AE CC 2017 full of bugs

[Tim Kurkoski]

Tom, Michael, Bram,

Does your timeline have a lot of keyframes, or even just a lot of layers, visible when the problem occurs?

One of our developers is investigating a similar-sounding problem on this forum thread:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2231033

Does following his suggestions there, either minimizing or closing the Timeline panel, help with this problem? That helped for a user on that forum thread.

(I would appreciate if you would continue to post on that thread, which our developer is monitoring. I will be out of the office for an extended period soon and probably won’t be replying to this thread for the next couple of weeks.)

[Tom Smith]

The strange thing for me is it happens sometimes, and sometimes I have no issues with the playback (I just played with it 2 hours as I’m currently using 2015.3 for my work projects), when it works correctly I can’t see a very good upgrade in the preview speed vs 2015.3. When the crash happens, it can be on a 3 layers composition or 120 layers composition.

Another fact: When the playback crashes and I quit and relaunch the app, AE 2017 is unusable, very laggy, slow to load project files etc. I have to restart the computer. I’m monitoring CPU and it’s at 10% max, same for RAM.

The huge issue I have is really with the screaming BEEP when I preview composition with audio file (even when I create a new project with just a mp3 or wav file in it)

[Zachary Johnson]

Here’s a bug: I’m not able to select the topmost item within the project window. (Or twirl open the first item if it’s a folder.) I can select any other item below it.

If I retitle any other item so that it moves to the first of the list alphabetically, then it becomes unselectable and the previously unaccessible item becomes selectable. This is true of comp items, footage, solids, whatever.

I also am unable to resort the Project Window by the “Name”, “Label Group”, and “Comment” column headings. They are also unselectable. Type, Size, Media Duration, and File Path column headings are clickable, however.

I’m on Mac OS 10.10.5.

Edit: After opening a 13.8.1 project, I’m unable to reproduce this error, even in newly created projects.

[Walter Soyka]

[Dave LaRonde] “But YOU shouldn’t be pressing the space bar in the first place — you should be doing proper previews.”

Preview changed a lot with the release of Ae CC 2015. The standard preview versus RAM preview distinction you’re thinking of from Ae CC 2014 and previous no longer exists. Spacebar is the proper way to start a preview in CC 2015 and up.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Kevin Taylor]

This is what I get when (improperly) previewing with the spacebar:

The timeline gets cached(?) – AE saves a file – and exits to the desktop showing an error window like the image above.

I’m running AE CC 2017 and OS X 10.12.1 on a newer (trashcan) Mac Pro.

This behavior is 100% of the time with a project created and converted from 2015.3.

I haven’t see this happen with a new project made in 2017 yet. And importing the 2015.3 project into a 2017 project didn’t trick it. The sequence I was trying to preview had no plugins running except Lumetri. I get the same result if I hide everything in the timeline and hit spacebar.

So I’m wondering where to start…clean install? Remove all third party plug ins? Live with it for another week until this legacy project is done and hope that a new project that originates in 2017 doesn’t exhibit this behavior? Keep searching the help forums for what a “proper RAM preview means” 😉

Kevin Taylor
Atlanta GA

[Michael Litty]

I’m not sure what constitutes “a lot of layers” I had the original problem in a composition with around ten layers but Iwas able to reproduce it in a new project with only two graphic layers and one audio layer.

[Kit Carson]

How does one reinstall CC2015?

I had to delete it because it wasn’t opening after installing 2017.

[Adam Simmons]

Holy hell almighty! I’ve never updated and has such problems as with AE 2017. I just started a new project, brought in footage, dropped it on a timeline, hit play, and CRASH! Everytime. If I play footage, it crashes. What the hell?

[Mark Borgions]

Similar problem here.
Only a few keyframes. When hitting the spacebar, the preview starts but stops all responsiveness of the application. Need to hard relaunch the app after every single preview.

[Tom Smith]

Might be useful for some people who doesn’t want to lose old AE versions: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2172589

Always uncheck “remove old versions” when updating Adobe softwares, especially if you’re using them for a living. Adobe people always release beta builds since they started Creative Cloud, and for AE 2017 it’s even an alpha release! I can’t imagine how such a buggy version could have been greenlighted.