Strange After Effects Problem

[Muskie]

I've googled this for about 2 days and spent some time looking here as well, and have not found anything. I'm not exactly sure what to be searching for though, so that might be my problem.

I'm pretty new to After Effects, but this thoroughly confuses me as well as my professor.

I'm doing a project that incorporates several .mov files cut together with text and various other elements between them. If I RAM Preview or scrub, everything works fine. If I export roughly 40 seconds or less, everything works fine. If I expand the work area to much more than 40 seconds and export, all of the video clips randomly select one still frame and simply display that. The audio still works, the animated text and shapes are still present and functional, but the pieces that were .mov are now all static images with functioning audio. The problem continues back in AE. After exporting and getting a file as I have described, I now have the same issues in AE. Scrubbing or RAM Previewing the project reveals the same issue of frozen video. The only way to correct this seems to be to relaunch AE, and export only shorter portions.

The only solution I have come up with so far is to export this in sections and pull them all back together with Final Cut, but I'd rather do it all in AE. So if anyone could help it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Zac

 

[ppc_michael]

So, sounds like you're exporting, have you tried the render queue?

How are the erroneous files compressed? (which codecs?)

 

[Muskie]

So, sounds like you're exporting, have you tried the render queue?

How are the erroneous files compressed? (which codecs?)

I have not tried doing it via the render que, I don't have much experience with it. I was exporting as a quicktime movie in h.264 (as per professor's request) but have since tried quicktime with mpeg4 compression which gives me the same problem. I'll try doing it through the render que and see if that helps.

Thanks


---edit
So I've just rendered two tests from the render que.
The first one was run with "draft" settings. It worked fine, apart from being draft quality.
The second one was run the same with with "best" settings. The video on this one worked for about 10 seconds, and then gave me the same problem as the earlier ones.
Shed any light for you? I think that confuses me more.

 

[court.dickert]

AE Effects

Did you eer find the answer? I am having the same problem, the effects supervisor sent me a QT file that when I scrub it in QT or Final Cut it works fine but when I play it, it picks the frame and doesnt move. Please feel to email me at court.dickert@gmail.com if you found any solutions.

thanks
Court

 

[Proto Media]

Codec Change?

it most likely has to do with the fact that you are probably exporting in the animation codec, which plays back very sluggishly on most machines. If you bring that exported file into QT or FCP and re export as something different it should be fine.

Also in the render que in after effects, before rendering, you can click on the options and change the format for compression, setting it to something different here also might give you a playable file. By default it exports in the animation codec, which is the highest possible quality, but also one of the highest data rates, so it plays back horribly.

Hope this helps.

- Ryan

 

[court.dickert]

Thx

You are a GodSend