Preview audio from current time

[CoryTV]

No matter what I do, in the latest AE CC 2017, I cannot preview audio from current time.  If I hit (.) on the num pad, it ALWAYS previews audio from the beginning of the work area. I've scoured the forums, google, and the preferences and I can't find it.. Am I missing something blindingly simple?

[Szalam]

Go into your preview panel and have a look at the settings for previews via the different shortcut options.

[Szalam]

For example, see this image:

[CoryTV]

Thank you for so much your help, but that's not quite the answer I'm looking for.

I understand you can change the shortcut for preview. I'm asking 1 very important question:

How do you preview "AUDIO ONLY" from current position. It used to be the "." key on the number pad would do this, but now it ALWAYS goes back to the beginning of the work area, and I don't like having to constantly change the work area for my comp..

[Szalam · Accepted solution]

Check the other setting I have circled. You can specify where it does the previews from.

[jerryw48492253]

You're both right!

Today, the way to preview just audio from the current timeline position is to adjust the Preview settings (which can be set to Audio Only). HOWEVER, earlier versions of AE used to have a shortcut key to preview audio from the current timeline position AND maintain your Preview Window settings to, say, preview audio and video in the work area. You could always post a feature request to bring this back, and if you do, I would "me too" it because it was a useful feature.

You might also play around with command-clicking in the numbered part of the timeline, which plays a small sample of the audio at the point the timeline indicator is at. It's not as useful as the old "." key on the number pad though.

[Szalam]

Jerry, I don't understand your post. You can still press . to preview audio only from the current timeline while pressing 0 can preview the  work area and spacebar can preview from the current timeline. Of course, you can change these settings, but that's the default.

[jerryw48492253]

Szalam — right you are. It seems I remember the “.” key NOT playing back the audio, but the work area. I guess maybe the workstation I was on had the Video Preview set to the”.” key and I thought the feature had gone bye-bye.

[CoryTV]

I just upgraded to 14.2 and did not migrate settings. the "." command started working again.

I really did look through all the settings for anything that seemed remotely relevant and couldn't find anything... Anyway, for anyone from the future who needs help if they come across this issue.

It DEFINITELY was not working right earlier-- would only preview from beginning of work area with numpad '.' Tried ALL options in the preview pane, as well as combing all settings menus.

[Moon68]

Hi Cory TV,

I have the exact same problem: Audio preview starts only from the beginning of the work area, and not from current time position in the timeline.

I'm not sure how you fixed the problem... By upgrading without settings migration??

(I'm on AE CC 2018, and in my experience the feature used to work until AE 2014.2)...

[Moon68]

Ok, so to anyone having the same issue, I found the solution:

From now on, as long as your current time is inside your work area, audio preview only will be constrained to this work area.

If your current time is outside and before your work area, audio preview only will start from current time as before... but it will stop when it reaches the end of the work area.

If your current time is outside and after your work area, audio preview only will start from current time, and play all the way until the end of the comp.

So to get back to a normal audio preview only behavior, make sure you're outside and after the work area.

Just don't ask me why Adobe added this change after AE cc2014... 😕

[Szalam]

Reminder: you can change this behavior! If you don't like it, go into the preview panel and change it to do whatever you want. Remember, you can make different keyboard keys have different behaviors with the dropdown of which keyboard command you're modifying.

[Moon68]

Thanks for this reminder, Szalam, but unless I'm missing something, you're making the same mistake than last year above with CoryTV. I'm well aware of the preview customization options, but I'm referring to AUDIO PREVIEW here (with audio only), which is not the same.

And if I may, this thread is wrongly marked as "solved". My workaround is just a workaround, but this issue appeared with CC2015 and is certainly not solved, not properly anyway.

[Szalam]

I am talking about the audio preview. It's what my screenshots are about and everything. The preview panel is for making changes to all of your previews - in fact, you can specify whether previews with certain keys include video or audio at all.

[Moon68]

Szalam  a écrit

The preview panel is for making changes to all of your previews

That's precisely the problem: I don't want to make changes to all of my previews, just revert the audio preview behavior back to what it was up until CC 2014.2. If I make any change in the preview panel, it will affect the other previews as well and I don't want that.

And I know about keyboard shortcuts customization, but giving different shortcuts to different preview modes won't give them different behaviors.

I swear, If this was anyone but you, I'd think you were trolling me.

[Szalam]

I think I'm not making myself clear enough.

When you pick the shortcut in the preview panel (for example, you pick Numpad .), all of the options you are changing in the preview panel only apply to the previews for that shortcut. They do NOT apply to previews initiated by pressing the spacebar or Numpad 0 (or any others).

You can make it be identical to how it was in earlier versions of AE by changing the settings in the preview panel with Numpad . selected as the shortcut options to change and it won't affect previews initiated by pressing any of the other shortcuts. Note how when you switch between the shortcut dropdown options, that the other options in the preview panel change to match.

[Moon68]

Thank you very much for your explanations.