AE2017: looping playback beachball

[mrsclean]

With the new AE 2017, when I playback footage in the timeline with either Ram preview or spacebar,  playback loops indefinitely with a spinning beachball.

It seems to be related to animated shape layers and imported vector assets (.ai and .psd)

I can scrub just fine, and rendering seems to work... but when I preview, it gets stuck in a loop, and force quit is necessary each time.

I've done the usual resetting prefs, restarting computer, trying various files.. etc. To no avail.

I'm on a late 2015 5k Imac, AMD Radeon 2048, running Sierra 10.12.1

Anyone else seeing this issue?

[jsnashville79]

I'm having the same problem on a mid 2014 MacBook Pro, 2.5 i7, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M, Sierra 10.12.1

[jeroyg]

The quickest thing to try here is to close the timeline window and then see if you can still reproduce the problem.

In some cases on Mac only with El Capitan or later there is an invalidate triggered by the OS that causes AE to redraw the entire timeline during each frame update which is usually the cause of this issue. If hiding the timeline works other workarounds are listed below for the time being.

1.      Reducing the vertical size of the Timeline panel is often enough. Some users who have experienced this problem dock a different panel under the Timeline, such as the Render Queue, and raise the vertical divider between them.

2.      Enabling Full Screen in the Preview panel, or maximizing the Composition panel during the preview (` key, or in the Composition panel menu), hides the Timeline panel.

3.      Hiding the preview-time indicator (the red line that moves across the Timeline panel during a preview) will almost always solve this, as it is the redraw of this UI element that triggers the problem, but it is tricky to do so. You need to zoom in on the Timeline and then move the view away from the area being previewed. This is also not convenient, and somewhat workflow-disruptive, since you can’t watch the PTI hit keyframes, audio waveforms, etc.)

[mrsclean]

Well thats interesting. 

The behavior you describe seems to line up with my problem.  I'm testing it out and it seems to be correlating, but since AE totally locks up when its stuck in the loop, I can't use the workarounds you describe to verify. I can only keep a tiny timeline anytime I want playback.  Now I just have to teach myself to not reflexively preview things.

If this is a known bug, and it hasn't been addressed since El Captain, that doesn't bode well.

[jeroyg]

mrsclean -

efforts have been made to address the issue but apparently there are still cases where it can happen. this is a high priority issue for us to fix. upon launching the app with the default workspace this shouldn't happen.

although i understand the inconvenience - the best workaround is to keep a layout that will prevent this from happening - like number 1. if the timeline panel isn't the bottom most panel in the UI layout you shouldn't ever run into the issue.

[jackthegiantslayer]

I'm sorry but I am SO freaking over this never-ending bug which Adobe haven't been able to fix for ages and which they should be allocating ALL resources to at this point, as entire studios that use 5k Retina iMacs are still having to use After Effects CC 2014 just to be able to have basic functionality!!!! Adobe should be ashamed and embarrassed at their ineptitude, and should offer refunds or compensation to all the AE users who have been basically beta testing for the last 2 years. To call this question "answered" is a joke.

[VPCEdit6]

I have been trying to solve this issue on my iMac.  Pressing the spacebar to preview some .ai vector animations results in a RAM preview that I can't stop.  In CC 2015.3, pressing the space bar again stops and starts playback, but not in CC 2017.  The preview renders the whole timeline and loops over and over at half speed.  I'm on a 5k iMac on El Capitan.  I got some better results by moving my cache folder to an external drive, even though it is a slower connection.  I got the beach ball crash over and over.  I was able to save my work with the kill -SEGV terminal command but man what a bummer.  Maybe CC 2018 will work on an iMac.

[BrianBass]

I was under the impression that these "work arounds" would be unnecessary as Adobe claimed these preview issues would be fixed in the new update.  Now it will playback a little smoother than before, but it gets stuck with the spinning wheel and can't be stopped, so annoying.  I'm not even trying to playback a comp with effects, just a raw .mov file.

[sc89999951]

Mac Pro 2013 fully loaded. Rather than fight this issue or force to update to OSX10.12 (apple's new billboard that communicates to all prousers with an elongated middle finger "we are a full blown phone gadget company now and you can F off") I simply uninstalled AE14 and reinstalled 13.15 and continued my delayed projects... and wait for adobe to fix this or just live here until I can migrate to 2nd or 3rd gen surface : \

[davidclabaugh]

AE CC17 is totally crashing on preview, and I think it has to do with audio sample rates, the best workaround is to scrub graphics and port the project over to Premiere for audio timing or turn off audio and check "Cache before Playback" in the preview tab but then you have to wait until the whole comp is cached to see it....till they fix this.

Adobe please hurry

[VMS studio]

Got the same bug on a late 2015 MBP 15"

I almost shot a coworker in the face because of how irritating this bug was.

Today I tried the render queue below the timeline trick and it seems like it worked. This is super annoying though. I don't remember AE 2014 being this buggy. RAM preview is glitchy on the audio and quite often doesn't play in realtime (even though the entire timeline just got cached), audio just changes the pitch because of some dropped frames or what do you call those.

Guys help us professionals get a proper stable release.

[openbyhand_LTD]

After Effects has been an absolute joke for years.

If you don't want to be in the business of making professional grade software then can you please reduce the cost of the CC subscription and we can all accept that we are in effect beta testers and not customers - because this isn't funny any more.

[andyc83834215]

Bumping, as I'm also experiencing this issue with any level of animation in AE.

Hiding the timeline indeed solves the issue, but makes for an awful workflow. Needs a fix ASAP.

[aaronlyon]

Been struggling with this for years, hoping Adobe would fix. Still a major issue. 27" iMac, latest OS, latest software updates.

[kantis80346518]

I disagree with this thread being labeled as "Answered" when this is clearly a persisting issue. I've not run into this issue much before the newest version of AE.

[mrsclean]

the solution of putting the render queue at the bottom of the screen seems to work. Its why I marked the question as answered. Not being satisfied with the answer, and not being answered aren't always the same thing...

[mave1969]

Fair comment!

[Szalam]

This isn't just an El Capitan issue. It also affects people with Sierra (but not everybody on either OS - I'm not having the problem on my MacBook running El Capitan).

Anyway, if this is the bug I think it is, the AE team says they are working on it as a very high priority. They've also said a bug fix update for CC 2017 is coming very soon. Let's hope this fix is in the update and that it solves this issue.

[mave1969]

I, too, would strongly question the marking of this question as "answered". That said, while the suggestion closing the timeline didn't make any difference to playback, docking a panel below the timeline did. To minimise the inconvenience, I found that docking the render queue with the timeline, and then setting the panel to 'stacked' and 'solo' was the best solution. That way you can just flick between them as necessary without the render queue taking away very much vertical space from your timeline panel.

Frankly, AE's preview functionality has been a bag of washing for years now, but this does at least reduce the daily frustration somewhat.

Professional software, eh?

[mave1969]

Actually, scratch the bit about stacked panels. That just makes another vertical panel every time you double-click on a comp in the timeline, which quickly becomes useless. So just docked below and then resized to just a single tab-height row which you can double-click to expand when you need to see it.

[Szalam · Accepted solution]

Everybody who is having this issue, please install the latest update that came out las: After Effects CC (November 2017) Bug-Fix Update Is Now Available

This update is 14.0.1 and is a bug fix for many disturbing issues especially for Mac users. It does not fix all the bugs that are new with the CC 2017 release (Known issues in After Effects CC 2017), but it does fix some issues that have been plaguing After Effects since the first parts of the new architecture showed up in the CC 2015 release.

If you can't see the update yet, you may need to wait a while until you see it as it can take up to 24 hours to populate an update across all the data centers. You may need to log out, relaunch the Creative Cloud app, and long in again.

[BrianBass]

Looks like it doesn't solve the issue.  Now instead of getting the spinning wheel, it's back to slowing down and not being able to playback in real time, even with the frames cached and the preview screen full-screened.  This is beyond ridiculous.

[Szalam]

BrianBass wrote:

Looks like it doesn't solve the issue. Now instead of getting the spinning wheel, it's back to slowing down and not being able to playback in real time, even with the frames cached and the preview screen full-screened. This is beyond ridiculous.

That's odd. It should have been solved. It has been for the other folks I've talked to who had the problem.

I mean, at least it's not crashing on you now, so that's better...

Try this. Make an HD composition that's 10 seconds long using the HDTV preset. Create a rectangle shape layer (or something equally simple). Cache that preview and play it back. Does it reach real time once you have the green cache indicators across the whole comp?

[darknoise]

OMG I hate Adobe products sometimes. This issue has wasted most of my day and I'm working on a seriously tight deadline. Seriously, this is crap.

[darknoise]

Don't get me started on the idiotic experience of Adobe Illustrator along with After Effects. What a moron process for the modern day. Where is Macromedia? These programs are about as unintuitive and convoluted as a bucket of dirt. The developers can't possibly be using these programs. If they did, they'd know what i'm talking about and fix this lame process. I hate that i have to rely on it as a professional. Everything has to be so overwhelmingly complicated, taking 5 steps to get to something that should be one click away. Trust me, i know how to use these programs as I've been using them since day one of Adobe. Nothing has really changed, except that they bought out a company that truly understood the user and simplification. Was a sad day for me when the "merger" happened. It's horrible. Fix this crap excuse for an interface for god sake! It's a bag of bugs, roundabouts and pain points.