I’m thinking there is definitely something wrong with AE. I opened AE, just left it like that, didn’t open any project, and bit by bit it started taking up all of the RAM allotted to it, using up and around 96-97% of my RAM. Opening up Task Manager, there’s nothing else taking up much RAM, only AE. So, when exporting, even though my resource…

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I also think that as the cache fills up AE starts to have problems. I haven’t seen that when exporting, but I have seen it many times while working on a project and in playback. Normally when it gets too wonky, I check the cache and it’s full or close to being full.

In this case, however, after the first issues, I cleared the cache and even moved…

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I’ve really simplified the comp. I’ve decided to solve most of the aesthetic needs in the 3D animation itself, so I’ve taken out most of the layers and masks in AE… But it’s still taking forever. I think that when I finish the urgent projects I have open right now I’m going to reinstall Adobe. I can’t think of anything else that might be causing…

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Hey, Walter, thanks for your reply.

I do have Enable Multi-Frame Rendering checked, and have only 10% CPU reserved for other applications.

The difference between exporting in directly from AE and AME is negligible in this case. It unexplainably still gets stuck in the same places, while not using all my computer’s resources. What seems to be…

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P.S. I’m talking about 10-second-long comps, that seem to speed through normally at the beginning, and later into the export they painfully crawl through each frame, making the total export time over 1hr long, if that. 🤔

Hi, Tom, thanks for your reply.

I wish I could post a comp from it for you to check it out, but it’s part of an ad covered by an NDA. I can give you some technical details:
I’m exporting with 3D animations exported into 2 frame sequences: one EXR with multi-pass layers and one PNG with sketch lines. In AE I’m compositing them into several different…

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I’ve a pretty layer-, mask- and/or effect-intensive project I’m rendering, but it’s taking forever, much longer than expected, and I don’t understand why when I’ve plenty of resources available:

my CPU is at 20-40%,

my GPU is between 10-20%,

my RAM is between 60-80%,

I’m exporting to a very fast SSD…

What can be bottlenecking my export?

I have over 70 different screen element animation comps in an AE project and I have to export them all individually.

I open up AME’s Media Browser, browse for the AE project, open it up as directory and find the folder with all my comps, select that, it connects for some time to get all the info and then shows me all my different comps in separate…

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So I’ve just wasted 12:12:16 (12hs) exporting a video and at the very end: “File importer detected an inconsistency in the file structure of VIDEO.mp4. Reading and writing this file’s metadata (XMP) has been disabled. / Adobe Media Encoder / Could not write XMP data in output file.” Which of course with an MP4 means: “Here, this is a 24-byte MP4…

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I’ve been using AME for years and I’ve just stumbled upon this issue/realisation. I have a video which was taped by a client and then converted to DVD, so it’s 4 VOB files on an external drive. If I pull them directly from the external drive onto AME to get stitched, then I get by default Hardware Encoding, and the entire conversion takes less…

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Hello, Dan,

Although the OP doesn’t specify, I’m assuming your response is for 3D layers, correct? (Which is why I’m having an error come up using it on a 2D layer.) How could it be adapted to use on a 2D layer? I’m trying several edits here and there but none are working.

EDIT: Sorry, a few minutes after asking I finally found another post (which I…

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Often, when I’m using a cutting tool, trying to guide myself with the actual material of an object (say when you have a room projection and you’re trying to cut out edges) the face selection absolutely ruions my day because it completely covers up the material and I can’t see where I need to cut. I’ve tried everything in order to find a way of…

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Something weird is sometimes happening to me in R25… As you can see in the attached pictures, the move tool works perfectly and shows the distance being moved; BUT the rotation tool doesn’t show the angle being rotated and some of the axis seem to be inverted (ie when I move my mouse to the right to rotate that way, the rotation tool moves the…

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I was so excited to try and see if the Toggle Switches / Modes button would collapse all layers (although I’ve never seen this happening before) but alas it doesn’t 🙁

I’m inclined to think its a bug because if Adobe has intentionally done away with one of the most useful functions that I probably use more than anything else when working on an AE…

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I recently updated to the latest AE and have notices that the U shortcut is no longer working as it has always worked. If I select a layer and press it once it reveals the keyframes, if I press it twice it reveals anything that has been changed from its default value, so far so good. But when I click off all layers, ie select none, and try using…

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Hi, Michael! thanks for your response. And, sure, here goes the scene. It would be great to get a debug in order to know what I’m doing wrong, once and for all. ☺

I generally stay away from hair simulations as I can never get them to work how I’d like them to but sometimes I’ve got no choice. An example of hair not working for me in the most basic sense is the image I’m attaching.

As you can see, in some places the hair is growing as if I’d told it to only grow on the X or Y or Z direction, so that it’s…

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So I don’t do too much camera and object tracking in C4D, and when I do, I usually have good footage to start with. But a client has bought this BAD stock footage of a plane flying by: shot with a handheld camera, no real environment data to track the camera motion, no focus distance data (or any other data) at all, a plane that flies by at high…

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Well–it seems I got 0 bites here… it sometimes happens. Fortunately, after A LOT of tinkering I found a solution which follows the line I was working with. So for any one out there that might in future have a similar issue, I’m uploading the working C4D file for their reverse-engineering pleasure.

Basically, I fixed both issues using constraints…

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I think this is a “bug”… or at least it’s a VERY aggravating feature. The thing is that every time I need to create proxies and I directly pop all the original material into AME, choose Ingest, etc., and export, for the next couple of days AME always defaults to Ingest! Even if I’m sending a queue render from PPro or AE. That is, even when I’ve…

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For some reason neither the images nor the C4D project file I mention in my original post were uploaded to my original post… I’ve zipped them all here and 🤞 this time it works.

I’m doing this animation to teach kids about steam engines. I’ve looked all over the place and haven’t found any rigging tutorials or guides, at least not for C4D (if you know of any, please let me know). I’ve run several tests rigging the engine using different strategies and none quite fully worked. I remember I’d seen a YT video some time ago…

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In theory, until you make a Symmetry or Connect “group” editable or hit Current state to object, whatever “changes” you do to the Symmetry or Connect remain there and the inside or rather base polygons aren’t affected at all. However, recently I’ve encountered what surely must be a bug: whenever you play around with the Tolerance, and it deletes…

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When working with many cloned objects (using multi-instance mode), scenes with complex geometry, several individual animated objects in one scene, to name a few examples, C4D starts going really slowly, a lot of lag, and often becomes completely unresponsive, so that I have to force exit. However, my CPU, GPU and RAM usages are below 30-50% at…

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Steve, can I further pick your brain? What do you do in terms of Pos Pass when you use tele cameras? When working with a sort of isomorphic aesthetic, I find that the only thing that gives me control is to use a camera from 135mm up. And when I really need to crank it up in order to get a very flat effect, there’s no way I can get the Pos Pass to…

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Man, this is the kind of empirical wisdom I wish I would always get when I come here with an issue! Clearly you’ve been through these 3D existential doubts before and to get a glimpse of your workflow is much more valuable than just getting a quick solution or workaround for one specific issue.

I don’t do much photo-realistic work (just play around…

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Now, I say “problem,” because it may just be the way it works and there’s therefore no solution.

I’ve got some trees. The base tree is made up of a couple of cloners with “leaves” in them and a Random effector applied. The “leaves” have a multi-shader applied to them, to give them different hues of green for a more natural look. Up to this point,…

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I agree that doing everything inside C4D isn’t practical. It’s hardly a one-touch software, even if you don’t go for external compositing (maybe Blender is more one-touch), but, as you mention, I find that it often takes MUCH longer to do things that you can do yourself in, say, AE. And I also find there are some things C4D simply can’t do……

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UPADATE: I realised I should’ve added an image of the actual Pos Pass, to see if there are any issues you might pick up on. As you can see here, the edges are quite jagged, but there’s no AA, which is good, and the gradient is good (it spans the entire depth of my scene). So it should work correctly… BTW, this is the Pos Pass without any…

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I realise now I should’ve added an image of the actual EXtracted result, which would clearly show any issues with my Pos Pass. As I can’t edit my post, I’ll add a reply to my post with the new image below. As you can see there, it looks fine; I can’t see there’s any AA. It should be working correctly.

I always try to get a good gradient from C4D…

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That’s very interesting, what you say about the using the B&W points (on EXtractoR, BTW) instead of levels… I sometimes have used the B&W points when it’s just a matter of bringing up one or the other level so the gradient is actually visible; but as the levels UI is so much more practical, and “visual,” I almost always use the levels instead.…

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Thanks for your response! Indeed, that’s the tut I watched many years ago that taught me this process that usually works very well.😁

Thing is, in the same scene, another camera, another object, the jaggedness isn’t so noticeable.

I’m constantly toying around with the value, as you mention (though for some reason my scenes always tend to go down to…

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I was wondering if you guys might have any tips to get better or more consistently good results rendering with Position Pass in C4D and then applying Depth of Field in After Effects.

I use this workflow a lot (I almost never export with, say, true DoF from C4D unless it’s a still image) and sometimes I get perfect results, more often than not I…

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Hi, Jerry. Thanks for your answer. I’m trying both! Usually I use AME but it’s failing too much. So right now I’m exportin directly from PPro and that’s having a bit more success. Still, there’s something seriously wrong. Unless the source files from the camera are somehow corrupt, I don’t know how this could be happening, as I’ve made 20…

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This never used to happen and now it’s happening to me all the time. I’m mid project that consists of exporting 20 1-minute videos and I’m going mad. 9/10 times I will get clips exporting without the effects I’ve applied on them (mainly Lumetri and Colorama). And/or it’s intermittently exporting black frames. Also, I’m constantly getting failed…

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So today, out of the blue, AE CC 2020 has decided to prank me with a brand new bug that I had NEVER before seen. I simply cannot move certain keyframes, or change their ease, nothing… when I right-click on them nothing happens either: no options popup.

Right now it’s happening with 10 duplicated masks. I created keyframes for all and I want to…

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This is what is logged:

Export Error
Error compiling movie.
Render Error
Render returned error.
Writing with exporter: H.264
Writing to file: my-video.mp4
Writing file type: H264
Around timecode: 00:00:04:19 – 00:00:06:03
Rendering at offset: 4.792 seconds
Component: H.264 of type Exporter
Selector: 9
Error code: -1609629695

I’ve had this (or similar) errors…

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I’m editing more than 20 quick recipe cooking videos for IG for a client, so there’s a lot of putting “pinch of salt” and “1/2 bell pepper” and “4 tomatoes” in a corner. Normally I would animate text graphics in AE but I’m really trying to pop off these videos as fast as possible, and have the shortest render time (I already have to deal with…

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Hi, Eric, thanks for your response! This is definitely a quicker solution than exporting/reimporting. But it still is a workaround in my opinion, when it could (and indeed I’m sure it used to be) as easy as one click. It’s not something I’ve needed too often, but the couple of times I have I have in my mind that there was literally a mixdown…

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I’m pretty sure (like 95% sure) that there used to be an audio mixdown command in Premiere that would create a track with a rendered audio file of all your sequence’s audio. The long way around is obviously exporting the sequence’s audio, importing it back, and placing it in a new track… But I’m almost certain this could be done with one click…

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Since I updated to C4D r21 I’m no longer able to make Generate Meshes with the Motion Tracker. I’m doing exactly what I used to do in r19 but it gets stuck on Adding Cameras on the bottom left corner (and something else that goes by too fast to even guess at what it says) and the progress bar doesn’t go change. Today I left it going for 5 hs,…

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I need to add a colourful logo onto a video of snowy mountains and in order to better “blend” the logo into the video I’d like it to cast off some colour onto the white of the snow (aside from shadows), which is what would happen if a giant colourful logo floated above snowy mountains… I know I can use the Shadow Catcher Material in order to…

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Hello, Sam, I know I’m about 1 year too late to this party… but it seems there’s no way to get the texture method to affect the visible light, it only affects the luminance itself, i.e. the results of the noise texture are only seen on the surface receiving the light; the light source itself continues indivisible, and if you activate its…

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I finally upgraded to PS 2020, after a lot of internal turmoil… and up to now it’s been fine, albeit some differences one has to get used to–but I’ve now run into the first obstacle! For some reason, now, when I try to free transform a layer, it no longer draws a transform box inside the work area, even if the image “spills” out of the work…

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Hi, Mathieu, did you ever find an easy way of solving this? It’s now 2020, 4 years later, and this is still and issue. Honestly, this is just sloppy and/or <font face=”inherit”>lazy on Adobe’s part. It takes one a lot of time and hassle to do this manually, and it would really be a ver easy fix for Adobe–even if keyboard layouts differ–, really.…

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There’s this sign made of individually lit letters, and I need to turn each letter on at random, sort of as if it were an old sign made with fluorescents that you never know which one will turn on quicker and which one will take longer… That sort of thing.

The letters are obviously a MoText, and I’ve been looking around the web and trying out…

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That’s great, Bret! I was in fact starting to search for Dolby Atmos to see if there was an Adobe Audition plug-in. I understand from the specs that the DAPS only works in Pro Tools, right? I’m currently working on Audition, so I’ll have to look into that. I’ve also found the Sennheiser AMBEO Orbit VST plugin, which is free on the Sennheiser…

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I believe it was called spatialisation. Many, many years ago, when I got into FLStudio I’m pretty sure there was an included plugin that opened up a window that allowed you to move around each individual channel in a virtual 3D around your head and the result would be a stereo sound that seemed to be coming from around your head. The result was…

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I’m looking for a non-web-based, non-suscription software I can buy once and forget about it. All I need is to sync a transcript and/or timecoded subtitles onto a video. Normally, when I need to generate subtitles fro videos I’m on I use a professional edition of Dragon Software that’s tuned to my voice and gets me the best possible results. W…

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Does anyone know of any shortcut for this? Pressing “U” in the timeline is great (even if it sometimes doesn’t work as expected and sometimes doesn’t work, period!). But when I’m working with many effects, one on top of the other, I really miss being able to press “U” while in the Effect Controls window and having everything collapse. Especially…

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