FIXED: After Effects Slow Playback Issue - How To Solve It

A guide to how After Effects previews video and what to do about it.

In this video I explain why playback in AE is often slow / not in real time (or should that be realtime) and what that means for editing. I then share all the different ways you can overcome this. Using elements like the Solo option, Proxies and understanding the preview controls will all help to speed up the processing. These tips and more will help to prevent the timeline stuttering and allow you to time your edits.

#AfterEffects #tutorial #preview @AdobeVideo

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[maple_journey]

Most After Effects users don't understand how the application works under the hood. They expect AE to playback their composition with a zillion effects like a video player and are often frustrated when that's not the case. This video explains it beautifully 👏🏻

[alienthefirst]

I cant belive my 4 years of XP is in the mud with this your explanation. Thanks for this troubleshoot. I had to raise RAM thinking it as a RAM issue but apparently no. Your explanation helped me solve it!

[davidsiegel]

Thank you for that comprehensive explanation - it was helpful to have a rundown of how AE works and a number of different strategies!

[ITSTEEJCO]

It blows my mind that UE5 can render hundreds of millions of polygons, volumetric light effects, post effects, motion blur.... all in real time and I can barely play back a 4k video with some text in AE. The solutions are always non viable, and there seems to be little interest in rebuilding AE from the ground up. Im actively looking for alternatives and every adobe user I know says the same.

[gowon]

in my case, its that when i click on the spacebar to play the preview but it takes around 10secs before it finally starts playing (but with no lag, and the problem only applies to one project.)

[fea]

for me all the frames are rendered and i can go over all of them fast but when I click play it runs at like 2 frames

[iiserenity]

in the info mine is show ( 60fps realtime ) but in my eyes is not like that, like 25 fps and the sound doesnt matching and it just raw video no edits. So is there anyway to reset my AE?

[clxud]

Everytime I try to change my fps to a lower frame rate, the speed of my whole entire project goes fast and everytime I make the fps high, it goes in slow motion. For some reason, I have to stay on 23.900 fps for my project to go normal speed. Do you think you can tell me what’s wrong with that? If so, please help🙏

[swamprec]

you just saved me from a final, THANK YOU SO MUCH

[PrototypeFilms]

What if you record off, for example, a Canon M50 Mark 2 and when you import the footage into after effects, the video itself is slow, and plays in half the speed, but when you render it and watch it, it's normal speed?

[mdr]

Why isn't there an option like the 'Render In to out' in premiere pro in After Effects? So you can render your project without having to export.
Or am I just unaware of this option?

[CupofLoffee]

my fps was on 60 fps but i changed it to 30 and it ran smoother but the audio went slow mo in the preview! so i changed the fps to 29 and when i click play it switched it back to 60 fps every time! why! help someonee

[JayFrTheGoat]

Is ae outdated or something? Because if I edit on my phone using even more effects than on ae its way faster than my almost $2k pc with ae

[ePICS]

M2 Macbook 16 Ram still struggles. I wonder if there is a better configuration for faster previews. Sometimes it gets stuck in a small parte of the video and it wont render further, only after I click after. Why?

[ADEMJARI]

Bro i can't see the preview and hear the audio in same time in 30 FPS.but when i put it 10 FPS. I Can see and here the both of them. i want really to see the preview ans hear the audio in same time in 30 FPS but i can't even with Green line it Say Always frames not realtime. give me a solution (my labtob is 8gb RAM ddr3 Intel uhd graphics card and i5 4th) should i upgrade my labtob ?

[Kekauzu]

I have this weird bug, so everything was supposed to be fine

Even the green line is full

But, today, my after effect got an error, where my preview stuck at 1 Second, and then reset back to 0 and proceed to 1 Sec and back to 0 again

But the green line is full

But then I tried, new project, white blank, nothing

And I click enter to see if it an actual bug or my ram

And yes, it stuck at 1 Second

It seems it's only me, I can't find the fix on YouTube or even people talked about it

Can you help please?

[uppastam]

ur southpark esc vtuber is so silly i love u fr like its geeeenius, why didn't i think of that????

[HxssanKhan]

Bro I have 16 gigs of ram Rtx 3050 my composition duration is 10 mins and I have a quite complex project but I have done all the hacks my playback still is not working properly audio is reverbing which is a glitch of aftereffects can you pls help me bro I will get you subs from my whole house plzz

[hindulife]

I tried this and when I try to play a video it only does one part other part fets left out pls help😢

[RVladimirP]

Hi! when I add a simple recorded video without effects to after effects and press the spacebar, only the first seconds play normally. then the slide show starts. is that how it should be? It really annoys me, because my computer is rtx 4090, i912900 and 32 ddr5 and I have a strong feeling that I'm doing something wrong :(