Play button doesn't play.

[777bbbbq]

When I click on the play button nothing happens.  I have refreshed the scene. I have exited and re-entered.  I have a 2-minute scene that was playing fine and suddenly it will not play at all.  Any ideas on why it will no longer play? Thanks.

[777bbbbq]

Okay, it started playing again for no apparent reasons. Hmm.

[dtull-adobe]

I have seen a few odd situations where the play button wouldn't respond and they've all been somehow related to audio playback being in a weird state. Irritating and devilishly hard to reproduce the issue to look into fixing it. 😬

Mentioning it only in case it gives you some ideas for what might have caused it (let me know if you find such clues, I'd love to corner it) or at least a way to shake it loose if it happens again.

Dan Tull

Adobe Character Animator

[777bbbbq]

Thanks, Dan.

When the play button isn't working, sometimes it seems to help to click >> and then try the play button again.  Or maybe click >> and <<. Also, I think that the problem may have something to do with the designation of a 'work area.'  It almost looks like there's a mini work area lasting a fractional second at the beginning of the file and the play head does not want to advance past it.  When I click play, the scene does play, perhaps, but only for a fraction of a second.  I mention that possibility because I have been able to make the playback problem disappear by clicking on some option about the work area.  Also, in the midst of the playback problem, I tried exporting the video for the entire 3-minute scene, and the duration of the export was only about .04 seconds.  So both playback and export seem to be hung up on the very beginning of the scene file.

[TheOriginalGC]

It sounds like the work area for your animation does not extend the length of your timeline. Try moving the play head to the end of your animation, right-click on the timeline, and select "Set Work Area End to Playhead."

[dtull-adobe]

Yeah, the default behavior of an active work area is to loop the content of the work area once playback hits it, so if you had a really short work area with no appreciable animation content in it right after the spot where you started playing, it would just loop that nothingness and seem like it was just not playing at all. (especially if you are zoomed out far enough that the work area is effectively zero length in terms of pixel dimensions)