Dear Adobe and readers,

For several weeks, I've been coping with inconsistent and unexpected render errors using Adobe Media Encoder to render After Effects Compositions.

The error code: -1609629695 seems unfindable, searched high and low, without succes.

Most annoying part is, sometimes it works flawlessly for 2 days straight, sometimes it stops working mid-day, sometimes a reboot helps for a short time, or a flush of the ame pref-folders.

What DOES work:

- Rendering premiere sequences through AME (as long as it doesn't have .aep files in the sequence)

- Rendering directly from After Effects

- Converting .mov files to h.264 through AME (been my workaround)

I have a daily average of about 50+ renders through Media Encoder, so it's really grinding my gears.

I tried all of these things already:

- update GPU

- Disable GPU

- Other Filepath (Desktop, HDD, SSD, Dropbox folders, Documents)

- Other codec (Several HEVC and Quiktime Codecs)

- Roll-back AME (tried 5 versions)

- Roll-back AE (tried 5 versions)

- Clear Cache AE

- Delete the AME preference folder (both in documents and appdata)

- Tried several different comps, different saves, from various locations (over 50 now I guess)

PC specs: 

OS: Windows 10 Enterprise 21H1 19043.1526

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10980XE CPU @ 3.00GHz 3.00 GHz
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming OC 24G (unclocked)

RAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO 128GB (8x16GB) DDR4 3200MHz CL16

Current AME version: 22.4

Curren AE version: 22.4

The Errorcode with GPU enabled:

Export Error
Error compiling movie.

Accelerated Renderer Error

Unable to produce frame.

Writing with exporter: H.264
Writing to file: E:\test_file.mp4
Writing file type: H264
Around timecode: 00:00:01:17 - 00:00:02:15
Rendering at offset: 1.233 seconds
Component: H.264 of type Exporter
Selector: 9
Error code: -1609629695

The Error code with GPU disabled:

Export Error
Error compiling movie.

Render Error

Render returned error.

Writing with exporter: H.264
Writing to file: E:\test_file.mp4
Writing file type: H264
Around timecode: 00:00:00:21 - 00:00:01:28
Rendering at offset: 0.700 seconds
Component: H.264 of type Exporter
Selector: 9
Error code: -1609629695

Maybe the weirdes thing of them all...

If I try rendering a 10 second comp of a solid through AME, it works just fine...

Also, all the comps that did not work at my home office, worked at the office, which has an almost identical PC build, program versions and folder structure, drivers etc.

Who has the magical answer to this maze!