Still Getting Render Crashes >:(

[Francesco Capone]

i have the same problem. what system do you use?

[Michael Brodner]

A powermac G5 with 4.5gb of RAM u?

[Francesco Capone]

mac pro quad core 2.4ghz with 32Gb RAM. Quite different systems. I really don’t know what to do with this problem!
I think I’ll try to format it and reinstall AfterEffects as first software then install other software and test compatibility with AE at every installation.
Gosh…

[Matthew Woods]

Have you guys tried trashing the preferences? Sometimes those can get corrupted and can cause frequent crashes. Trashing them is easier than reinstalling. I keep a backup copy of my AE prefs. Corrupt media can also cause AE to crash. In Michaels case it sounds like this may be the case because it seems to be crashing at the same point in the timeline. I had some problems with a corrupt quicktime clip once that played fine in QT player, but caused AE to crash. Simply re-exporting it from quicktime pro as lossless animation solved the problem.

-Matt

[Kevin Camp]

you can actually remove the entire folder that the preference file is kept in. it’s in users/username/library/preferences/adobe/after effects, if you have cs3 the folder is called ‘8.0’.

additionally, you might try pulling out any quicktime components from library/quicktime and users/username/library/quicktime (usually leave the system/library/quicktime alone unless you know you manually installed third party codecs there). sometimes old codecs can cause crashes, though you’ll usually see these at ae startup time.

you could also pull any third party effects/plugins from the plugins folder. there may also be some in library/application support/adobe/common/plugins. old effects can cause issues too.

if you determine that it is either a codec of plugin, try to find an update for it.

you could try changing the multiprocessing settings to see if it is an issue with multiprocessing. and, for the record, i would disable opengl in the preview settings, but i doubt that is your problem since the issue is with final rendering, not previewing, right?

when it renders, take note of the ram usage in the render queue. if it is crashing when the ram usage hits the max ram cache settings (preferences>memory & cache, default: 60%), then ae may be having issues clearing the ram cache. if this is the case, hold the shift-key and hold the mouse button down as you select preferences>general, then select the dropdown menu for prefences and at the bottom should be a secret pref. choose it and set the ‘purge every xx frames’ to a frame value that is less than the number of frames rendered prior to the crash (ie, if it crashes at frame 50, set it to 40).

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Darby Edelen]

Does it give you an error code when it crashes? What are your Memory & Cache preferences set at?

Darby Edelen

NVIDIA
Santa Clara, CA

[Michael Brodner]

Yes it gives me an error message..here it is:

https://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g109/Bonesone4/Picture1-10.png

My settings are set to 45% for both the RAM & memory usage under the “memory & cache” tab

[Michael Brodner]

So you are saying I can just go ahead and delete this file completely?

https://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g109/Bonesone4/Picture1-12.png

[Darby Edelen]

Have you updated QuickTime to the latest version? Do that 🙂 Also you should set Maximum Memory Usage to about 120%. Leave your Maximum RAM Cache Size at 45%.

Darby Edelen

NVIDIA
Santa Clara, CA

[Kevin Camp]

yes.

after effects will create a new one with all the same files the next time you run it.

however, i would probably just move it to the desktop to see if recreating it has any positive effect in after effects, rather than delete it. that way, if it doesn’t help, you won’t have to go back and reset all your settings, you can just replace the new 8.0 folder with the old one that had all your settings.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW