[Christopher R. green]

[Matt Stevens] “Nothing has changed with my system.”

Not even a recent OS update?

[Christopher R. green]

[stigWeard] “Could this be a corrupt footage file rather that the AE file?”

Probably not. The last time this happened to me I had to do this:

1. select all the layers in the comp you are trying to render (make sure layers are unlocked, and make sure you copy top-down or do a select-all so the layer order is maintained)
2. make a new comp with the same properties as the old comp (fps, dimensions, etc.)
3. paste the copied layers into the new comp

(If you’ve got expressions that are comp name-aware, you should give the new comp the same name as the old temporarily)

4. get rid of the old comp and try to render with the new one

hope this helps ….

[Christopher R. green]

[stigWeard] “Could this be a corrupt footage file rather that the AE file?”

Probably not. The last time this happened to me I had to do this:

1. select all the layers in the comp you are trying to render (make sure layers are unlocked, and make sure you copy top-down or do a select-all so the layer order is maintained)
2. make a new comp with the same properties as the old comp (fps, dimensions, etc.)
3. paste the copied layers into the new comp

(If you’ve got expressions that are comp name-aware, you should give the new comp the same name as the old temporarily)

4. get rid of the old comp and try to render with the new one

hope this helps ….

[Christopher R. green]

Hi Matt.
Probably won’t be able to help you out here, but I figure I’d get the ball rolling and ask a few questions:

Is this the first time you have attempted to launch AE on your Intel mac? If not, what has changed (obvious question, I know)?
At what point does the error come — very beginning of launch? As it is loading and listing AE components? If so, can you see what component is loading when it craps out?

[Christopher R. green]

If you have the bucks to spend, you should seriously consider PFTrack. Boujou does rock, but the Pixel Farm algorithms are ridiculously good. This is based on some experience with PFTrack, but mostly with the mutant little brother PFHoe, which I have used for countless jobs with great success. No one wants to take it (PFHoe) seriously because it is only a couple hundred bucks, but my track record (that pun was not intentional) with PFHoe was great last year. It is true however that Pixel Farm has not updated PFHoe since before they updated PFTrack, so it is possible they made the tracking algorithms less amazing than they were, but that is highly unlikely.
If I were consulting, I would say, sure, use the budget to buy PFTrack, but also get a few seats of SynthEyes, which is cheap and professionally feature-rich. You might get a few more freelancers who know SynthEyes. A little affordable diversity is worth a lot, imo.

Best of luck

-CG

[Christopher R. green]

After hoping that Adobe would offer some kind of interim solution until the ae universal binary comes out … this seems the solution that makes sense. I have no problem with nodes, personally.
What a turn of events. I wonder how the Adobe AE dev. team got so behind the curve in ‘porting’ to universal. Doesn’t matter, now. And QMaster works with Maya, too? Hmm. Crystal balls anyone?

[dang, and the xcode version of the ae sdk just came out, too … ]

[Christopher R. green]

Darren,
In typical Johnny-come-lately style, I am replying to this post hoping that I can either help or find out what happened with your problem.

One of the first nasty early-in-launch-process AE7 crashes I had (with the trial) was with an evil font. (I think I posted something about this).
I’m on OSX (usually), and I always install ‘non-standard’ fonts in my home directory/library/fonts directory. After a few hours of thinking (ok, and hair-pulling, and maybe a curse or two) I diagnosed this problem by removing all my added fonts from this folder and successfully launching ae7. Then it was a simple matter of dropping fonts back into the folder and relaunching until I found the font. This didn’t take long — there were two or three really suspicious ones that I replaced first.

Anyway, try this, or try the appropriate Windows equiv.

good luck

CG

[Christopher R. green]

scrimski,
Here are a couple of questions and a (potentially futile) offer to help:

1)what size is the last backup of the project?
2)what size is the ‘missing data’ version of the project?

If these two sizes are not drastically different (like: backup version = 1 meg, damaged version = 300k), I might be able to do some salvaging for you, if no one else wants to touch this. It sounds like your shedule is short. Mine is, too — I could look into it for you until tomorrow, when I’ll be slammed at work. Sorry if I caught this post rather late. If you haven’t already wrangled a solution, you will need to send me both the most recent backup and the ‘damaged’ file, in a folder, zipped (use the email link at http://www.crgreen.com).

Hope I or someone can help …

[Christopher R. green]

AAah! Guilty of site neglect. Sorry, I’ve been really busy lately (surprisingly), so I haven’t had a chance to update stuff.
Kazden, Feel free to ask me about stuff by using the email link on my site.
In the meantime, here are a few pointers:

(1-Of course, I would suggest using my PF_Preflight script.)

2-In AE, Copy the position value of a tracker that is where you want your added object to be. Bring the object in, make it 3D, then paste the position value in. That should pop your object to the right place. Perhaps you’re already doing that…

<<<<<< rewind <<<<<< 3-When in PFHoe, Save your project before you scale the scene using the scale handles on (what I prefer to call) the perspective grid ("ground plane"). When you are ready to scale, grab a scale handle and scale the sucker down so far that the handles DISAPPEAR. I know this is odd (and the pixel farm doesn't seem to be in a rush to fix this problem), but this is just the way it works with PFHoe when using it with AE. I usually scale the scene to slightly beyond the disappearing point. You'll get the hang of it eventually. NOW, DON'T save over the project in this state, because those handles are gone for good. Leave the scaling for LAST, save before that stage, export the AE (.ma) file, and close without saving. This ensures having handles if you need to re-open the pfh project.

4-Never move the camera. You shouldn’t need to.

shoot me an email if you want …

-CG

p.s. here is some text from the old tutorial, but all of this is handled by my preflight script:

Importing and Preliminaries
When you import a PFHoe-generated .ma file into After Effects (make sure you select “Adobe After Effects” in PFHoe when exporting

[Christopher R. green]

Two options:
1) Spend the 300 bones.
2) Get someone who has scripting skills and has v7 to create a script that recreates the project for AE 6.5, less any (or with stand-ins for) v7-only features. Probably would cost more than 300 bones.

just a thought …

-CG