How to render in the background.

[Michael Szalapski]

What is the exact text of your error message?
What steps are you taking to get that error message?
What exact version (down to the build number) of After Effects are you using?
What exact version (down to the build number) of Adobe Media Encoder are you using?

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Jerry Smith]

Could Not Connect To Adobe After Effects. Please Verify That Adobe After Effects & Adobe Dynamic Link components are installed.

I get that when I go to the menu item to encode an AE project.

I use 13.2.0.49 AE and most current Media Encoder.

I don’t have Premier installed because I haven’t needed it. I have the subscription, but my machine whispered that it would appreciate it if I could not install any more stuff.

[Jerry Smith]

Sorry, wrong message

[Jerry Smith]

Not sorry. That was the message. Sorry, vicious multitasking.

[Michael Szalapski]

[Jerry Smith] “I use 13.2.0.49 AE and most current Media Encoder.”

This is likely the issue. You need to have matching versions. 13.2.0.49 is not the latest version of After Effects. Either use the older version of Adobe Media Encoder or use the latest version of AE which is 13.7.1 on Windows 13.7.2 on Mac

As a heads-up:
For the past three years, Adobe has released a new version of After Effects, AME, Premiere, etc. towards the end of June. So, if this year is the same, the “latest” version number of AE I just said, is likely to become an old version in a week or two.

Anyway, what I said holds true for now. 🙂

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Jerry Smith]

I can’t upgrade AE. It would be an act of total insanity. Is there someplace I can get the older version of ME?

[Michael Szalapski]

You should totally try CC 2015. It’s not an “upgrade”. You can have them installed alongside each other. In fact, it’s recommended. See this page [link]

Since the most recent updates to CC 2015, it’s worked pretty well for me on both Mac and Windows. I don’t even open up CC 2014 anymore except (maybe) to render with multiprocessing.

The new version of AE that is releasing “soon” (historically in the next two weeks as I said), is supposed to be even better. A more stable preview, GPU acceleration of some effects, some expressions enhancements, etc.
The buzz I’ve heard is quite good!

The good thing about installing CC 2015 is that you can open project files created in either version of AE in either version of AE. They’re both version 13.x of AE, so you can use project files interchangeably between them. So, if you don’t like CC 2015, you can just jump back to CC 2014 to keep working.

You should have the older version of AME installed when you installed After Effects, but if it got updated, the CC app sometimes likes to remove the older versions. (Make sure you uncheck the box to remove older versions when/if you install CC 2015 or the new version when it comes out). If you install Premiere Pro CC 2014, it should install AME CC 2014 along with it. This page covers installing old versions [link].

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Jerry Smith]

Thanks Michael. I have a newer version on another computer that I mess around with and I like it. But I won’t risk it with the real stuff. I’ll try an older version of ME.

[Jerry Smith]

OK, I got the older version of ME running, but when navigate and click on the project, it’s only showing me one of the compositions and one or two folders. There should be a couple dozen compositions and a dozen folders. 🙁

[Jerry Smith]

I can’t open the folder, and the one project it links to is a minimal project that just has a couple of AI files inside.