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Ae Rotobrush keeps propagating over and over again?

Community Beginner ,
Mar 15, 2021 Mar 15, 2021

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Hi everyone, I've run into the same problem with the Ae Roto Brush a few times now and it's more or less making it impossible to use the tool at all;

 

Whenever I finish rotobrushing a video clip and go back to the composition window, when I change anything in the composition that somehow triggers the Roto Brush to completely restart the propagating process, which can be very time consuming. Those changes don't even need to be something related to the rotobrush, even stuff like adding a text layer or just looking at a different part of the compisition can trigger this to happen. 

 

Has anyone had this same problem? 

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 15, 2021 Mar 15, 2021

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To make matters worse, for whatever reason my Ae just re-propagated (?) and ruined an entire segment I had manually rotobrushed for 4 hours. No way to recover the original. How is this possible? 

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Community Beginner ,
May 15, 2021 May 15, 2021

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Dude it sucks badly!!!!!!! I'm typing this while it just keeps repeating itself over and over. If adobe doesn't fix this problem...They need to get rid of Roto brush completely. Or we can just find another editing program that has a proper roto brush. The funny thing is, none of the updates fixes it.

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Community Expert ,
May 15, 2021 May 15, 2021

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Did you Freeze Rotobrush? Are you stacking a bunch of other layers in the same comp as the Rotobrush layer? If so, that's not a good idea. Your Rotrobrush layer should be the only layer in a comp. If you need to use the matte that is created you nest the comp in the main composition with the other layers. If your roto is complicated and longer than just a few seconds it is a really good idea to Pre-render the Rotobrush comp so you end up with a visually lossless source file with transparency. This is doubly important if you are using Dynamic Link and Premiere Pro.

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New Here ,
Jul 14, 2023 Jul 14, 2023

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Why not make a video of what you have said and share link please

 

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 01, 2023 Dec 01, 2023

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New Here ,
Mar 18, 2022 Mar 18, 2022

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I seriously don't beleive that anyone who ISN'T experiencing this issue A) understands the actual issue or B) understands how absolutely infuriating it is. I have watched DOZENS of videos on how to use the rotoscope brush and never have I seen anyone's video propagate constantly. My file just auto-saved which triggered another 999 frame propagation. The more you do, the longer you're going to wait EVERYtime you stop to fix a border error.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 19, 2023 Apr 19, 2023

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This is true. I have been researching this issue for a few days now, and it seems like there are just a few people in this unlucky "club" while everyone else just spews random useless suggestions on how to fix some alternate issue they made up in their head.

This is what is happening: We double click the layer in our comp so it opens up the layer panel. We select the rotobrush and work on a frame. Some random green rectangle covering an arbitrary number of frames that isn't the entire comp appears and an arrow somewhere in the middle of it points either left or right (I guess it flips a coin or something). Then as soon as we try to click literally ANYTHING, After Effects calls timeout and forces us to wait while the Rotobrush "propagates frame [n] of [m]". 

When I say anything, I mean ANYTHING. If you try to fix a frame, Propagate. If you simply move the playhead to a different part (even something you have already brushed), Propagate. If you click Save, Propagate. If you click a different window, return to After Effects and accidentally click something to get back into the window, Propagate.

Like, all I want to do is brush the first frame, advance automatically, and then fix it when it makes a mistake, just like I would with a Track Mask or in Mocha. I don't want it to go back and re-do the first 50 frames (while stopping me from doing anything else) just because I spotted a mistake on frame 51. Just let me fix frame 51 and continue working. 

The question in this thread is "How do we stop AE from going back and re-propagating every previous frame when we click literally anything in the software?" 

The question is not "How do we edit videos just like you?" or "What we should change about ourselves to be better editors?"

If you have never encountered this issue, or have no experience with the issue, then you are welcome to post a comment in a DIFFERENT thread about something else.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 26, 2023 Apr 26, 2023

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Before someone gets brutally murdered over this, here's how I do it. JUST READ IT.

Firstly, I've been in your situation too. It is infuriating, and frankly, this should be addressed seriously by Adobe. Just dropping name of big companies who use AE doesn't mean nobody never got the same issues too.

 

YES, AE WILL GETS YOU IN A UNRECOVERABLE AND INFINITE LOOP OF PROPAGATION. SO HERE'S THE WORKAROUND I USE.

 

Firstly, "Automatic Propagation" is stupid. In AE2023, there should be a way to stop and constrain the propagation in time, other than Freezing the complete job. Once you're happy with a portion, you should be able to just lock it, so AE don't come after you and just mess with it. Just this, not having being made to work this way is puzzling.  I know you can reduce the span or have multiple ones, but that doesn't change anything.

 

So, here the way I do it on real life situation with complex rotoscoping jobs. 

If you use this, I guaranty you it will not be another waste day in front of AE.

 

AE has numerous limitations(let's call them that way).

You won't be able to roto brush a 5 minutes video with a subject jumping and moving around with black hair over a black pixelated background, from start to finish, UNLESS, you split and prep your video before. Unfortunately.

 

For instance, suppose you don't have a MP4 with no alpha channel (such a YouTube video), and you can't color key the background without loosing too much details that you want to keep.

 

Learn about #pre-multiplied vs #straight alpha. Maybe you can get away by just adding an alpha channel. (Just to let you know it is possible or someone suggest this, but I never got this lucky myself.)

 

Otherwise, in the above situation, prep your file, (clean the file prior rotoscoping).

 

Here, I will create a pretty loose mask surrounding the subject so mask-tracking gets done fairly quickly. Then, I will end up with a video with an incompleted alpha channel with a matte surrounding the subject that I want to get rid of.

 

Since AE messes up or starts to struggle beyond the 20 seconds mark when rotoscoping, I, then split my video in 20 seconds numerated segments that I will reassemble once all done. Premiere here is the way to go for this, trust me, even if AE can do it too. 

20 seconds it the magic number for me.  I never got any issue rotoscoping with AE since, no matter the complexity of the scene. And I just have an average gaming desktop with an unsupported AMD GPU.

 

More specifically, this rotoscoping method (apparently called the Brute Force approach) is the only one that's gets the job done for me.

This means, it's frame by frame, using the Page UP/DN key only.

 

IMPORTANT - When the Layer windows loses focus and your computer idles after a predetermined amount of time set in the Preview Preferences, that's when AE starts messing with you. It will start rendering non-rendered frames and that's can be time consuming (and nerve-wracking) on a long video. You may even decide to quit and contemplate starting a new life right there, hence the 20 sec. segment.

 

Now, once you're done determining the background/foreground and refining your edges on the subject and you're happy with your roto brush setting, use the Pg UP/Pg DN keys to advance. - You MUST watch carefully the thin green progress bar just above the propagation ones with chevrons (that is there only to add confusion). This is the obscur Rendering Frame Bar that tells you if a frame is rendered or not. As you move, frame gets automatically rendered when going slowly (a 1-3 sec. pace between each Pg DN, depending on you computer power). Go one by one slowly, watch the RF bar, and the Layer windows. Any correction applied will affect already rendered frames and you will have to go back. That's OK. As long you go slowly, things are fine.

 

Using this Brute Force approach, you want to render every frame as you move forward in time. Again, this means every time you move one frame, wait that AE has done rendering the frame. If you've moved 10 frames forward in time and AE has suddenly "UNRENDERED" few frames after you made slight adjustment with the brushes, STOP and move backward using the Pg DN key. Most likely AE need your help to fix few contiguous frames here (or just one). But that's nothing and usually very quick to fix and you won't have to fix them all. When you move, they often fix themselves of if the frame was rendered, it will stand that way. As long you stop and fix and render them, you'll be back where you were in no time. 

 

Also, AE will display a span of approximately 8 sec. of rendered frames in the RF bar, then they will will be cached (NOT DELETED) and disappear from the RF bar. YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO BACK, they are just cached, just keep going. 

 

Once you have done you're 20 sec. segment this way, Freeze your roto brush job, and lock your layer.  The Cached frames will be added.

 

Now you can render your whole 20 sec. segment video, import it in Premiere, etc.

 

Sometimes the Yellow Decontamination warning is in our way because they stupidly decided to put at the lower edge of the layer window, other times a 75% zoom would be useful, or the timecode system would be as simple and user friendly as in Premiere, but that's another story. I’m not going to go through all AE "limitations" here.



The attached photo, is my setting I use involving long black hair over a black background that gives me the most success.

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 27, 2023 Sep 27, 2023

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Thank you for sharing your process. However I have to say the sheer complexity of this process is showing how far behind AE is compared to the the flourishing video editing market which at last makes it accessible to all with better AI algorithms. Times are changing.

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New Here ,
Aug 15, 2022 Aug 15, 2022

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More than one year later and the same problem persists...

 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 15, 2022 Aug 15, 2022

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Can you explain what is going not how you expect it to work? Adding a screen grab will help us help you.

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New Here ,
Aug 31, 2022 Aug 31, 2022

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Hi, jumping on this as I have the same problem. Select object with rotobrush, spacebar to let it play, stop when it goes wrong and maybe got back a frame or 2. Sometimes it's fine, but othertimes every frame change starts it propogating over hundreds of frames and nothing I do seems to stop it. Also sometimes when letting it play it will suddenly jump back say a dozen frames and start propogating again.

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New Here ,
Nov 01, 2022 Nov 01, 2022

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Yes, it's doing that exact thing even right now on my system. 

 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 31, 2022 Aug 31, 2022

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If you use Rotobrush on a shot that is longer than about seven seconds, it is a very good idea to follow this workflow:

  1. Duplicate the footage layer
  2. Trim the duplicate footage to only the frames that need rotoscoping
  3. Precompose the duplicate footage layer naming the Pre-comp "Rotobrush" or something similar, and open the pre-comp (when using Rotobrush, it should be the only layer in the comp)
  4. Apply any procedural or garbage mattes you can to the shot to improve the likelihood that Rotobrush will be able to find and refine the edges
  5. Apply color correction and sharpening to the shot to improve the contrast on the edges you expect Rotobrush to find
  6. Pre-compose the layer you want to Rotobrush and name it something like Roto Source
  7. Apply Rotobrush, refine edges, carefully check the matte, freeze, Rotobrush, then adjust the rest of the settings in the Effects Control Panel while looking carefully at the matte (Alpha Channel) or by adding a Solid set as a Guide layer below the "Roto Source" layer to get the best edges you can get
  8. If you want to use the Rotobrush layer as a source file instead of a Track Matte, go to the RotoSource comp and turn off all color correction and sharpening (personally, I never do that)
  9. With the "Rotobrush" Comp selected, go to the Composition/Pre-render and Render and Replace your Rotobrush Comp in the main comp with footage that has an alpha channel. 
  10. Use the Rendered Rotobrush Comp as a track matte for the original footage.

 

This workflow accomplishes several things. It drastically reduces the Project file size because Rotobrush (and Warp Stabilize) will bloat the project file, makes the project more stable, gives you more options to perform further refinements to the matte like Light Wrap, prevents glitches or the wrong click from undoing the Freeze, saves overall render time, and more closely follows industry workflows for all visual effects work. Those industry standards are, in a nutshell, Render anything that takes a long time to create and do the compositing and color correction on the rendered assets. 

 

I hope this helps. I cannot remember a single rotobrush project I have worked on since the tool was introduced, and I spent the better part of a day figuring out how to use the tool, where I did not trim, apply garbage mattes, and color correct before using Rotobrush. If I spend more than about 15 minutes working with Rotobrush, I always render and replace. I can't afford to do it again if something glitches or I hit the wrong key.

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Community Expert ,
Aug 31, 2022 Aug 31, 2022

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Phone apps can do amazing things, but they are far from production quality results. Not even the best mobile app can create a good roto job from a shot with a complex background. Computers are not that smart.

 

Inferno, Nuke, Davinci Resolve, and all professional 3D and compositing apps operate better with complex projects if you render some intermediates. Even Pixar, Disney, and ILM, with their incredible resources, render intermediates on complex projects. Sometimes a dozen or more people work on one shot. 

 

The workflow I suggested saves time on most projects and yields better results. 

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Community Expert ,
Sep 01, 2022 Sep 01, 2022

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It's not a workaround; it is an intelligent workflow just like the one you should use when using Keylight, Mocha AE for Roto, Motion Tracking, Corner Pin, Stabilization, or even using the Brush tool as a mask. I don't know very many one-click solutions in professional-level compositing or motion graphics. It's the same thing in DaVinci, Inferno, Nuke, or any 3D app I have ever used. Every time the tools get improved, the workflow needs to be modified.

 

Even the smart masking in Lightroom and Photoshop needs to be refined, and an intelligent workflow speeds up the process and improves the results. I can't think of the last time I used Select Subject or Select Sky and did not need to go in and refine something.

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Community Expert ,
Sep 05, 2022 Sep 05, 2022

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If you render it will be smooth.

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New Here ,
Dec 09, 2022 Dec 09, 2022

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I'm trying to impement the workflow you have outlined here to create a mask (overlay) of long hair in the foreground in order to change the clothing in the background. ASo, are you recommending to create a pre-comp within a pre-comp to do the actual rotoscoping?

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New Here ,
Dec 09, 2022 Dec 09, 2022

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Replying to my own post because apparently I'm not able to edit it as a "New Here" member. Here is my corrected post:
"I'm trying to implement the workflow you have outlined here in order to create a mask (overlay) of long hair in the foreground so that I can change the clothing in the background. So, are you recommending that to do this rotoscoping propery I should create a pre-comp within a pre-comp to do the actual rotoscoping? I've uploaded a picture of the scene that I am working on. It is the girl on the left whose hair I need to create a mask for so that I can eliminate the badges and pins on the sash behind her hair."

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Community Expert ,
Dec 09, 2022 Dec 09, 2022

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Hair can be extremely challenging. A screenshot of a typical frame would help. For Rotobrush to extract fine detail, the footage must be shot with the workflow in mind. You might get lucky, but careful shot planning and execution will save you hours of frustration.  

 

I have had to hand Roto hair in Mocha Pro before because the shot was not carefully set up. Even with Mocha Pro, the few frames that required editing took the better part of a day. The result was acceptable but not nearly as good as it would have been if the scene was properly prepared. 

 

Note: You should be able to edit your posts by clicking the More link at the bottom then pressing enter when Edit Post comes up.

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Explorer ,
Feb 22, 2023 Feb 22, 2023

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But why has propagating every frame just because you tap a frame before to fix something?

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 26, 2023 Apr 26, 2023

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If you use the Brute Force approach I have described above, this will gets going and you will also understand what is going on. Although it is dumb to me too and somewhat confusing, you can just stop breaking your head over that. There is many thing confusing and AE is not as user friendly than Premiere. But it’s bearable and the result still impressive if you’re a bit patient.


Let me explain so you will stop focusing on that propagating bar and start focusing on the rendering frame bar just above which should be more obvious than the roto brush propagation bar in the AE user interface IMO.


Ok, let's say you just rotoscoped 200 frames without issue. At this moment your Tracker time blue marker seats at the 200 frames mark (I speak in frames instead of timecode because it's easier), both bars (the Propagating & Rendering frame bars) are green from 0 to 200 frames. Then, you leave your computer for a moment. When you come back, you simply move your mouse and realized all your green roto brushed frames have disappeared and the propagating message show up.

 

You don't have start all over again.  
 
While your computer was idling, AE simply rendered un-rendered frames and cached approximately 8 sec. of your work. That is fine. Just keep your Tracker time blue marker ahead the 200 frames mark and AE will never try to re-propagates it. But as soon you will bring your Tracker time marker within the 0-200 cached frames span, AE will recalls them from the cache and will repopulate the propagating bar, thinking you need them for something. That’s dumb and confusing. I know. But at least you won't have to waste the time I wasted to figure that out.
 
The only way to stop the propagation is to move your Tracker time marker few frames ahead of the 200 frames span and keep rotoscoping the next few frames as normal. At the end, everything will add up fine as long you render your frames as you move forward while rotoscoping. Too much un-rendered frames is asking for trouble. So take your time, and wait them to render, they will get automatically rendered (watch the Rendering frame bar).

 

Also, your composition Layer windows should always have the active focus when you leave your computer unattended for a while.
 
You can also shorten your propagating span to the 200 frames mark if they are cached already, and start a new propagating span job in the same composition for the rest of the remaining frames. That's completely fine. I sometimes have two or three. Again, at the end, everything will add up just fine, as long you’re patient and render each and every frame.

 

So, whenever you see the propagating message, move your Tracker time marker ahead in time, where frames are still to be roto brushed. Most importantly, don't try to roto brush long video. Split and prep your files into short segments.

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Community Beginner ,
May 01, 2023 May 01, 2023

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EDIT:

 

Actually, there is a way to stop Automatic Propagation anytime you want.

By turn off the rotobrush effect in the composition windows (unchecking the FX).

Also, sometimes (only sometimes, for very specific job) it's faster to roto in the opposite direction than the chevrons are pointing in the propagation bar. This means you start at the last frame of the span and move toward the first frame. You'll never have to move backward to recheck or revisit some unrendered frames. Why would someone do that and not taking advantage of the Adobe Sensei algorithm? When you have only few frames to roto and the propagation slow you down.

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New Here ,
Sep 05, 2022 Sep 05, 2022

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Hi there sorry for the late reply. My main gripe is that Rotobrush doesn't seem to add keyframes, as it used to do before.

 

Prior to the problem rotobrush propagated backwards only as far as the latest stroke, now it goes back from the very beginning of the first stroke...

 

L

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