AE Comp Flickers Black on NVIDIA 531.18 – Quick Fix

Quick answer

Disable GPU acceleration, clear the After Effects GPU cache, then re-enable acceleration. If that doesn't stick, roll back to NVIDIA driver 528.49 or 527.56.

Why this happens

You're seeing the classic black flicker in the Composition panel when GPU acceleration is turned on. It's not your comp, it's not your footage — it's a bad handshake between After Effects and the NVIDIA driver.

Driver 531.18 (released March 2023) had a known issue with OpenGL and CUDA interop that caused random black frames in previews, especially on RTX 30-series cards. Some folks also see it on GTX 16-series. The flicker usually shows up when you scrub the timeline or play a RAM preview, and it gets worse with multiple layers or effects.

There are two culprits: the driver itself and a corrupt GPU cache that After Effects stores on your system drive. The cache gets filled with outdated shader data that the new driver chokes on. So the fix is about clearing that cache and checking the driver version.

Fix steps

Disable GPU acceleration temporarily.
Go to Edit > Preferences > Display (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > Display (macOS). Uncheck Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels. Click OK. This turns off the GPU for previews — you'll still get GPU effects, but the preview won't flicker.
Clear the GPU cache.
Now go to Edit > Preferences > Media & Disk Cache. Under Cache, note the folder path. Click Clean Database & Cache. Close After Effects completely.
Delete the cache folder manually.
Open File Explorer and go to the path you noted — usually C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\[Version]\Media Cache. Delete everything inside that folder. Don't worry, After Effects will recreate it. Also delete the Media Cache Files folder next to it.
Re-enable GPU acceleration.
Restart After Effects and re-check Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels in Display preferences. Click OK. Test a RAM preview on your comp. You should see no more black flickers.

After step 4, most users see the flicker gone. If it still flickers, the driver is the problem.

Alternative fix: Roll back the NVIDIA driver

If clearing the cache didn't work, the 531.18 driver is your enemy. Here's how to roll back:

Download the previous driver. For most RTX cards, that's 528.49 or 527.56 — both were stable with After Effects. Go to NVIDIA's driver site, select your GPU, and download the older version.
Uninstall the current driver. Use Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) — don't skip this. Boot into Safe Mode (hold Shift while clicking Restart, then Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Startup Settings > Restart, then press 4). Run DDU and choose Clean and restart.
Install the older driver. Run the installer, choose Custom, and check Perform a clean installation. That wipes out any leftover settings.
Reboot and test After Effects. The flicker should be gone entirely.

This rollback is the surefire fix. I've seen it work on dozens of machines. The trade-off is you lose any new driver features, but stability matters more for editing.

If you still see flicker

Try these in order:

Turn off GPU acceleration completely and work with CPU previews. Slightly slower but rock solid.
Update After Effects to the latest patch — Adobe fixed some GPU cache bugs in 23.4 and later.
Switch your GPU preference in Windows to High Performance for After Effects. Go to Settings > System > Display > Graphics, find After Effects, set it to High Performance.

Prevention tip

Don't jump on the newest NVIDIA driver the day it drops. Wait two weeks — check the Adobe forums or Reddit (r/AfterEffects) for complaints. When you do update, clear the After Effects cache right after installing the new driver. That prevents the old cache from colliding with the new driver's shader compiler, which is exactly what caused this flicker.

Also, set After Effects to Save cache on quit — but only after you've done the fixes above. That keeps your previews fast without the risk of a corrupt cache.