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uncleranny
Inspiring
June 7, 2021
Answered

AE Blending Mode "Screen" causes render error in AME

  • June 7, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 1336 views

My After Effects project uses a particle flare footage layer with blending mode "Screen".  This plays and looks correct in the AE preview.  However, when exporting to Adobe Media Encoder, it generates a render error.

 

Export Error
Error compiling movie.

Render Error

Render returned error.

Writing with exporter: H.264
Writing to file: \\?\C:\Users\brown\Documents\Adobe\After Effects 2020\Projects\NL\NL_AME\NL.mp4
Writing file type: H264
Around timecode: 00:00:01:00
Rendering at offset: 0.000 seconds
Component: H.264 of type Exporter
Selector: 9
Error code: -1609629695

 

I have found that changing the layer blend mode to others such as Normal, Add, Lighten all work correctly (every other mode I tried except Screen seems to work).

 

Further, I exported the project (using Collect Files), copied it to another PC, where it renders correctly

 

What can I do to fix the AME error?

 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer uncleranny

Thanks again for the response. I've tried converting the problematic layer source to a few formats, but no luck.  At this point, I've decided to move AE/AME to my other computer and do the work there. 

3 replies

Mylenium
Mylenium
Brainiac
June 9, 2021

Fair enough. In this case double-check your sources. Oddly enough AE will still use hardware-accelerated decoding and that may and even when switching to software-only rendering GPU functions are never fully disabled. As a test try to substitute the sources with a different format and/ or setting a proxy and enabling its usage in the render settings. Maybe this will solve this problem.

 

Mylenium

U
unclerannyAuthorCorrect answer
Inspiring
June 9, 2021

Thanks again for the response. I've tried converting the problematic layer source to a few formats, but no luck.  At this point, I've decided to move AE/AME to my other computer and do the work there. 

Mylenium
Mylenium
Brainiac
June 8, 2021

You answered your own question: Turn off GPU acceleration. Screen uses non-inear math which apparently cannot be accommodated in one computing cycle on your slightly older card in conjunction with other GPU accelerated functions such as H.264 encoding. Other than that you can always spend hours trying to figure out driver settings, installing different drivers and the usual, but in your case it's doubtful that this will actually resolve much. It may fix the rendering issue, but introduce another problem due the same resource shortage cropping up in a different place then...

 

Mylenium

U
unclerannyAuthor
Inspiring
June 8, 2021

Thanks for the response.  Where do I set that?  Is it in the AE settings or in the AME settings?  

Joost van der Hoeven
Joost van der Hoeven
Community Expert
June 7, 2021

Can you please share your system info? Like OS and version, CPU, RAM, GPU vRAM, Pr version? Thanks. Also a screen grab of your issue will be helpful.

Quick question what are the h264 settings you are using? Does the error also happens when you export to an other format, like Quicktime ProRes?

U
unclerannyAuthor
Inspiring
June 7, 2021

AME version 15.2 build 30

AE version 18.2.0 build 37

Windows 10 Pro (version 2004, build 19041.985)

AMD Ryzen 5 2600

16GB RAM

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT710

(admittedly a very minimal graphics card, but it's worked fine for everything else I've done so far)

 

I normally use the H264 Youtube 1080p preset, which is what you see here. 

I've also tried Quicktime with the Apple ProRes 422 which also fails.  All the other Quicktime presets I've tried failed, except for the NTSC options which seem to work (but of course at lower resolution).  I can tell which ones will work or not by looking at the preview - the ones which fail to render also fail to preview (it gets stuck at the "Rendering..." in the preview window).

 

 

 

 

However, I can successfully render directly from After Effects (not AME) using QuickTime with Best Settings.

 

 

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