media encoder doesn't export background

Report · Mar 27, 2020

Hi there,

When I export my ae project trough media encoder, it doesn't render the background. Only text layers and other stuff i've made in after effects.

media encoderweird error background

some other info:

- The background is a jpg-sequence

- working on MacOS Catalina 10.15.3

- since I've updated to Catalina.. media encoder sucks :')

- It (only) works when I export to render queue as lossless first and then import in media encoder, but this is not very efficient..

who can help me?

Report · Mar 29, 2020

Sorry to hear all this trouble that you're having. I agree that is not an efficient process. This is odd. I haven't ran into this problem before. Which version of both After Effects and Media Encoder are you on? And can you share a screenshot of what your background is supposed to look like so that the community has something to reference?

Anything out of the ordinary done to to the background layer in After Effects that you think might be useful toward troubleshooting this? What happens if you render with Media Encoder using Software Only?

Report · Apr 03, 2020

Hi Brandon

Thanks for your reply 🙂

I've found out where the problem is. It was because the jpg sequence (the background) was saved on my desktop and my project was saved in google drive (google drive file stream). When I saved the sequence and project on the same location, there's no problem. I'd never had this problem before, so I think this is a bug or something in the new version..

The only problem now is that media encoder keeps crashing when I launch it directly from After Effects. I saw that is a common problem with macos catalina. Is there a way to fix this?

Report · Apr 03, 2020

Hmm I'm honestly not sure. I've avoided Catalina because of all the macOS problems that our IT warned us about. Workaround idea: Are you able to drag and drop the After Effects project from your Finder window into the Media Encoder queue?

Here's two similar cases to your where other users were able to fix the problem. Not sure if these help or not.