Participant

Question

Render fails on M1 Max but completes on Intel Mac Pro

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
November 2, 2021
8 replies
2794 views

Last week I received the new MacBook Pro M1 Max, 16-inch with 64GB ram.

I have a pretty simple AE comp that I am unable to render on this machine. However, the same project renders just fine on my Intel Mac Pro (2019).
It fails when I render directly within After Effects. If I render using Media Encoder, it'll complete but looks wrong - there are artifacts that appear in the final render that shouldn't be there. I'm rendering ProRes 4444 with alpha.

So I can't render using Media Encoder as the final output doesn't come out correct, and when I try rendering inside AE, I get the screaming goat halfway through with this error:
After Effects error: Rendering error will writing to file "...." Compressor format error. (-1610153454).

Followed by:

After Effects error: An unexpected error occured while exporting a composition. Error Code: 9988

Please restart After Effects and retry the export.

I've tried the render with both multi-frame rendering turned on and off - same error each time.

I've purged everything, restarted AE and the machine several times. No matter what, I can't get the render out on this M1 Max!

Error or problem

This topic has been closed for replies.

J

jmh22

Participating Frequently

Hi all. Flagged this issue to the Adobe team a little while back and seems the issue has been identified and an update is on its way. For those who come across this post having this issue a work around in v22 can be used. See here for more details:

https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911311-after-effects/suggestions/44791213-m1-max-prores-4444-alpha-compressor-failing-render

K

kietthai

Participating Frequently

I have an older AEP project from last year that I created on a 2015 Intel MacBook Pro. After receiving my new M1 Max laptop a few weeks ago, I had to open that older project up on the new M1 Max and revise some assets. Frustratingly I have seen thoses error codes as well when I render. For what it's worth, I also seem to be able to bypass the render queue and use media encoder with success.

I knew that AE was being redone to run native on the M1 Max, but I didn't realize that it would be slower than the 2015 model I had before. I can't wait for this all to be updated so I can get all the speeds promised with this new Mac.

I also upvoted the issue. Thanks Jase for sharing the link.

kevins89114709

Participant

Another update on this problem. I had previously thought that when a crash occurred using the M1 Max MacBook Pro while rendering any ProRes format with an alpha channel on certain projects, rendering it from Media Encoder would fix it.

This is incorrect. I remember reading somebody else mentioning that Media Encoder was not a solution for them either (at least consistenly). It had worked for me once but perhaps I was rendering the TIFF sequence I was able to make in After Effects and then saved it as ProRes from ME.

So again, this problem is either an issue on Apple's side with the media engine on the M1 Max (since I never experienced the problem on the original M1 that lacks a media engine) or it is a bug with Adobe's products and whatever code both After Effects and Media Encoder share, or both.

I have been able to successfully render ProRes with alpha channels sometimes, but they are usually much simpler comps in after effects. I can pretty much tell now, based upon the complexity of the comp, when it is going to fail.

J

jmh22

Participating Frequently

As it seems there a few more people experiencing this issue, the bug has been reported here:

https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911311-after-effects/suggestions/44791213-m1-max-prores-4444-alpha-compressor-failing-render

Please upvote for Adobe visibility.

Thanks!

kevins89114709

Participant

I have just been banging my head on my desk trying to solve this exact issue. I just got my M1 Max MBP yesterday, had to do rush overtime work today and I was making both texted and keyed (with an alpha channel) cards when it happened. The texted version would render just fine to ProRes 4444 but the alpha channel version to ProRes 4444 with alpha would report:

After Effects error: Rendering error while writing to file ..... Compressor format error.

This would happen at the exact same spot on every attempt. I tried rendering it out as a TIFF sequence instead of ProRes 4444 and it worked fine. I then brought that TIFF sequence back into AE, tried rendering it as ProRes and again, it aborted and gave that error message at just about the same place.

I'm completely making guesses here but it seems the common issue is this M1 Max chip. I was working for a full month on an M1 MacBook Air (from 2020) and I never ran across this issue even once. I've had the Max for a day and nothing I tried would fix it. I'm afraid it's something like the specialized Media Engine or some other specialized area of the chip that the M1 Max may have that the original M1 chip does not. I hope it's just a problem with After Effects or Apple MacOS issue (good luck waiting decades for that to be fixed (if ever) if it's a Quicktime-level issue). But, I'm probably going to have to return this while I still can. My job depends on a reliable After Effects computer and so far, this is not it.

A

Anthony22787040uwn7

Participant

in case it helps expedite a fix, I, too am experiencing this error.

J

jmh22

Participating Frequently

Same issue occurring for me. Extremely frustrating.

OussK

Community Expert

did you try the beta version of AE?, it's support natively the M1 processor.

VFXbear

Inspiring

Not an option for production situations, since a lot of effects and plugins are not yet compatible with the native M1 version.

C

creggor

Inspiring

Having the same problem - very simple animation with alpha fails. Interestly some of the comps rendered fine, some failed then tried again and rendered fine.

Media Encoder did render them out and they were fine. What artifacting did you see? Are you sure it wasn't just artifacting from the straight alpha? I noticed that the new OS (or maybe just the M1) shows the full alpha when using quicklook (or quicktime) and on my intel mac (Big Sur) it would let you preview the file showing what it would look like composited.

Have you tried taking the files back into AE and dropping them on in a new comp?

This is what quicklook (and quicktime) shows the rendered file:

This is after bringing back into AE:

Regardless, there is definitely a bug in the new AE 2021 with this 9988 code which is hopefully fixed soon!

briancovaltAuthor

Participant

Ah that's interesting about how the lastet macOS may be displaying the alpha. However, that's not quite the issue I had; even when I'd bring the completed render back into Premiere or AE, it'd show the artifacts that weren't supposed to be there.

I've had to continually go back to my Intel Mac to render out my comps because I keep running into barking sheep when I try on my M1 MacBook Pro.

With deadlines, I gotta just go with what works as I rarely have time to troubleshoot. (funny these tools are supposed to help you work faster).

Today I tried rendering on the M1 MBP again, and again got an error:
After Effects warning: logged one error -- "error: Rendering error while writing to files "..." Compressor format error. (-1610153454)"

I brought the same file over to my Intel Mac and had no issue rendering; it just works.

I cannot use my new $4300 MacBook Pro for professional work in AE. Super frustrating.

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