After Effects project corrupted (33::4 “missing data in file”) after crash & computer restart

Hey guys,

After Effects (Beta) (Version 24.3.0)(Windows 11) crashed a couple of times while I was working. After restarting my computer and relaunching After Effects, I received a message that my preferences were invalid. The application created new preferences and moved the old ones into files with “-old” in the name.

When I tried to open my main project file (.aep), I received the error:

After Effects error: missing data in file (33::4)

 

The last available Auto-Save is from June (not sure how that happened), and I was incredibly stupid and haven't backed up my hard drive in a few months. So I have lost some months of work unless I can recover the file somehow.

I have already attempted opening the project in the latest stable release, as well as importing the corrupted project into a new project. I tried renaming the file to .zip to see if it was XML-based, but I couldn't extract it. Using a hex editor, I can still see effect names, asset references, and file paths, which suggests that potentially the data is intact but After Effects cannot parse it. I also tried trimming the header at “LIST” markers and then re-importing, but that didn't work either.

I would like to know if Adobe support can attempt an internal repair of this corrupted file, or if there are any any applications or workflows for salvaging .aep projects beyond what I have tried.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated! Thank you