object matte tool totally broken, it worked initally then just wouldn't work anymore. Unacceptable software design, seriously considering to switch platform now.

The Object Matte tool initially worked correctly in this project and I was able to identify and isolate several cars in the footage very accurately. After working for a while, however, it suddenly stopped functioning properly.

Now, when I hover over a car, After Effects still appears to recognise the object and highlights it correctly. But when I click to confirm the selection, one of two things happens:

• The entire frame/layer becomes outlined in purple, as if Object Matte has selected the whole image instead of the car.

• Nothing happens at all and no object matte is created.

The same problem can also occur when using the brush selection.

I have already tried restarting After Effects, reopening the project, clearing memory and disk cache, reopening the footage in the Layer panel, switching tools, resetting preferences and trying again from frames where the tool had previously worked. None of this has resolved the issue.

This is particularly frustrating because the exact same footage and workflow were working correctly earlier before Object Matte suddenly entered this broken state.

I mainly use After Effects for tasks such as object removal, masking and Content-Aware Fill. In this case I need to remove several cars from moving footage, and manually drawing and tracking masks for every vehicle would take a significant amount of time. Object Matte is specifically supposed to make this workflow faster, so when the feature fails like this it becomes effectively useless.

Considering the amount I pay every month for Creative Cloud, it is extremely frustrating to have a major advertised feature behave this unpredictably during actual production work.

Expected behaviour:
Hovering over a clearly visible object and clicking it should create a matte around that object and allow it to be propagated through the footage.

Actual behaviour:
The object is recognised while hovering, but clicking either selects the entire frame or produces no selection at all.