I keep losing my audio in After Effects
 

I create a new composition, but when dragging and dropping a video file onto it the sound seems to not be arriving in the composition with the video.

It was all working fine earlier, but now when dropping on a video file It only adds just video.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

I don't know if you realize, but the audio needs to be rendered (along with the video).

You need to hit the zero button and both audio and video can be previewed properly...

Also, holding the Control key while scrubbing lets you scrub the audio

That's not quite the problem I am having though.

When dropping it into the composition for editing it drags over the video but leaves the audio behind. This can be seen by looking at the small file picture under the 'preview tab'. Before dropping the video file into the composition the file showed with an audio wave underneath, but after dropping it into the composition the audio wave vanishes.

James, did you render or ctrl+scrub the composition timeline as suggested? do you not hear audio? Are you aware that AE does not create seperate audio and video "tracks" like PP? The footage layer in the composition contains the audio. If you expand the layer's properties (by clicking the triangle icon left of the laye's name) you should see the "audio" property. You can expand that property as well and you should see the "waveform" property which in turn can also be expanded to show the actual waveform graph. Shortcut for expanding audio is the key "L" and shortcut for expanding waveform is double pressing "L".
when you have a footage item with audio, the preview thumbnail does indeed display the audio wave underneath. But the preview thumbnail for a composition item does not display that, even if the composition does contain audio. this is normal.

If what I'm describing here does not resolve your issues, and you do indeed have some problem with the audio, I suggest you give some more information about the file you are working with, this could be a codec issue perhaps. You will probably get more help in the future by posting AE related questions in the Digital Compositing and Effects subforum and not in the Premiere one.

good luck :)