Plugin Errors after upgrading to After Effects 24.5

[m1jackson]

I got upgraded to 24.5. Can anyone confirm if any plug ins have stopped working for them?

I'm getting an error using the Red Giant 11.1.9 Keying Suite plugins (Edge Blur, Light Wrap, etc.) saying that they can not be applied to a layer.

Downgraded to 24.1 and got the following error on startup.

Now, I like VFX Suite and all, but I know that Red Giant isn't gonna do anything to support these old plugs.

Anyone else had any issues?

[֑nubnubbud]

welcome to mandatory updates and no old versions allowed. What's a third party? leeches, that's who! the only ones to profit should be adobe, because when they bought out their competitors to get the base for their programs, they paid a whole few million, and buying things then letting them fall apart from lack of maintainence while people try to use them is hard work for those like 20 devs that are surely paid a generous portion of the 14 billion in revenue Adobe gets yearly. Gee whiz, is subscription a good business model- you can even get complacent and make money and nothing like new hardware or modern standards will ever replace you or render your software borderline useless.

Trust me, I still use CS6 because that was the golden age of Adobe, and all the old plugins still work and it's great. which is good because I'm working on getting all my AE stuff out of my reel, or migrating it over to Nuke. 

[m1jackson]

This doesn't address my very singular issue. Have you had this issue or not? If not, all you're doing is grousing and that doesn't help. If you want to go to Nuke, that's your perogative, but it doesn't help address the issue.

[֑nubnubbud]

I mean, this isn't a bug report thread, for one...
but if you get that from trying to start up a project that you opened, even briefly, in a newer version, but you can start a new project in the new version and use the plugin normally there, there could have been changes applied to the project's internal format by AE's version checker and "mediator" which would corrupt it if you roll back, as previous versions have no concept of new versions, and AE unlike blender or similar, will throw errors instead of telling you "hey bud, we had to delete these unknown data blocks that are from a newer version". This is part of my gripe- and the likely issue you're having- file corruption due to opening in newer or older versions, is why larger production teams avoid adobe despite its excellent workflow and team tools- lack of acceptable version control tools and lack of acceptible legal terms for support on old versions. TL;DR- most likely it's not a bug, it's a feature, or intended lack thereof.

In the case that you can still open it in the new version, and at least view the affects that can't be applied in the panel;
you might be able to write them down, and copy the keyframe data to another software or window of AE. After that you delete the offending effects, then "reassemble" it in the old version.
(In the case that the plugin simply does not work in the new version, or the bug really broke things, you may need to uninstall the plugins, then reinstall after opening the "cleaned" project in the older version once.)

and remember- there's a reason it's industry standard not to change versions mid-production! butter side down. every time. at least open a marked new version duplicate instead of your working copy in the new version.

[Jessica McMillan]

Hello @m1jackson,

Sorry you are experiencing this issue. This is my first time trying to move a message and its thread to a new post. I moved this to our bugs forum to help address your issue. I am unsure how to change the title of this post to reflect the issue, but at least it is in the right place now.

If you are still experiencing this issue, could you please try reinstalling your plugins?

All the best,
Jessica
AE Engineering

[m1jackson]

I did already remove and reinstall the plug ins to,unfortunately, no avail.

[Jessica McMillan]

Hello @m1jackson 

What version of AE were you running previously that worked with these plugins and was it on this same system? Did you change other things about the system, like updating your OS?

It could be that something AE installed before with our application, or the OS installed, like a windows runtime component, isn't installed anymore if AE or the OS itself doesn't need it. It might need to be installed independently now or bundled with the plugins that needed them. An example of a component like this, is the Visual Studio Runtime.

You could try reaching out to Red Giant, as they might already know if there is a specific component that needs to be installed, and/or you could try installing older additional Visual Studio Runtimes, though that may not solve your problem. 

All the best,
Jessica 
AE Engineering

[Chris24935801ig80]

Our studio are also having issues now with Red Giant plug ins, they run, but really slow!
Also, it seems like Adobe have made it so AE requires elevated priveleges, which totally messes everything up.

You shouldn't need a prompt popup to allow After Effects to run. It should just launch like all the other programs.

When the issue started for us, AE wouldn't even launch! An Adobe engineer did a workaround so it complied with our IT security, but you still had to open it via a security prompt first to allow it.

So now it works, but some plug ins are just really slow now.

We have done everything possible so far, updated the graphic drivers, gone back to a previous version of AE, done a fresh install of AE, re-installed the plug ins. Our own IT has checked every avenue, double checked the computer specs. Even got in touch with Maxon. But everything points to Adobe.

Our Design team use AE for mockups to help our graphics team, they don't have plug ins like Red Giant, yet one of their team now has the same issue after updating.

I have tried chatting to the Adobe team via Virtual Assistant to pick up where we left off today from yesterday. However, you can't get connected to anybody as 'We're busier than usual'. I wonder why!

[Chris24935801ig80]

Also, when AE was working through our IT security firmware, I found when you tried to render a png sequence for example and you tried to create a folder through AE to save to, it wouldn't let you! So I had to go out of AE to create a folder first for the sequence to go in to.
IT have temporarily removed the security stuff from my computer, to try and rule out that as an issue. I can now create folders through AE, but the plug in issue remains.

So even if a Windows Runtime Component is the issue, am I still going to end up having a security popup to go through everytime I launch AE and then still not be able to create a folder when rendering anything out of it? Which again points to the potential elevated priveleges issue I've already mentioned.

[JohnColombo]

Thank you for reporting about this, @Chris24935801ig80. I'm not sure if it is related to the same issue that @m1jackson is experiencing, so it might be best addressed as a separate thread. I can move it if so.

Also, it seems like Adobe have made it so AE requires elevated priveleges, which totally messes everything up.

By @Chris24935801ig80 

Elevated privileges are not required by After Effects. If you are experiencing this consistently, it could be due to how After Effects was installed or other IT restrictions on the machine. It also could be related to the presence of third-party plug-ins that need to call to their licensing framework or servers.

• Do you know what method was used to install AE?
• Do you still need elevated permissions even if all third-party plug-ins are removed?

Thanks for any further information,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[Chris24935801ig80]

Hi,

Feel free to move it if you feel it's best.
I just put it here as it seemed related to other Red Giant plug ins.

I used the usual Creative Cloud Desktop App to update/install. I still have a user account control popup before I can launch AE. But other than that all other security provisions have been temporarily removed, whilst we try to resolve the issue.

We have used the same plug ins for years, with no adverse effects, our new BeyondTrust security was implemented quite awhile before this became an issue and didn't require going through it to launch AE before.
3 other members of our graphics team have no issues whatsover and don't require going through the BeyondTrust popup before being able to launch AE. We all have the same plugins. The only difference is that they have NOT updated After Effects.

So the common denominator seems to be whenever someone updates AE.

A member of our Games Design team who also uses AE, also updated today and now also has issues. He does not have the plug ins we do. He does not get the Beyond Trust Popup, but does get a crash message popup when launching AE, which gives 4 options, like reset preferences and continue.

It's also weird that I cannot drag and drop assets into the project tab anymore.

I've reached out to Maxon also.

It's all very strange that this has started happening out of the blue and no one seems to have a definitive answer to the problem yet.

Cheers