After Effects on M4 Pro: Persistent Ghost Image on Alpha Channel Even in Empty Composition

[philc69194013]

AE shows invisible ghost image on alpha channel in completely empty composition
No layers, no effects, color management disabled, Photoshop PSD/PSB cleared
Ghost persists in final render on M4 Pro, the latest AE update. 

[philc69194013]

so far I've noticed that one of the adjustment layers with transformation animated by expression may cause this thing. Also when I switch the quality (full to half for example) bug dissapears in preview, but still appears in the render. I tried all kind of purges and a safe mode, where bug was at first but then also dissapeared after some random tweaks. 

[nishu_kush]

That's not ideal. Sorry to hear about the issue.

Such issues are usually fixed by clearing the media cache (Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache). If that didn't help, can you check if it is happening in a specific project or all of them? Can you share the faulty project with me so that I can try to reproduce the issue on my end?

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks,
Nishu

[philc69194013]

of course I tried the purge first, and it didn't work, good news is that all of my other projects seems fine, here's the link for you

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X1D-Ff5A2qoyu5XfEwJHKgbNtmuoFx88/view?usp=sharing

you gotta render a composition "KV_11_PreM+voice_0512" and after that a bug appears (or you don't even have to render, I just opened the file and already got a bug) PLEASE SIR save my sanity lol

[Warren Heaton]

Hi @philc69194013:

I tried opening the project that you posted and it's working as expected on my computer.

I'd try a few things:

• Import the current project into a new project to see if that gets Layer visibility to work as expected.  If it does, save and continue with that new project.
• Open the project with all of the source media offline such that you're seeing placeholder footage to see if that gets Layer visibility to work as expected.  If that works, then reconnect the source footage to see if Layer visibility continues to work as expected.
• Create a new Adjustment Layer in front of the other Layers and apply Invert (Effect > Channel > Invert) to see if that forces Layer visibility to render as expected (other than the inverted colors).  Once in several decades, I've used this approach when a very, very complex project wouldn't render as expected to render a first pass and the follow up with a second render that inverts the colors back.

[philc69194013]

hey there, thank you for your reply and concern. Did you try to render the composition called "KV_11_PreM+voice_0512"? I just did and got that glitch again, an image stucked on alpha channel. And once I created an adjustment layer, bug dissapered. But to have my sanity back I need to know the reason of this glitch, I was working my usual pipeline build for years (nothing special, some photoshop, some blender, AE mostly to combine png sequences into a video) but again, new adjustment layer did the trick. Check out the video file

[Warren Heaton]

Hi @philc69194013 

When I opened your project on my end, everything worked as expected.

My best guess would be that there's some sort of conflict between After Effects and your video driver that's preventing it from rendering the Comp as expected.  That, or something else running at the same time (could be in the foreground or background) that is causing it.

I used to think that background processes would not affect After Effects, but then I encountered a fax driver that caused all source footage to show as 0 pixel by 0 pixel.   When disabled, everything went back to normal.

It might not hurt to run a diagnostic utility on the RAM in your system.  I've also has some strand render issue when the memory pressure was very high and one of the RAM chips needed to be re-seated.

- Warren

[philc69194013]

Have you had any chance to look at?

[Warren Heaton]

@philc69194013 

I opened your project on one of my workstations and it worked as expected.

[nishu_kush]

Hi there,

Sorry for taking so long to reply. Just like Warren, I opened your project without any problems, and I didn't find anything wrong. But when I rendered the Composition "KV_11_PreM+voice_0512," the issue started. Clearing the memory (Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache) helped.

I'm moving this conversation from Discussions to Bugs and reporting it as a bug for more investigation. Thanks for letting us know.

Thanks,
Nishu

[nishu_kush]

Changing thread status to Investigating.

Thanks,

Nishu