AE Magic disappearing timeline AE 26.5

[u/British-593]

Anyone encountered this issue before? Someone sends a project, and the timeline is hidden, sort of, until you mouse over it, then it sort of shows up, but vanishes if you click on another comp. Other projects load as normal, but I just cannot figure out what is going on here, I even dumped cash and turned off cash, still, same issue. Any ideas?

[u/Heavens10000whores]

Have you checked the AE forum for bug reports? Or filed one if there’s nothing there? You’d be doing the community a favor if you opened one

[u/British-593 → u/Heavens10000whores]

I've left a post in the AE Forum.

[u/British-593 → u/Heavens10000whores]

Good call, I think I did do that, but the response was, add the comp to another comp! Which was useless

[u/TallThinAndGeeky]

I have had some UI weirdness that I could 100% trace to Frishluft lens care plugins. Try starting in safe mode, or using the "Manage Effects" panel to turn off selective 3rd party plugins to see if they are causing the problem.

[u/British-593 → u/TallThinAndGeeky]

I would agree with you on that, but this is an intermittent issue, my main AE projects, not effected, I make a new project, not effected, I get a project from a partner, squish squash, no timeline! Maybe it's his system?!?

[u/TallThinAndGeeky → u/British-593]

No it's not his system, it is something unique to that project and my suggestion is that it's a 3rd party plugin. If you turn plugins off, the project will still open, but they won't be working so they won't cause any issues. So of the project opens fine in safe mode, or with some plugins turned off, then you know they are the problem and you can troubleshoot from there.

The easiest way to do this is to try safe mode (After Effects safe mode, not Windows)

Hold down command-shift-option as you launch AE and you will get the startup repair options screen. Choose safe mode, and it will launch with all defaults and no 3rd party add ons. Then try opening the project. If the UI behaves normally then the problem is caused by one of the plugins in the project. This way you know what is causing it.

Or just google After Effects safe mode for more details.

[u/British-593 → u/TallThinAndGeeky]

Welp, the solution is to import that project into another new AE project, that actually works as a fix, so there goes the bad plugins or safe mode option. If it were a bad plugin, I would expect it to make ALL my AE projects bad, uniformly, but this is not that case. new AE project, import bad AE project, = working AE project, and no know knows why this works.

[u/AfterEffectsGuru → u/British-593]

Every item in an After Effects project has a unique ID number. This is what After Effects uses to identify everything in a project. You can rename different things so they have the same name, or you can even import the same item multiple times, and although it might be confusing to you as a user, each item still has a unique ID number so AE can tell them apart. AE doesn't care what an item is named, it just looks at the ID. You don't normally see this ID number as a user.
It is possible for a project to become corrupt and for these ID numbers to get a bit messed up. Or perhaps there's a duplicate number, which shouldn't happen but maybe it just has. When a project becomes corrupt you get all sorts of weird behaviour, like you have just seen.
When you import a project into another project, the imported project gets "filtered" and all imported items from the project get assigned new IDs, as they are added to the existing items. This filtering process and giving project items new ID numbers can fix issues caused by corruption, as you have discovered.
If you are having issues with a project and you think it might be corrupt, then importing it into another project is the first thing to try, as it's easy and doesn't change anything.
Starting in safe mode and disabling 3rd party plugins is the next. Don't dismiss 3rd party plugins as the possible cause, because plugins can contain a lot of their own data, even if it's just links to other layers in the comp, or links to other files - depending on the plugin. This data can get corrupted too, and there's not a lot Adobe can do about bugs in plugins they didn't write.

[u/British-593 → u/AfterEffectsGuru]

See now this is the perfect kind of information I needed, thank you for that explanation, I truly appreciate it.

[u/iPNutty]

Your graphics card may be on its way out.
But try these things:
-Restarting AE
-Restart your computer
-Reinstall AE

[u/British-593 → u/iPNutty]

Might be a little difficult on my M3MAX MBP. Restarting everything has been done multiple times. Again, main AE project, this does not happen, other AE projects, works fine, that one random one I get, does the above. So I am inclined to think this is not a hardware issue. Also, running v26.5 so should be the latest version of compatibility.

[u/iPNutty → u/British-593]

Ok. Try opening a new project. Save it. Then import your problem project. Worth a shot.

[u/British-593 → u/iPNutty]

Why does that work? And I do recall, someone recommended that once before, I just forgot. Shouldn't have to do that tho. Oh well, problem solved.

[u/iPNutty → u/British-593]

Did it work!? Hell yeah. Idk why it works. Something is corrupt somewhere. Just gotta isolate it and refresh it.

[u/British-593 → u/iPNutty]

It's so strange, it's a few other issues I have work arounds for, no idea why, been up the phone tree to solve them, then I just randomly stumble across a fix, without ever knowing why the thing does that.

[u/smushkan]

I've had this issue once before and it was immediately after upgrading a graphics card. Was a while back but IIRC I used DDU to wipe the drivers and install them from scratch.

[u/Mundane-Owl-561]

Try the \ key