After Effects 6 - crashing with Previews

[cb911]

well i've been following a tutorial for making a 'video wall' in AE 6. it requires importing around 60 or so clips. whenever i try to do a preview or try and move the timeline slider it has some 'abnormal memory error', or something like that and just crashes.

am i trying to ask to much of AE to get a preview with that many seperate clips in one composition? i've actually only got about 15 now... and it still crashes. or does anyone know of any setting in AE i should be trying?

i've got a 1.25 PB running 10.3.3 in case that helps.

thanks for any help.

 

[cb911]

well i thought that it was just crashing when i tried to Preview anything... but just now i tried to render the comp... and that crashed it as well. this is really not good.... how am i ever going to get this out if i can't render anything?

i also haven't rebooted in a couple of days? that's the problem perhaps?

here's a pic of the error i got as well:

 

[advres]

#1. Are you using any plugins that do not come installed with AE?

#2. Is your composition in 8-bit or 16-bit mode? You can check by looking at the bottom of the Project window. It should either say 8 bpc or 16 bpc. You can change this setting by option-clicking on the box that displays this information.

#3. How much RAM do you have installed. I am actually testing plugins my company makes for AE and have had no problems with 152 10 frame clips each containing a seperate effect and I am using a 1.25G PB w/1GB of RAM. Any stock powerbook should be able to handle your 15 clips with effects.

I am test for After Effects and FCP all day long so just let me know what you come up with, maybe I can help.

 

[cb911]

advres, great to have someone with a profession like yours around here.

well i don't have any third party plug-ins installed, and i just got the plug-in updates from adobe.com, i think that updated Radial Wipe and OpenGL 3D.

the composition is in 8bpc. i haven't dealt with any tutorials that cover that yet, so i don't really know what i should be using.

i've got 1.5GB RAM, that's why i'm surprised to see it crashing on me, i figure it must be a problem with software.

i've got 32 clips in the composition now, and they range in size from 2MB to around 25MB. would that effect anything?

well i just tried to change the colour depth to 16bpc and it started to do it, then after about 5 seconds i got that same error again...

i've got Overflow Volumes set to two of my other partitions on my PB hard drive, could those settings have anything to do with it? also 'minimum diskspace before overflowing' is set to 3MB.

in Cache, i've got Image Cache Size set to 60%, and Maximum Memory Usage set to 90%. do those settings sound right?

i just tried to render again... it crashed. in the Render Queue it says 4% of RAM used. it doesn't even get 1 second into the rendering and it just gives me that error...

i was also reading in some other forums that people are having trouble with OpenGL, and they were turning off OpenGL in AE, but i think that was for PC users...

well i really appreciate your help, hope i've given you enough info so you might be able to see what's going on inside my crazy PB.

 

[advres]

Your PB supports OpenGL fine. The reason I know this is because so does mine and we have the same setup. I have to leave work and i will be home in a couple of hours. I will play around at home and try to recreate your crash. I will try to get back to you soon.

 

[advres]

ok buddy, I just tried to recreate your crash and I have failed. I completed the whole tutorial you were working on using the project files that came with it thinking there was maybe something wrong there but have found nothing.

It can not be the size of your clips because all of my clips range from 25M to 96M. and I put the whole 64 clips in and rendered. 25 minutes later I had a perfect rendered copy.

I am interested in seeing what you are using for render settings.

Are you just using mpeg movies or are you using other formats?

Also, Why do you have any overflow volumes? As long as you have enough space on the drive you are saving to I would disable those settings.

Have you tried throwing just two or so clips into a comp (Not a comp associated with this tutorial but your own) and see what happens when you throw some effects on and try to scrub/render?

Don't worry about the 8-bit/16-bit thing. You would only have to worry about that if you had 3rd party plugs that were capable of running in either. 16 and 8 bit plugs have to reside in different places on your HD so i thought that could be a problem but it is obviously not.

Which plugin were you using for the unmult? were you using Xmult or WE Multiply? Where exactly did you put these plugs you downloaded? Did you throw them in the plugs folder under applications>After Effects>Plugins or did you bury them deeper into one of the folders in the plugins folder? I would either throw them directly into the plugins folder or into their own folder. I would NOT put them in a folder that had existing factory plugs in them unless they came from adobe, and adobe plugs install themselves. I only tried the Xmult so if you were using the WE Multiply I would try Xmult and see what you get.

Have you been doing a lot of RAM intensive things? You could possible have a bad chip. If all else fails I would swap the positions of the two and see if that has any effect.

I am going to post this question to a couple guys I work with tomorrow morning to see if we can't get you straightned out. Have no fear, We will get this, I just hope you are not in a super big hurry.

 

[cb911]

thanks for all the effort your putting into this. i'm not in any real big hurry...

all my clips are either mpeg or mov, although some of them i have to re-size very much to get them to fit under those masks. could that be a problem if i import a 600x400 clip and resize it to 200x60 (approximate)? there are a few clips i did that to.

i also tried starting the tutorial again and just put in a few videos and it scrubbed and rendered okay.

and i forgot i do have XMult installed. i've put it in AE 6>Plug-ins and it's just sitting in there. i didn't put it in the Standard or Professional folders.

and i thought i better have Overflow volumes on because i've got very little disk space on the partiton i've got AE installed on. only less than 300MB now. i've got about 3GB free with my other partitions combined. i've been meaning to clear out some stuff on my HD to free up some space, i'll get around to that soon.

thanks for your help. i'll try and free up some disk space and see it that helps.

 

[urbnarch]

I'm having a similar problem w/ AE6 on a G5

I'm having pretty much the same problem listed above but on a G5 (dual2Ghz) and 2GB RAM plus two 150GB HDs. I'm on the standard edition of After Effects 6 and my only non-factory pluggin is Magic Bullet 1.1. Thanks to anyone that has any ideas about this problem.

 

[Forevercoolin]

I was getting that same error a few months back and it was unmult that was causing it.. They have since updated (redgiant) and it works just fine.. I was able to use xmult in its place and it worked with no problems. I would try selecting all layers in all comps hit e for effects and temporarly turn them all off and if it works you'll know its a pluggin.

advres: where can I find We Multiply I've never heard of that one? What company do you work for if you dont mind me asking?

 

[cb911]

i still haven't found out what the problem was. i'll try turning off the effects and see if that works.

someone i spoke to at my college about it said that it might be too much for my system to handle. most of those clips are re-sized to about 20% of their original size and the play anywhere from 15seconds to a few minutes. that person also suggested i only import and use clips of the proper size, so i dont' have to re-size them in AE. would those things make much of a difference?

well if anyone's got some tips for how to set-up AE that would be good as well. i'm just learning this stuff as i go. i'm still an After Effects n00b.