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PhantomLimb_Arber
Known Participant
February 2, 2014
Answered

AE CC Mac: After Effects Collect Files not collecting some files, including project!

  • February 2, 2014
  • 37 replies
  • 61047 views

I need to send a client some collected projects, but the File > Dependencies > Collect Files command is not collecting some of the files (after the project has been reduced, so all the files in the project are required), including the project file!

I just end up with a collected folder containing a "Footage" folder that includes some of the files and not others. This is a nightmare!! There are hundreds of files that will take days I do not have to manually track each file down.

Any suggestions?

J

      This topic has been closed for replies.
      Correct answer ebelharw

      Hey everyone -

      Running CC 2014 on Mac 10.9.5

      I kept getting this error when trying to collect:

      After Effects warning: The file 'filename' could not be found.

      So I know this is going to sound crazy, but the problem was the mouse and Wacom tablet. Anytime I gave it input when it was starting to collect it would error out like that. Then i tried putting down the wacom pen and clicking enter on the save dialog and boom - worked perfectly. Really strange bug - hopefully Adobe addresses it soon. Props to chandra hope on creative cow for tracking the problem down:

      https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1052704

      hope this helps and hope the issue is addressed soon.

      Wes

      37 replies

      davidr13429266
      davidr13429266
      Participant
      June 15, 2019

      I had the same problem. It seemed to always be an Ai file that couldn't be found so I convertd all my Ai layers into 'creating shape layers out of Vector'... no fix.

      After this I thought of just saving the collected Ae to my desktop... RESULT!

      I'm not sure if this is the same for others but I was working in a file system that is linked to my Dropbox and thisis where I was trying to collect it. So that could be the issue?

      Who F**kin knows!? Stupid F**kin Bug!

      M
      mrepix
      Participant
      November 11, 2016

      Thank you, ebelharw​ , that totally worked.

      G
      Greg@Antifreeze Animation
      Known Participant
      November 11, 2016

      Still fails in 2017.0   Dang.

      I just tried it. Collection fails if I move my mouse during Collection!

      (To adobe's credit, I actually get a failure notice, instead of the perception of success that we used to be plagued with!)

      System:

      Mid 2010

      2 x 3.06 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon

      Kensington Mouse

      Wacom Tablet is plugged in

      S
      stevenprobets
      Known Participant
      December 20, 2016

      Still an issue with me!

      Using AE 2017!! Be Jesus?!!!

      iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

      4GHz i7

      32GB RAM DDR3

      macOS 10.12.2

        Mode

      M
      morganed43545528
      Participant
      May 18, 2016

      Hey there,

      I had the exact same problem, and it worked for me when I stopped moving the mouse of the computer...

      Weird but true... Thanks for the tips!

      Cheers

      B
      brandonmcfarland
      Participant
      February 22, 2016

      Glad I found this because this is still the solution for CC2015 13.7.

      Mine could be related to the older Wacom drivers (6.3.8-2) that I installed in order to get rid of some other weird Wacom related bugs in Premiere and AE. I'd rather have to use my mouse when collecting files than get random layer selections that stick to my moving pen.

      When is Adobe going to sort the Wacom bugs?

      allanwr
      allanwr
      Participant
      January 31, 2016

      This totally saved my sanity. Thank you!

      yoyopop.studio
      yoyopop.studio
      Participant
      February 9, 2016

      just to chime in here and say thanks to all for posting re the wacom collect files click problem, its being doing my nut in for ages now.

      but simply hitting the return key its sorted and all collected perfectly

      all the stuff making people to change folder structures and file names, big waste of time in the end

      hopefully the issue re wacom and mouse clicking on this simple function gets sorted soon.

      thanks all

      D
      David Mudd Art
      Participating Frequently
      January 21, 2016

      I can confirm this work around.

      A co-worker and myself have had the same issue.  We are both using Intous Pro 2 Tablets and when ever using the pen to consolidate footage it would get an error and only a handful of the files would collect.

      **By unplugging the tablet and using a mouse everything worked just like it was supposed to.  It is a bug that has to do with the tablet. **

      iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)

        Processor: Intel Core i7

        Processor Speed: 4 GHz

        Memory: 16 GB

      K
      KGW Graphics 1
      Participant
      January 21, 2016

      David, I use an Intuos 2 as well. You might be going to more trouble than you have to. I think the problem is that the slight quiver in your hand after you click the Save button is all it takes to throw this mouse movement error. It's very sensitive.

      Instead, once you've hit the Collect button in the dialog and the "Collect files into folder" save dialog appears, put down your stylus (don't touch the tablet if touch areas are activated) and switch to the mouse or keyboard to confirm the save. During collect, treat everything on your desk like it's radioactive and you should be good

        S
        steveo_tv
        Participating Frequently
        November 24, 2015

        Yeah, it blew me away that this worked for me too. I suspect there might be a connection to the dreaded wacom sticky cursor problem that some of us have had intermittently with intuos tablets for many years. Is everyone that is having this problem with a mouse using a wacom mouse, or are some of you mousers using apple mice?

        H
        hqhempen
        Known Participant
        November 24, 2015

        I'm using a wireless Logitech mouse on 2014 iMac or whatever.  Definitely would only collect properly if wireless mouse was turned off, lol.

          MayDayMedia
          MayDayMedia
          Known Participant
          November 24, 2015

          Using MacPro trashcan with wired apple keyboard, and wired macally mouse. It's not a peripheral problem, it's an Adobe problem.

          T
          tstuderTOPIC
          Participant
          November 7, 2015

          We had this same problem. Disconnected tablets and it worked.

          Thank You

          M
          mimic8645457
          Participant
          November 13, 2015

          I don't know if this will work for others but I was experiencing the same symptoms as posted originally in this thread, however Wacom and mouse had nothing to do with it.

          In the end I worked around it by:

          • Selecting 'None (Project Only)' from the collect files menu
          • Closed the auto-opened After Effects file
          • Opened the file from the 'None (Project Only)' export location
          • Run Collect files again and this time select All from the collect files menu

          Hopefully this helps some of you


          Mimi.

          A
          Anonymous
          November 2, 2015

          This is frustrating. I just sat down at home to spend a couple hours working on a project and when i open my USB drive everything is there except the project.

          Todd_Kopriva
          Todd_Kopriva
          Inspiring
          October 26, 2015

          an update on this bug, with some history on this problem from our perspective:

          This problem is new to Mac OS 10.9, or one of the 10.9.x updates. Which doesn’t seem new, but 10.9 is only a bit over 2 years old (For comparison, Windows 7 is 6 years old, Windows 8 is 3 years old.) We suspect that Apple changed something subtle in the mouse event handler code that causes After Effects to unintentionally interrupt the file copy messages it sends to the OS.

          We started seeing reports of problems with Collect Files on Mac OS during the CC 2014 cycle, though the reports weren’t limited to CC 2014 versions. We investigated, but it’s not necessarily an easy problem to reproduce; another way to say that is that the failure conditions are more specific than simple repro steps will reveal. Thus, at that time the correlation between mouse movement and the Collect Files failures wasn’t obvious, so we spent a lot of time chasing potential problems with file copy processes. In fact, we found and fixed a bug in After Effects 13.1 with QuickTime file writes and crossed our fingers that it would address the issue, but it clearly did not.

          Since then, the team has been heads-down on the architectural changes in After Effects 13.5. That work demanded all of the attention of the team, and many bugs like this one that existed in previous versions had to be put aside. The basic functionality of preview and other core features have taken higher priority over issues like this one that affect a smaller number of users, and even worse are platform specific.

          That said, we recognize how frustrating this bug can be. Now that we’re past 13.5, and are working through the trail of bugs that it created, we are beginning to gain some time to look at other issues. Like this one.

          Our apologies, and thanks for hanging in there with us.

            G
            Greg@Antifreeze Animation
            Known Participant
            November 2, 2015

            Thanks for your attentiveness. I think one of the things that makes this such a "gotcha" for me is that when the Collection fails, it "looks" like links are there because all post-mouse-move items are still globally linked.  As an interim fix, maybe it would be helpful if the algorithm first destroyed all global links so that we would be well aware of the missing linkages when opening it back up*. As it is, it doesn't throw linking errors, because it simply doesn't attempt to finish the move. So, it's easy to accidentally think the Collection happened adequately, and very difficult to verify that it did. The folders are there, some of the assets have been moved, but depending on when the mouse moved, not ALL of the assets are moved. So it becomes impossible to even verify the links are now local to the folder, because there are no missing links!  Crazy. I wish we could put our finger on exactly what setup causes it, but for now all we know is that the mouse move triggers it.  Let us know if there is specific system build info we can provide. (Or maybe forward a report? Surely there's some software that could identify the common parameter or build, e.g. like we're all using a Kensington mouse or something.)

            * I don't know if this has been changed, but it's also ridiculously awful in 2014.2 to have an individual error for every broken link on file open. It would be much more helpful to simply have a general error that says, "One or more files did not load or could not be found. Search for "Missing Footage" in the Project window for more information."  It's not elegant, but saves us from clicking through a hundred errors.

            (Note: I also have a Wacom Tablet attached. I'll test it with it disconnected, as some later posts suggested)

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