After Effects not being able to send the export to Media Encoder

Hi ​@VisionsRaph:

Sorry to hear that you hare having trouble.

Yes, 8GB of RAM is a low amount of RAM.

I’d try the following options, probably in this order and taking the time to restart between each option.

Option 1

Try restarting your computer and launching just After Effects with Caps Lock enabled to prevent After Effects from rendering the Comp. Then launch Media Encoder and drag and drop your Comp from the After Effects Project panel to the Media Encoder Queue panel.  Assuming the Comp shows as an item in the Queue as expected, save and quit After Effects and then start Media Encoder.

Option 2

You mentioned that the Render Queue in After Effects won’t finish.  This may need troubleshooting before on the Ae side before you’re able to use Media Encoder.  Try launching After Effects in Safe Mode, open your project, add the Comp to the Render Queue and then save and render.  You may get an error message that some third-party effects are missing.  If the renders as expected (but may not look correct), then the likely cause of your crash is on of the third-party effects.  You’ll have to determine how to get the results you’re looking for without that effect or check if there’s an update available that will render without crashing.

Option 3

Another thing to try on a low RAM laptop is to render and a lower Resolution.  If you were in Safe Mode, relaunch After Effects and continue.  Add your Comp to the Render Queue with the Render Settings set to Best Settings.  Click Best Settings and change the Resolution pop-up menu from Full to Half (this will render a movie that’s half of your intended frame size).  Back in the Render Queue, set the Output Module to High Quality.  Set the Output to name and location and then save and render.  This file will take about 1GB per minute, but requires less work on the part of your M1 to create the file.  If that works, you’ll have a High Quality file that you can do a second pass on to up-convert back to the intended frame size.  You could import the movie into a new Ae project and apply Detail Preserving Upscale (which should be relatively easy to render) or use something like Video Topaz to up-convert the file (there's a trail version that you can test).