After Effects CS3 Freeze frame problem

[Jack Hilkewich]

I think the problem is the fact that you have some files on an external HD that isn’t fast enough. Move all your files on to the main Hd in your computer and I think the problem will go away.

[Patrick Saad]

It could be, but my hard drive is a LaCie 1TB Big Disk with Firewire 800 connected… could it be that its because its almost full, ( i have about 50GB left on it) ?

I will give it a try and get back with the results.

Thanks for your support Jack.

Pat S.

[Patrick Saad]

Hello Dave,

Thanks for your feedback… I was actually going to do just that, and recompress the footage that i downloaded from quicktime.

Do you have any compression settings you could suggest (using sorenson squeeze for example) to maintain the quality yet have a suitable format for editing in AE?

I will get back to you if that solved the problem.

Merci.
Pat S.

[Patrick Saad]

Hi Dave,

I tried compressing all the h.264 movies to a LG quicktime format using sorenson squeeze but with no chances of success.

Whats weird is that upon scrubbing through the time line and looking at the preview window, the freeze frame gradually occurs. That is, its not so much of a problem when i first start scrubbing(less frames frozen) but as I go through it over and over again, more frames start freezing all over the time line.

Its as if im running out of memory. but when looking at the activity monitor on my mac I can see that i have lots of free memory lying around. I have 2GB of RAM and I was running no other application at that time except Google desktop.

any clues?
Thanks.
Pat S.

[Mort Bender]

I get the exact same thing.

I am going mad… Seems like there is a few threads out there, all ends blind. No fix. I am doing my finals at Design College, if I do not get a fix, I do not graduate.

Anyone know something please share…

[Mort Bender]

* The project: simplify it! Break it into smaller projects if necessary! Prerender wherever you can!

– Did that!

* Footage: If the footage you imported into AE is any kind of the following — Native HDV, MPEG1, MPEG2, mp4, m2t, H.261 or H.264 — you need to convert it to a different codec. I’d use the Animation codec set to best quality.

– Am using Animation Codec.

* MP3 or AC3 audio: convert it to aiff or wav.

– Have no MP3 or AC3.

* Open GL: don’t use it under ANY circumstances. Just turn it off.

– Is turned off.

* If you’ve enabled the Disk Cache, DISABLE it… especially if you’re doing everything off one disk drive.

– Is disabled.

* Use AE default for memory usage (Max Mem Usage: 120%)

– I do.

* Turn off multiprocessing

– Not sure what this is?

* Set AE to purge every x number of frames. I’m not in front of my AE machine, and I can’t remember exactly where to find the command. I THINK you hold down the shift key and navigate to preferences. You could always consult AE Help (https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/) for a straighter answer.

And not sure what this is either.
Could you please explain further?

Thanks for your answers.
I am currently trouble shooting QuickTime codecs. Not sure if that will produce a result, but I am trying.

[Mort Bender]

Here is a more detailed description:

After Effects freezes my frames, not the same one each time, but randomly. Have noticed that it occurs when scrubbing back and forth. Then I can reload the project and earn a few seconds of working time, before the issue begins again, I can provoke it by scrubbing back and forth.

Even when rendering out the problem occurs. Sometimes it jumps between 2-3 random frames, then when I scrub – to another layer, a random frame from that layer shows up, frozen though. I use some (not a lot) plugins; keying, and color correction, as well as track mattes, and I have some pre-comping going on. I currently have 58 layers, of which about 15 i precomps. Here is the major puzzle. ONLY the footage freezes, my animated graphic elements (Illustrator) keeps going just fine, as does the sound from the freezing footage – the sounds continues perfectly along with animation. I have done larger projects with no problem on the same machines, so I do not think that RAM or processing power is an issue. I use footage 1024×756, 25 fps (PAL I am in europe. Original footage is Mini DV), exported in Animation codec, audio 48.000, 16 bit.

[Ryan Maloney]

I am having this same problem. Did the quicktime codecs work out? Any solutions?

I’m using Quicktime 7.5.5 and AE CS3 and have gone through everything in this thread to try and solve this prob, still no luck

Thanks for any new info

Ryan

[Mort Bender]

Hi Ryan!

I never found out what caused the problem. But I finished my project in CS4, and I never had any problems again.

So I am afraid that it is a CS3 problem, that arises under very certain circumstances – I am sorry I cannot be more helpful than that.