Instant scrubbing
Drag anywhere in the panel and frames follow your cursor. Motion uses a fast proxy that sharpens to full quality the moment you stop. Navigation stays fluid.
After Effects preview panel
Stop waiting
for
After Effects.
Overdrive is a preview panel that steps around AE’s display pipeline. It renders ahead of your playhead while you think, and every frame matches your export pixel for pixel.
Free during beta. macOS, After Effects 2025 and later.
01 — The problem
You know the wait.
Scrub the timeline and watch the spinner. Change one value and your cache is gone. After Effects renders beautifully. It just makes you sit through every frame of it, every time.
Overdrive removes the sitting.
02 — How it works
AE renders. Overdrive gets out of the way.
Every frame you see is rendered by the After Effects engine itself, with your third-party effects and 3D layers included. Overdrive replaces the path between that render and your screen.
The panel keeps its own frame cache, renders speculatively ahead of your playhead whenever AE sits idle, and spreads work across background render processes instead of queueing it on the instance you’re working in. When you scrub, the frame is usually already there.
- After Effects renders every frame with your effects and 3D layers.
- Overdrive stores the frames in its own cache and renders ahead of your playhead while AE is idle.
- A pool of background render processes fills the cache in parallel.
- When you scrub, the frame is usually already on screen.
03 — Features
What you get
Renders ahead of you
The moment your hands leave the keyboard, Overdrive fills the frames in front of your playhead. Come back, press play, it's ready.
Before / after in one click
Snapshot your comp, keep working, then flip between the two states to see exactly what your changes did. Faster than spamming undo or duplicating comps.
Its own timeline
Navigate inside the panel while AE's playhead stays where it is. A cache strip under the image shows which frames are ready. Grab AE's cursor and it takes control back.
Background render pool
Extra render processes fill your cache in parallel, beyond what a single AE instance can do on its own.
Measured gain
A live readout in the panel shows the actual speedup Overdrive delivers on your comp, measured while you work.
04 — Fidelity
Pixel-identical,
by design.
Because After Effects renders every frame, the image in Overdrive is the image you export. Third-party plugins, expressions, 3D: if AE can render it, Overdrive previews it.
- Third-party plugins
- Expressions
- 3D layers
05 — Beta
Try the beta
Overdrive is in active development. Beta testers get early builds and a direct line to the developer.
- Early builds, weeks before public releases
- Your feedback lands directly in the roadmap
- Free while the beta lasts
06 — FAQ
Quick answers
Does Overdrive change my project?
It reads your comp and displays frames. Your project file stays untouched.
Will my third-party effects work?
Yes. AE's engine renders every frame, so anything AE can render, Overdrive previews.
Windows?
Planned. The beta is macOS first.
Is it free?
The beta is. Pricing comes with the release, and beta testers hear about it first.
- macOS on Apple Silicon
- After Effects 2025 or later
- Beta builds are English only