After Effects crashes at the same frame every time when rendering.

[Julian Sixx]

Hi

do you use mp3 files? Ae can’t stand them

[Michael Duff]

i generally try not to include any audio in my renders anyways. If you put the audio on in FCP or Premiere or something that is generally a better idea.

[Balazs Frank]

Hi,

As I am working on an animation in AE CS4 where everything is synchronized beat by beat, I have to use the audio at least at RAM Previews. (Final renders is image sequence, so it does not matter there.)
The audio I use here is 16 bit 44.1 kHz WAV file, the CD standard, NOT mp3.

Here is my similar problem:

Usually after 7-8 RAM Preivew calculations AE always freezes when finishes the RAM Preview calculation. The whole applications halts and exits without further notification. This always happens exclusively when my audio track is enabled to play.

I do understand that these tasks should be done in Premiere, but I have to use this WAV for creating proper and very detailed anim sync.

Is there any workaround to get rid of this kind of freeze?

Thanks,
Balazs

[Balazs Frank]

Thanks för the info, I as I have only 3GB I turned off multiprocessing. We’ll see…

Thanks for the tip of how to find the beats, but after some pre-processing they are already clearly and very precisely shown by layer markers. So I align keyframes, layer in/out points, etc. to layer markers.

[Jeremy Thille]

Here is how to get rid of this damn problem that makes everyone crazy. A little late, but it might help people anyway.

1. Hit and hold SHIFT in AE

2. Click on Edit > Preferences > general, (then only release shift) and you should see “SECRET” at the bottom of the preferences list. Check “Do not cache layers” and, above all : clear image cache when rendering, every 50 frames (more or less).

This will regularly purge the video memory while rendering, and you will notice your RAM usage making sawtooth instead of insanely increasing.

Spread the word. It is absolutely ridiculous for such a thing not to be enabled by default, and worse, that it is hidden in a super-mario secret menu. There are some dumb guys in Adobe’s team.

P.S. After Effects is BY FAR the most unstable software I know, it keeps crashing and crashing all the time for any reason, and it did so with ALL versions I tried (from 5.0 to CS5) . A CTRL+S every 3 seconds is absolutely essential when working with this crap. This is even more surprising when I see how other Adobe’s products (especially Photoshop) are rock-stable.

[Jessica Lawheed]

I know this is an old post, but I recently ran into the same trouble. What helped me figure it out was turning off all the layers, placing my playhead on the offending frame, and then turning on each layer one by one to see which layer was screwing it all up. It wound up being a combination of the camera layer and 1 other random layer in the composition with a stroke effect applied to it. Luckily, that layer’s effect was already done by the time it reach the crash point, so I duplicated it, turned off the effect and ended the layer before the crash point.

That worked for me. Just thought I’d add my solution in case anyone else ran across this thread as I did.

[Māris Štekeļs]

Pre-Composing (ctrl+shift+c) audio layers should fix your problem.