I think I’ve cracked it. I googled ‘launch media encoder without plugins mac’ and found this thread. Mind you, it’s based on 10.15 Catalina and I’m on 10.13 High Sierra.

However, I did a test with MediaEncoder 2020 and lo and behold, ME 2020 launched without problems. Then I tried to launch AE 2020 and it did. And recognizes my video card as… Read more

Update: after uninstalling ME 2020, 2019 and 2018, versions 2018 and 2019 are not showing up in my Adobe panel, although I have the option ‘show older apps’ switched on. ME 2020 still crashes.
The AE versions 2020, 2019 and 2018 didn’t create prefs I found out when I looked for them.
————————-
what will this button do?

Thanks. I’ve tried that. On closer look, could it be related to Media Encoder? It’s around the initialisation of ME (in the AE launch) that AE crashes. I’ll try to uninstall ME + prefs and see what happens.
————————-
what will this button do?

Hi there, when I was on macOS 10.12.6, versions AE 2019 and AE 2018 crashed on launch with no 3rd party plugins or scripts installed. Last week I upgraded my OS to 10.13.6, followed by the security update 2020-003 and the updates on my videocard drivers. After that I installed AE 2020, without 3rd party plugins or scripts. AE 2020 crashed on… Read more