Media Encoder 2023 Renders Freezing/Hanging

Hi all,

I'm finding Media Encoder 2023 is having an issue where my renders frequently freeze/hang.  I'll set up a large queue, let it run, and at some point in the queue it'll just get stuck at a random point in a file and then just hold there for indefinitely.  I also have an issue where it'll just sit there forever trying to connect to dynamic link but never start the render. There's a trick folks recommend online, to go into task manager, select After Effects from the background processes and hit "end task."  This works to some extent, but not every time and often I'll have to end task multiple times for media encoder to fix itself and continue working.

I have done some (though limited) research into my project files itself to see if there's a specific effect or animation happening on the specific frame that's causing media encoder to hang, and I'm fairly certain there's not. I think this is an issue with media encoder itself.  One argument in support of this is the fact that when media encoder hangs and then I "end task" the AE background process, media encoder will sometimes start back up and finish the file out.  So it's not like media encoder can't get past a specific frame or moment in the animation. It just gets hung up, essentially goes to sleep, and needs a jolt to get going again.

These are problems folks mentioned with 2022 as well -- it seems to be an issue across multiple machines (both my laptop and desktop) and cross platform (a freelancer of mine on mac has had the connecting to dynamic link issue as well). I have also tried uninstalling and reinstalling AE and AME to no avail.

While I appreciate that the "end task" option seems to jolt the program back into existence, I hardly would say this problem is "solved." Nor do I think suggestions that we should just render in AE directly are a solve either.  The ability to leave media encoder rendering while you continue to work is key and hasn't been an issue for years.  Even as recently as AME 2021 I don't think there were nearly as many issues with rendering speed and media encoder bugs as I've found in 2022 and 2023 so far.

Unfortunately, while downgrading back to 2021 has been a band-aid where the softwares run as they should for us, we run into issues where if anyone accidentally opens a project in 2023 and saves it, we then can no longer open that project in 2021 and we're locked back into 2023.

While I appreciate the effort Adobe has put into these UI updates for colored keyframes and a better track matte system, it certainly shouldn't be at the expense of a Media Encoder that works.

Adobe, if you have any suggestions of how to troubleshoot this issue or permanently resolve it, let me know.

(Running Windows 10 Pro on an MSI laptop and AVA Direct custom desktop.)