I spent hours troubleshooting a very strange After Effects Preview problem and finally found the cause, so I'm posting this in case it helps someone else.

Symptoms:

• After Effects Preview was extremely slow to start, with a 5–7 second delay after pressing Space.
• During Preview, AfterFX.exe was constantly reading the source video from the SSD at full speed (up to1,5 Gbps).
• This happened even with a fully rendered/cached Preview.
• RAM usage was around 29 GB / 32 GB, but AE wasn't behaving as expected when cycling cached frames between RAM and Disk Cache.
• If I let Preview run continuously, AE eventually behaved normally: it streamed the initial data from disk, filled RAM, then started cycling cached frames as RAM filled up.
• However, if I paused Preview and played the exact same section again, AE would start reading the H.264 source from the SSD all over again instead of using the existing cache.
• Switching between CUDA and Mercury Software Only made no difference.
• Clearing Disk Cache / Media Cache, resetting preferences, reinstalling After Effects, changing SSDs, and using a different H.264 source did not help.
• The same RAM usage in a completely new project did not cause the problem.

The culprit turned out to be a High-Low Pass audio effect applied to the audio of the video layer.

After disabling/removing that effect, Preview immediately returned to normal. AE once again properly used the existing RAM/Disk Cache instead of repeatedly pulling the video from the SSD after every Pause → Play.

My takeaway: If After Effects suddenly starts re-reading video from your SSD every time you restart Preview, especially if it seems to ignore already cached frames, don't only investigate GPU rendering, RAM, Disk Cache, or the video codec. Check the audio processing on your video layers too. A broken or problematic audio effect may be forcing AE to continuously reprocess the source media and preventing normal cached Preview playback.

In my case, High-Low Pass was the unexpected culprit.

Hopefully this saves someone else a few hours of debugging.

That's my first post on Reddit so feel free to copypaste it to r/AfterEffects or somewhere else (I can't because of noob profile). I spent a few hours to resolve this problem and I hope that information can help somebody else.

I've recently been feeling like I'm in a pigeon hole of motion design, coming from a video editing background, where I don't feel like my design skills are good enough to get me hired for most open roles, despite my motion skills being fairly decent.

I've been considering Ben Marriott's courses, specifically his Design for Motion course, but curious if anyone who has recently taken or completed his course(s) has any feedback?

Or perhaps alternatives? I saw in another thread this link of free resources that intrigued me, but also open to other suggestions!

Feedback is appreciated!

Can any one tell me the best method to do this or if you know any tutorials that would be great.

So I've been building this plugin (Prism) that connects Figma and After Effects, and Live Sync is honestly the feature I'm most proud of you change something in Figma (position, color, text, whatever) and it just... updates in AE. No exporting, no re-importing.

Wanted to actually show it properly instead of just a boring screen recording, so I spent a good chunk of time on this piece. Typography's doing most of the explaining, tried to keep it snappy.

Lmk what you think, especially on the pacing. Still learning a lot on the motion side.

nexthorizon.art/store/figma-to-ae

This is my second short on YouTube I have actually made 6 of them and will upload them to get to know people who are in this field and also in content creation as I would like to have suggestions on what can be improved

Hey freelancers,

Bookings/first holds/POs/actual booking confirmations can be a pain in the *** and we all know it. But in my 10y of experience, agencies were always respectful and kept me in the loop weather projects got canceled/scope got smaller/etc etc. got a long term first hold from Los York (a studio I was looking forward to work with) and then got ghosted, no justification, they stopped replying, and in the mean time I lost work with other studios while waiting for answers. Just found it so rude... wondering if that happened to anyone else?

Was I just lucky all this time or is this the new norm?

pixelflow.neuorix.com project of mine I have been working on! Give it a look, pixel art, animation, sound studio , 3d voxel drawing and animation, add them all into the same timeline to make animations with sound, all free in your browser! Pretty proud of it as ive drawn and made games for years! always wanted a tool like it and always wanted a quality FREE drawing tool for pixel art so here it is pixelflow ;)

Hey! I put together a bundle of 4K VJ loops (abstract, particles, neon, geometric, cinematic, etc.) that I think could be useful for your sets. The files are royalty-free, seamless loops.

I’ve been working in motion design for years and also teach motion graphics, visual communication, and media psychology at a university.

And the more I teach, the more I notice a pattern:

A lot of people can follow tutorials. They can use the software and recreate effects. But when they start with a blank comp and have to make actual decisions, many get stuck.

Not on “how do I animate this?”
But on questions like:

• Why this typeface and not another?
• Why does this composition feel balanced?
• Why does this color choice feel trustworthy, energetic, or calm?
• When does motion support the message, and when is it just decoration?
• How do you know whether an animation is actually solving a communication problem?

I’m not asking because I want to validate a course idea. I’m asking because I don’t want to build another resource that only teaches software tricks. The internet is already full of those.

What I’m trying to understand is:
What’s still genuinely missing in motion design education today?
What do people keep struggling with, even after years of practice?
What knowledge is hard to find online, but actually matters in real projects?
And what kind of learning format would you actually pay for in 2026?

If you had to name the biggest gap between “I know the tools” and “I know what I’m doing,” what would it be?

I added an interactive demo to my editing app, where you can swap logo and text and download it, very simple just to show how simple it is to use vidmo.app

I saw this guy animation some sort of stop motion with real footage of himself, and I found amazing his style of animation and I want to use something similar for a personal project, but cant find the video anywere

It was him showing his progress on this style of animation, and the recent one was one video of him like changing outfits in a animated style, with a finger whiping and dragging clothes to him, finishing with kind of a joke on perfomative males on social media

Can someone help me find it?

I’ve been trying to learn motion design for some months now with YouTube and tbh there’s no clear direction as I do not understand why I am doing anything, I just watch and recreate. I want to learn motion design and do it professionally, so I have to learn from the basics and all… I’ve been looking for a tutor/course that can help and is affordable, it’s been tough cause I don’t want to pay for something and not learn enough. I don’t have enough to just try my luck…

This is kinda my goal and also want to showcase my editing and motion graphics,I also intend to improve my speaking, writing means overall storytelling skills tell me if you have any suggestions

Hi everyone

I’m completely new to motion design and would love some advice on where to start, both in terms of resources and software.

My goal isn’t to create flashy animations or VFX. I’m more interested in simple educational animations, such as:
- Drawing tables and charts
- Animating arrows and connections between ideas
- Simple graphs and diagrams

I’m wondering what software is best for this type of work. Are there good free alternatives to Adoabe AfterEffects , preferably one with a lot of learning resources ?
I tried davinci resolve but it seems overly complex for my use case (just drawing a table took 20 minutes)

I see some creators just use PowerPoint presentations 😅

Any help is greatly appreciated

Hi guys, im practicing bounce animation and to my eyes it looks okay now but i know it's not that accurate that's why I need feedback from you guys what to improve with my animation, thank you! sorry for my bad english.

I spent two days reconstructing a 36-second launch film with Kimi K3, using the reference as a formal study in motion language, material response, and editorial rhythm.

Rather than treating K3 as a one-shot generator, I used it within an iterative production loop: source analysis, shot segmentation, code-driven reconstruction, render review, and targeted revision.

The first full pass established the temporal structure, but its visual hierarchy was too uniform. I therefore separated the system into three layers: motion, material, and edit. Camera moves and timing remained procedural; flat assets were replaced with generated textures; and the field sequences were rebuilt as Three.js particle simulations.

I then evaluated matched timestamps frame by frame, correcting shot scale, prop density, transition timing, and depth cues clip by clip. The comparisons below show how those changes altered the visual weight without discarding the underlying motion structure.

For reference-led reconstruction, which variable tends to break fidelity first in your work: timing, material response, or shot density?

1.5s comparison. Left: simplified V1 props; Right: final realistic textures and richer visual density

15s comparison. Left: flat V1 gauge; Right: final metal materials, lighting, and spatial depth

24s comparison. Left: sparse V1 composition; Right: final textured props and fuller framing

https://reddit.com/link/1v2m1ef/video/rqlkrnoprleh1/player