NO SOUND or Effects in After Effects CS5

Question

I just spent 6 hours trying to get sound to play in AE in Windows 7 with no luck.  I tried every common sense thing I could come up with including pressing space bar, and pressing things in the preview pane.  Then I read all FAQ's and found out not to use space bar, but to try to scrub audio etc.  Then I tried to "change output module settings" but nothing matched with the faq.   If it said to do something, it usually didn't exist unless you somehow got to the part they discussed.    But eventually I found the checkbox and it didn't help.  I tried changing things in the final box when you go to render, to render audio, but that didn't work.  I know my computer has all the right hardware/drivers because I have many other sound and video editing programs which work with no problems. I also have ASIO as an option to try.   I went into edit-preferences->audio hardware, and the audo output mapping with no luck.  I re-installed windows 7 with a clean install after formatting, and set up with the most basic settings and that didn't work either.
Also no matter what I do, I can not get sound to export with the video as AE strips the audio out.  In fact I can't get any video effects to export.  I tried everything above and nothing helped.  I could even at points see the audio waveform in the editor.  Plus I know the video has audio.  But to make sure I tried 4 or 5 more videos and sometimes in different formats and that didn't work.  After spending this much time, I find this pretty counter intuitive given that every other editor like Sony Vegas etc, simply assumes a default that you want to be able to hear the audio track when playing, and assumes if you put effects on, they should render to the output file.  Then they give you ways to turn this off.  At any rate, I feel pretty stuck at this point. If anyone knows how to get sound within the program, or verify it's working I'd appreciate it.  Also a way to export the effects to the output render file would also be useful.  Thanks.

Answer 1

"A useless fluff question"?  lol.  I would have been happy to provide more info, but it's not a fluff question and no need to be insulting.  Especially when it sounds like you don't understand how AE works your self.  Sorry to be blunt about that, but most of what you needed to know was in that question.  So you're telling me that your only "useful" information is knowing about my motherboard or audio chipset?  Had I posted just that you would have likely told me it wasn't useful and ask me to describe the problem in more detail.   I was already trying not to make the post too long because people tend to skip things.  I asked for a simple way to verify my sound was working because I was unfamiliar with AE, and for all I knew I wasn't using the program correctly.  That's a logical approach and should have been the first step.  Anyone who knew anything about AE could have told me to look at the speaker icon, or confirm the preview pane could play sound after rendered. Or given me a simple 1,2,3 quick list to check the sound. Then we could have proceeded from there.
Did you provide any of that to save time?  No.  It seems you skipped it.  Then you ask me what 3rd party codecs I have installed.  What part about me reformatting my ssd and clean installing windows 7 didn't you get?  You say there wasn't useful information, but did you even read that?  With a clean install, obviously all codecs are provided by Microsoft up until the point that After Effects was installed and it added a few of its own.  The only exception was the addition of quicktime after the program was 1st tried without it.  Again, 100% clean, fresh system with 100% working hardware.  But here:  I have an x58 board with core i7 at 4ghz, 12GB ram, using windows 7 built in drivers for high definition audio device, standard version 6.1.7600.16385  working w/ onboard chipset.  I was also avoiding installing my creative labs x-fi to keep it as simple as possible.  But regardless, AE doesn't communicate with hardware, but the API, as well.  Which is why the sound options for WDM and/or ASIO were provided in the settings of AE as mentioned.   That should have been the biggest clue that I was just misunderstanding some step in AE's operation.
That said, I found other ways to verify sound was working.  One was to hold the appropriate key while scrubbing and audio and video play simultaneously.  One easy click did it.   Only thing is I have to manually move the cursor to hear it. Another was to look at the speaker cone icon on the track.  Finally I found that changing the work area size and doing ram-preview let me hear sound anywhere in the video in sections.  That made a lot more sense than it jumping to the beginning of the video and trying to render the entire clip.  I also found out about adding to the render que which solved the problem of no sound in my outputed video.   So maybe I can get points on this board for solving my own question? LOL.
And as I found out, the where-is-the-sound question is the most common in After Effects.  Yet the FAQ's do an absolutely horrible job at making that clear.  Sure it may be buried in some abstract way, but if it were my company I'd have an awesome step by step section on explaining the deal with sound and what to expect.  Or better I'd allow real time sound playback whenever it could render at 100% or faster as in other programs. Or maybe even 80%. It's kind of distrubing a $1000 program has such inefficient online resources for the most basic things.  I can see reading a manual to learn the cool more intricate things, but playing back sound should work out of the box with NO questions asked.  If that's not possible, it should come with a great explanation, or read me or something that grabs a persons attention quickly as soon as they install it.  That said, it took me longer, but I figured everything out on my own.