[Walter Soyka]

ROI can be a really useful tool, too. If you have a really heavy comp, you can enable the region of interest while you’re working to render only the portion of the frame you want to focus on, instead of having to render the whole frame.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

I’d recommend a third-party plugin from Mettle, FreeForm Ae:
https://www.mettle.com/product/freeform/

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

It sounds like you’ve activated the Region of Interest. There’s a toggle for that in the viewer panel. Check out this image:

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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[Walter Soyka]

I’d generally spec 32 or 64 GB of RAM for an After Effects machine. I would also consider more storage; perhaps an M.2 or second SSD drive. You can always add both of these components later if you need to.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

This does show a really uncommon approach. That little black-and-white cookie icon on the timeline indicates that your spooky layer is an adjustment layer. The Transform effect on that layer is applied to the composite of all layers beneath it.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Gage, try opening the movie in a text editor and searching for “aeProjectLink” (without the quotes). The file path for the original AEP should be a few lines below that if “Include project link” was enabled at render time.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Dave is right that saving is a good habit to get into. Discipline is important. But for a more compassionate answer, here’s a simple one-line script that you can use:

app.project.saveWithDialog();

Copy and paste that code into a text file, save it as “saveAs.jsx” or similar, and put it in your startup folder. Ae will prompt you on every startup to save the blank file it creates.

One very important note: this happens at the initial application startup only. If you use File > New > New Project, there will be NO reminder to save.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

“Latency” is still meaningful for video delay, too.

Some delay accumulating in the system should be expected. Every digital device in the chain that processes frames is going to add a minimum of 1 frame of delay, and some will add 2. (This can include scalers, projectors, and distribution, too!) I’m not familiar with your switcher, but the manual might specify how many frames of delay it adds in processing.

It’s normal to add some audio delay to compensate for the video delay to preserve lip sync on-screen, but obviously this can pose a challenge in smaller rooms.

What else do you have in your system’s engineering?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

What exactly happens when you try to render? Do you get an error message? Or some kind of unexpected output? Screenshots will help us see what you see and understand what you’re dealing with.

Wild guess: is your work area set to the time range you want to render?
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/previewing.html#work_area

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

You could also try using a track matte instead of a mask:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/alpha-channels-masks-mattes.html#track_mattes_and_traveling_mattes

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]