[Michael Litty]

I was about to give up hope. Thank you! This did fix it.
Exactly as you described,
File > Project Settings > General
and at the bottom there’s a little check box.

[Michael Litty]

I’m not sure what constitutes “a lot of layers” I had the original problem in a composition with around ten layers but Iwas able to reproduce it in a new project with only two graphic layers and one audio layer.

[Michael Litty]

I don’t see any terminology in the preview pane that designates “proper” previews but changing the preview settings to this seems to have fixed the problem! Thank you!

[Michael Litty]

I had no idea there WERE different preview behaviors. Seeing your post and did a little poking around and found this page which went into more detail about space bar previews vs. “proper” previews.

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/previewing.html

Still learning.

[Michael Litty]

This has been my experience with past versions as well and the behavior you describe is what happens on an iMac using the previous version of Ae. An iMac that I’ve used to work on this same project. The first time through, Ae is rendering the preview and it’s slow. On the second playback or loop through, the render is usually done and it previews smoothly.

With this new update, however, the playback never smooths out. Even after a few attempts. Letting it play through once or twice doesn’t help.

[Michael Litty]

My audio hardware dialog

Video Playback settings

I had real time playback on an iMac with 16GB RAM and Ae2015 installed. The iMac was probably a 2015 model, so newer than the Mac pro but the Mac Pro has these specs and should handle this little project.

[Michael Litty]

I’m also finding Ae 2017 to be unusable. I had to upgrade because I was having issues with my installation and had to reinstall.

I opened a project from the previous version of Ae CC and it was converted for 2017. Playback of the 20 second long project causes the program to bog down horribly and audio playback sounds delayed and distorted.
System: Mac Pro Mid 2012
2x 2.4 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
64 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC RAM
NVIDIA Quadro K5000 4096 MB

internal SSD drive with external for media.

AE Settings———————–
Audio Hardware:
Device Class: CoreAudio
I/O Buffer 1024
Sample Rate 44100
“Attempt to force …” unchecked.

Video Preview:
Enable Mercury Transmit (unchecked but I’ve tried both with and without and had the same horrible results)

end AE Settings ——————–

More info.
If I create a new project and import the same audio file and only play that file back, it sounds fine. As soon as I create a comp with three text layers that have animated presets applied and a single solid with an animated backgroun preset, the whole thing bogs down after about four seconds of playback.

[Michael Litty]

I’m having a similar problem with AVCHD footage from a Canon Vixia H30. I’m recording in AVCHD and transcoding from the SD card so that the file system remains intact. When ingesting and transcoding to DNxHD preset, the transcode fails with an error, “…Reason: AME encoding error!” Transcoding to H.264 seems to work fine.

As an added bit, Media Encoder tells me, “The source file’s video stream is not compatible with this preset. Please choose a different preset.” Does that mean I can’t go from AVCHD to DNxHD?

…

I may have found the answer. I had Prelude set to rewrap the AVCHD files in DNxHD and the codec in the AVCHD was not compatible with the DNxHD container. I needed to choose a DNxHD preset that transcoded the files.

[Michael Litty]

Thanks for the tip. I tried a variation on your suggestion.

Instead of moving any of the clips, I turned visibility off for the tracks above the track I wanted to analyze.

That did the trick.

[Michael Litty]

What a great thread!

I’m wondering how everyone feels about Canon’s own new flatter “Video Camera X Series Look” color profile in comparison to Marvel and Technicolor?

I’ve been using the Technicolor profile a lot for the widest dynamic range but find that it needs too much color correction for a lot of what I’m shooting. I do some news and sports shooting for a college news program. They don’t need cinematic footage but they do need it fast. There’s rarely time for color grading. I’m hoping that Marvel (or maybe Canon’s new VCx Series) profile will produce footage of a high quality that is ready or nearly ready to roll right off of the card.