Corrupted After Effects error #5

[Walter Soyka]

[Reuben Fink] “I can’t open AE for whatever reason I get an “Error: 5″ So I’m about to reinstall after effects. But before doing this is there a way to save the preferences so I don’t have to set that up from scratch?”

Preferences on a Mac are located in your home folder, in ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/10.0. You can backup the files from there.

However, it’s possible that problem may be with your preferences, in which case uninstalling, reinstalling, and then restoring your saved preferences wouldn’t help you.

I’d try resetting the default preferences before an uninstall/reinstall. Hold Cmd-Opt-Shift when you launch AE.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Reuben Fink]

I had tried that but still no dice. I’m trying a full reinstall. I wish there was some way to restore all plugins without having to do it manually.

OSX 10.6.4
Equipment: 2.8 ghz 8 core Intal Mac Pro, 20 gig of ram
Aps: CS5 Production Bundle, FCP Suite 2, Avid Media Composer

[Walter Soyka]

[Reuben Fink] “I wish there was some way to restore all plugins without having to do it manually.”

Plugins can be located in a couple places:

/Applications/Adobe After Effects CS5/Plugins

and

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/CS5/MediaCore

You may be able to back those up and restore them after your uninstall/reinstall.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events