After Effects keeps crashing on 9000 frames! Urgent!
by Daniel Bolstad
on
Jul 23, 2008 at 8:00:11 am
Hello. I have got After Effects CS3. I also have a school project which is due to Friday! I finished my project a while ago but when I export it it crashes on 9000-9900 frames no matter what format. I decided I'd check out what was on 9000 frames, and when I did it also crashed! Then I tried opening other projects and no matter what I opened After Effects crashed on 9000 frames. The error message was:
After Effects has crashed. Please seek support on Adobe.com (which didn't answer my question-.-) (0 :: 42)
Also, If I switch the preview mode on the project to regular time it suddenly works. But I still can't export because it shows frames.
Re: After Effects keeps crashing on 9000 frames! Urgent! by Joseph W. Bourke on Jul 23, 2008 at 1:33:33 pm
Daniel -
Here are a few things to try:
1. Set your "secret" settings in AE to purge every 5 frames. To get to the settings, hold down the Shift key while selecting Preferences.
2. Split your project into smaller pieces.
3. Render out Targa files, then, after the crash, at least you will have everything up until the crash saved, at which point you can try the render from the crash frame. Then import your Targas and render out whichever format you need.
Re: After Effects keeps crashing on 9000 frames! Urgent! by Dave LaRonde on Jul 23, 2008 at 3:14:28 pm
[Daniel Bolstad]"...when I export it it crashes on 9000-9900 frames no matter what format."
The first thing to ask yourself is this: what is happening in my comp at that time to cause that? Here's a list of BASIC things that could be responsible:
• Native HDV, MPEG1, MPEG2, mp4, m2t, H.261 or H.264 footage, no matter where it appears in the comp -- convert it to a codec that doesn't use interframe compression. Something lossless, preferably.
• Some of Photoshop's Layer Modes simply don't work in AE. Flatten the Photoshop document if you can.
• Open GL: the most overrated feature in AE. If you're using it, TURN IT OFF RIGHT NOW! Yes, Adobe promises the fix for Open GL is just around the corner. Adobe also promised a fix for always-problematic Mp3 files about two versions ago, and they STILL don't work.
• Mp3 files: if you use any in your comp, save yourself the grief right now and change them to an uncompressed format like aiff or wav.
Other things to do:
• Forget that the process of exporting in AE even exists for the time being. Render -- don't export -- using the Render Queue.
• Go into AE's Secret Preferences (shift>After Effects>Preferences) and set it to do a Purge after a given number of frames. If you're having problems at 9000 frames, think about purging at about 4500-5000 frames.
• Render an Image Sequence. If problems occur, you can pick up where you left off. If you absolutely must have a movie, import the rendered sequence back into AE and then render the sequence. All the heavy lifting will be done, and the render will blaze along.
Other people may chime in with additional advice.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: After Effects keeps crashing on 9000 frames! Urgent! by Dave LaRonde on Jul 23, 2008 at 3:28:48 pm
One more very basic thing that will surely bring AE to its knees are any documents using CMYK color. AE may not even allow them to be imported anymore -- I'm not sure. If you have any, convert them to RGB.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: After Effects keeps crashing on 9000 frames! Urgent! by Kevin O'Neill on Jul 23, 2008 at 3:15:34 pm
Does it only crash during export or while scrubbing through to 9000 frames as well? Are you using "export" and "render" interchangeably here, because they are 2 different things...you can search the forums for an explanation - though I can't recall the particulars I believe Dave LaRonde has posted in the past on the differences between the two.
I would try accessing the secret area of your preferences and purging every X frames (where X is a number of your choice). To do so, hold down shift and navigate to the "preferences" folder from your menu - if you've done it right, the last option in the preferences dropdown should be "secret".
From here you can tell AE to purge every X frames during a render. This has helped me overcome crashes in the past. The downside is that your render time will increase if you are using time-based effects as they use previous frames to calculate how they'll be applied to the frames ahead.
