I have an almost completed video that requires some text overlays timed to a narration track. I planned to do this in AE, but AE won't play the narration unless I pre-render and that only gives me a very limited portion of the timeline. Is there a way to do this in AE? DOn't they realize that often times the text and graphics are timed out to the audio?

Hi Paul. Couldn't agree with you more about AE being useless with sound - astonishing! You can scrub the sound by holding down CNTRL and dragging the Current Time Indicator. You can also place markers by pressing the * on the number pad, name them by doing ALT+* (sorry don't know the Mac alternative). Hope that helps.

Do keep in mind what After Effects is - a compositing package, not an editing solution. :) That said, RAM Preview will give you audio. Try reducing the quality to get it to render more frames. I usually edit in Full and preview in Quarter. You can also view audio waveforms if that helps.

At last resort, try opening the video in a proper video editor such as Premiere and noting the timecodes where you want to introduce your text and graphics. You can then perform the operations in After Effects.

I understand what it is, but video has had sound since the ice age. I don't expect to be able to edit sound, but to not be able to hear the sound track is disgraceful. I would not have purchased CS4 had I known this.

AE is MY main editing program on a daily basis at work. So it can be done. 75% of my videos have motion graphics in them so I learned the keyboard shortcuts in AE to help the normal video editing flow work smoother. It's easier to just do EVERYTHING in AE instead of switching between Premiere and After Effects. Premiere can be quite limiting at times when you want to do a little or a lot more!

Learn to switch the Composition viewer resolution to Half or Quarter while working. And only use Full when absolutely necessary or when you are doing the final render.
In the Preview window there is a check box that says "From Current Time", make sure that is checked because if you don't it will RAM Preview from the beginning each time.

The shortcuts for RAM Preview rendering plus audio is Shift+NumPad 0 or just NumPad 0 depending on what you have selected for "RAM Preview Options" in the Preview window. (Weither you use the shift key or not. I just have both setup the same).
Depending on how much RAM you have in your computer and what settings you have set in the Memory & Multiprocessing... setting in the Preferences will determine how many seconds it will RAM preview for you with concurrent audio.