After Effects Warning: Unknown Exception using effects.

[haaark]

Hey After Effects gurus,

I'm running into an issue whenever I try to use AE that's blocking my workflow on a M1 Macbook Pro.

Whenever I create a new composition or open an existing one, I get this error that I can't dismiss if I click on the effects panel. The only thing I can do to is force quit the application. 

I've tried reinstalling AE multiple times, starting in safe mode, deleting presets, delete any custom fonts I've installed, and even updated the operating system; nothing has fixed this issue. 

What do we think gang, anything I'm missing here to get this solved? inb4 "don't use effects".

[Jessica McMillan]

Hello @haaark 

Do you have any third party effects installed? If you go to Effect -> Manage Effects... you can see what third-party effects you have on your system. If you have any, please try disabling them, relaunching AE and see if the issue persists. It might be due to a specific plugin sending bad data back to AE. 

All the best,
Jessica
AE Engineering

[RobShultz]

Are creating an empty composition or a composition based on footage? If this doesn't happen when creating an empty composition there might be a problem with your media.

[haaark]

Hey @Jessica McMillan! I wiped my install a couple times and boot AE into the mode that lets me manage effects; don't have any third party effects installed. Are there any specific effects you'd recommend disabling?

[haaark]

Hey @RobShultz! AE crashes whether I have an empty composition or one with layers inside of it. I discovered this halfway though a project; clicked on effects and it crashed. Noticed it does this even when creating a brand new composition as well. Any thoughts?

[Jessica McMillan]

Hello @haaark,

Thank you for your time, and sorry you are still experiencing this issue. 

I have found yours and a few other users' crash logs. We are investigating internally for different scenarios that would cause this.

Could you try starting in safe mode? In preferences:
Edit -> Preferences -> Startup and Repair...
Under the section Repair Options, click "Start in Safe Mode..." and see if this reproduces for you there. This launches AE as if there were no existing preferences on your system as well as allows you to launch while disabling any 3rd party plugins. If it works for you, possibly still a preference/plugin related issue where you could try deleting all preferences. There is a way to go to your preferences folder from that same recovery preference panel.

Could you also try clearing out the following folder? 
~/Documents/Adobe/After Effects 2024/User Presets
This saves user created variations of plugins as well as saving additional plugin data. Maybe information from a previous install is corrupted or not valid and causing issues in your current install.

If you could try those seperately, hopefully one leads to a fix where we can further narrow down ways to avoid this endless dialog as well as fix the intended behavior.

All the best.
Jessica 
AE Engineering

[Ethan26934598hqim]

I had the same issue 

Followed @Jessica McMillan  advice of clearing my User Presets folder and it worked