-
Problem loading 3D Composition with AE CS4, Windows 7
Hello,
Merry Christmas! Hope everyone is having a better one than I am at the present time!
At little background information on what I have and what is happening.
My machine is a custom built machine with an ASUS P5KC Motherboard, Intel Quad Core Q6600 @ 2.40GHz, and 4.00GB DDR3 RAM, with a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX.
Yesterday when I was working on this video, I had Windows Vista Home 32-bit installed. All fonts, footage, plug-ins, etc were there, working fine. The project had multiple compositions with quite a bit of 3D elements.
Somehow that machine got infected with a wicked little trojan; cleaned it enough to get my files off of there and make a backup.
I then installed Windows 7 Professional 32-bit, re-installed After Effects CS4, copied all of the Video Copilot Evolution footage, and Pro Scores, Designer Sound Effects, and Action Movies Essentials to the machine; installed the fonts and plugins again.
I then attempted to start After Effects and open the project; all was good — it recognized that there was 53 items that were not found (unlinked footage). However, once it loaded and it started to load the last composition that I had open (which just so happened to be the fairly large one with 3D elements), it would simply freeze and become “not responding”.
I tried this various times; no luck.
I then started a new project, and “drug” the existing project to the new one. This allowed me to open the project without it opening the previous composition. I was then able to re-link all footage and sounds. I then was able to open the other compositions, but the moment I tried to open the composition that I tried earlier, it froze again.
So then I thought, well maybe I can just render it, or make it a proxy, etc.
Both failed. Even when I add to render queue, as soon as it adds it, before I even click start rendering it will freeze.
I thought maybe this was a memory issue; I did some tricks to allow After Effects to use all of the memory, and all cores of the procesor, verify OpenGL state, and allow it to use 80% of the physical RAM on the video card — still no luck.
I tried cleaning the project, and purging memory; no luck.
I can post the AEP project file for anyone who is willing to help.
Perhaps installing a 64-bit version of Windows 7 would help, but I don’t understand what this issue is steamed from.
Thanks,
Travis -
4 Replies
-
As far as enabling all cores of your processor goes, with a quad-core processor and only 4 gigs of RAM you do NOT want to try to have AE use all cores of your processor. AE needs 2 Gb per core MINIMUM to run well. No matter whether your current issue with that composition gets fixed or not, you need to get more RAM ASAP! (Here’s a post from Adobe After Effects employee, Todd Kopriva, on RAM in AE.)
As far as your project goes I, personally, don’t want you to attach a file. It came from a computer with a “wicked little trojan” running around on it and as cleaned up as it may be, I still don’t want to risk it on my PC.
As far as opening that composition goes; try disabling all OpenGL settings in AE and make sure your graphics card has the right drivers for Windows 7 before you open it again.
Also, as previously mentioned, you should disable multi-processing as you do not have enough RAM to even attempt it. You may think “4 Gb RAM, 2 RAM per core; I’ve got enough for two cores to run, idiot!” But I’m not as much of an idiot as I may look; Windows 7 uses up quite a bit of RAM itself – over a Gig usually – and any other programs you’re running will take up RAM too. I assume you’re running some sort of anti-virus software now…
If that doesn’t work, I’m out of suggestions. Others may still have ideas though. Or it’s possible that your file, in all the nastiness, got corrupted. It could have been worse; at least all the other compositions work!
– 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.
-
Wait; I thought of something else! You say AE “freezes”?
Well…you could try pushing caps lock before you open the comp. Having caps lock on keeps AE from rendering anything.
If it’s still going well, turn off the eyeball on all the layers. Then turn caps lock off.
If all is still well then one of those dang little layers is your problem child. Turn them each back on until it all dies. The layer you were turning on when it dies is the culprit!
Reopen everything (with Caps Lock on) and try to find out what RAM or CPU hogging thingy that layer is doing.– 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.
-
Once I opened the composition up and started turning layers off, I found that the problematic layer was a solid that had CC Particle World as an effect. Nothing very crazy, radius of 3.00, and particles 10, with a life of 2 seconds.
The issue was that it had Motion Blur enabled. I disabled motion blur on the project toggle switch for that layer, and it worked fine
So I figured maybe I needed to force motion blur from within the CC Particle World plug in (Options, Rendering, Motion Blur). It had the same affect (infinite loop of After Effects trying to render).
Not sure what the deal is; but it seems as if I can no longer use Motion Blur with CC Particle World.
Any advice?
-
I think it unlikely that a plug-in has suddenly gone feral, however it certainly does seem to have done so in your case.
Let’s see if we can isolate the issue.
Try copying that layer, starting a new project, creating a new composition and pasting that layer in. Does the new project hang once you enable motion blur too?
If so, try creating a new project, new composition, new layer and apply CC Particle World to it. Leaving the effect at its default settings, turn on the motion blur options. Does it hang 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.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up