My agony with After Effects - help :)

is possible to install windows 8 on a MAC? like just wipe out everything and place win 8 on it?

After Effects will still crash on win 8 occasionally, but at least you can work

It’s really hard to go back to windows after Mac OS. And no, I’m not an Apple fanatic or something like that… :slight_smile:

Are you on lion or snow leopard? Some time ago i had this problem and u solved turning back to leopard. Its hard but if i was you i will format the hard drive and reinstall the suite. I guess the problem is on mac and not adobe ( and i am an apple fanatic :slight_smile: ). And my guess is a language problem.

EFEKT_Studio said

It’s really hard to go back to windows after Mac OS. And no, I’m not an Apple fanatic or something like that… :slight_smile:

It’s just a problem with the set up. It can happen on Mac or PC and going wholesale over to another OS is not usually a realistic solution.

I’ve run Ae on a Mac for a little under 20 years, used it on a great many other Macs too in a great many studios… no problems.

That raises the question about what the problem is, and according to various things on the web, it’s not actually a problem with the language resource, but could point at a problem with something else.

My first thought here (annoying though it is) would be to do a clean install of After Effects… no plug-ins or anything and just see how it runs… if it crashes. I’d also think about upgrading to a newer version (at least trying out the latest trial) to see how that runs. If that’s okay, I’d start to replace the plug-ins one at a time.

After that, I’d consider a clean system install (even more annoying … and a good day’s work). Then I’d possibly contact the place where I bought it and get them to take a look at the machine. Maybe there’s a problem with the graphics card or something.

I assume you found this thread… http://forums.adobe.com/thread/908867

It appears that this is a cross platform bug and there are plenty of users who seem to have solved it in various ways. Prime candidates for the cause are dodgy plug-ins, especially Videocopilot ones, a corrupted User Workspace file and GPU rendering in general (was always a bit dodgy in CS5.5).

You might want to file the bug with Adobe too, although I suspect they’re not investing too much effort right at the moment fixing bugs in CS5.5. That’s a good thing about the new Creative Cloud concept. You’ll always be using the version that they’re concentrating on… no versions will be mothballed in the future. :slight_smile:

@jvirgos - I’m not sure about the names, but it’s 10.8.3

@felt - I’ve tried reinstalling whole creative suite, clean install. I’ve also removed all possible preferences with adobes cleaner tool (not sure about the name).
Yesterday I’ve reinstalled OS, but I was a bit surprised when I saw then everything was exactly the same before the installation. This is pretty smart from Apple, but then I thought whether anything changed except system files. I guess I have to remove everything from my HDD (which is really annoying btw.) and try with clean installation of everything again. I’m just afraid that might not change anything. I had various crashes on PC, but I’ve never had problems with this.

Yes, felt I saw the thread. My biggest problem is that I cannot narrow down the possible cause of the problem, so I can act. Crashes are not specific, and that’s also very annoying. For example, I could tell for sure that OpenGL does not cause the problem. I even removed OpenGL plugins from AE folder, it did not help.
Now, maybe I should listen to your advice and try to remove plugins, and see how it works. As for CC, I’ve had another thread where I explained why I even downgraded my license from 6 to 5.5 (in case someone didn’t read it, it’s because it had painfully slow workflow, at least for me).

And the thing is, I’m not the only one having these kind of problems, there were many others, but no where I could find that Adobe’s actually solving the problem. At this stage I’m furious at them. If there was any solid alternative I would switch. Apple Motion is way faster than AE, but of course it doesn’t have as nearly as much possibilities like AE.

Uhhh…

EFEKT_Studio said

@jvirgos - I’m not sure about the names, but it’s 10.8.3

@felt - I’ve tried reinstalling whole creative suite, clean install. I’ve also removed all possible preferences with adobes cleaner tool (not sure about the name).
Yesterday I’ve reinstalled OS, but I was a bit surprised when I saw then everything was exactly the same before the installation. This is pretty smart from Apple, but then I thought whether anything changed except system files. I guess I have to remove everything from my HDD (which is really annoying btw.) and try with clean installation of everything again. I’m just afraid that might not change anything. I had various crashes on PC, but I’ve never had problems with this.

Yes, felt I saw the thread. My biggest problem is that I cannot narrow down the possible cause of the problem, so I can act. Crashes are not specific, and that’s also very annoying. For example, I could tell for sure that OpenGL does not cause the problem. I even removed OpenGL plugins from AE folder, it did not help.
Now, maybe I should listen to your advice and try to remove plugins, and see how it works. As for CC, I’ve had another thread where I explained why I even downgraded my license from 6 to 5.5 (in case someone didn’t read it, it’s because it had painfully slow workflow, at least for me).

And the thing is, I’m not the only one having these kind of problems, there were many others, but no where I could find that Adobe’s actually solving the problem. At this stage I’m furious at them. If there was any solid alternative I would switch. Apple Motion is way faster than AE, but of course it doesn’t have as nearly as much possibilities like AE.

Uhhh…

Yeah… Ae has a speed problem. I’m hoping that Adobe’s going to address this issue soon, similarly to the change from CS4 to CS5. Right at the moment, there are certain things that need to be avoided. CC and CS6 are noticeably slower with expression heavy stuff, and there are certain situations with RT3D and even Classic 3D, where certain set-ups bring things grinding to a halt. (as per your example from before where you split the 3D space with a 2D layer IIRC.)

Ironically, it feels as though the slow-down is due to the presence of the Global Cache calculations, which is supposed to increase speed. It’s a great thing in itself, but if it starts to interfere with the previewing and working speed of other aspects of the program, that’s no good. And you can’t turn it off! (you can turn DISK-caching off, but not global caching)

Before you do anything else though, try running Ae completely clean (i.e. no scripts, no plug-ins etc.) It’s very likely that one of your plug-ins is causing the problem. Plug-ins have an interface directly into the program code, so they completely have the ability to bring the whole program down if they’re not very robustly written… and we all know the pressures that software companies are under to release stuff nice and quick and cheap… constantly forcing the pace of development.

If you do go for a clean system install, there’s a checkbox on the OSX installer that wipes all preferences etc. Make sure you backup your system before you start with Time Machine. Just in case, y’know. :slight_smile:

If a clean Ae on a clean OSX is still crashing, you may have a problem with your hardware, but I reckon it’s something to do with the plug-ins.

Agreed about AE. Thank you very much Felt! I will try first with removing the plugins and scripts.

Let us know how it goes.

After removing plugins and scripts from AE, it was working quite normal for some time. I had a crash now. It was just after importing an mpeg file… Could it be connected?

EFEKT_Studio said

After removing plugins and scripts from AE, it was working quite normal for some time. I had a crash now. It was just after importing an mpeg file… Could it be connected?

Oooooh… schoolboy error!

Don’t work with mpeg. If you know what’s good for you, convert to a format that’s intraframe, not INTERframe.

The problem with interframe codecs is that they need to read backwards to the last IFrame, then work out the changes forwards from that frame. This takes a lot of processing power and for one reason or another has always seemed to mess After Effects around.

It seems that mpegs and other interframe codecs are designed to be watched, not to be worked with.

Same thing goes for mp3s, although they seem to be more stable in Ae these days.

Good to know that your Ae is otherwise working now though. Looks like it was something to do with a 3rd party plug-in. Basically, if a 3rd party plug-in doesn’t include some really robust error handling, then at the first sign of something unexpected, it will CRAAAAASH and take Ae down with it. :slight_smile:

Hey Felt, I never work with mpeg4, but I was placing some mpeg4 files from vimeo to ae. Now, still I’m not sure whether that causes the crash, because when I tried importing again, it didn’t crash. Also, I’m not sure for plugins either. Anyway, I’m not sure in anything at the moment.

The situation is so bad that my frustration is turning into smiling :slight_smile: The next thing is probably me taking the computer, crashing it with hammer.

EFEKT_Studio said

The next thing is probably me taking the computer, crashing it with hammer.

Tempting, but bad idea. :slight_smile:

EFEKT_Studio said

Also, I’m not sure for plugins either.

This is a good candidate. I’ve encountered this issue many times. When I do a install of After Effects I’m never put the scripts/install plugins in one batch then open the software, but I install them one by one, verify if After Effects opens, if the plugin start up ok, if everything appears to be working correctly. Is not uncommon to find a script that doesn’t work.

Now, after trying to import regular mov I got a crash with this message: MCExportInfo::Destruct

I’m thinking to write a book: “After Effects crashes, and my life with it” or “My After Effects, my Agony” or “1001 crash from After Effects” or “Need a crash? Buy After Effects” or “Adobe: 1001 way to make an artist go crazy” or “Say no to boring stable applications” by adobe.

Looks like it crashes also when I import h264 files.

EFEKT_Studio said

Looks like it crashes also when I import h264 files.

As you mention, you have a problem with the card drivers ... and that affects about codecs ... I hope you can fix ... I'll ask anyway a partner who understands enough about this ...
juanmita said
EFEKT_Studio said

Looks like it crashes also when I import h264 files.

As you mention, you have a problem with the card drivers ... and that affects about codecs ... I hope you can fix ... I'll ask anyway a partner who understands enough about this ...

Please do, because it’s not possible to update drivers on a Mac. At least, I don’t know how to do it. Thanks.

EFEKT_Studio said
juanmita said
EFEKT_Studio said

Looks like it crashes also when I import h264 files.

As you mention, you have a problem with the card drivers ... and that affects about codecs ... I hope you can fix ... I'll ask anyway a partner who understands enough about this ...

Please do, because it’s not possible to update drivers on a Mac. At least, I don’t know how to do it. Thanks.

Ok, I now believe that this can be done ... please, give me your email address...;)

I am using ATI Radeon HD