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12

Ae Rotobrush keeps propagating over and over again?

Community Beginner ,
Mar 15, 2021 Mar 15, 2021

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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Participant ,
Feb 15, 2025 Feb 15, 2025

Thank you., this is good advice, especially the hint concerning multiple roto spans. However, do you know, how to create a new base frame without redoing the masking? Just like putting the current mask into a new base frame?

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Explorer ,
Apr 13, 2024 Apr 13, 2024

 This seems to work for me, thanks!

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New Here ,
Sep 05, 2022 Sep 05, 2022

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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Participant ,
Nov 01, 2022 Nov 01, 2022

Yes, I have 100% had this problem starting recently. Rotobrush will randomly start propigating from the beginning of the clip all over again while in the middle of working through the clip in the rotobrush process.

Rotobrush has also become much slower with long clips starting around 18.1 and as far as I know, this has never been fixed.

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Contributor ,
Nov 12, 2022 Nov 12, 2022

Just 48 hours ago I found myself in the same boat! A project I have been working on for weeks and Roto behaved itself properly. It was tedious and time-consuming but I could plod forward one frame at a time. Now suddenly doing anything, I MEAN ANYTHING* and Roto dumps all previously rendered frams and starts propogating from frame 1. I haven't updated to a newer version of AE or installed anything new. System has been stable for months. UFB.

 

Ex. 1 Moving the CTI in the layer panel to a previous frame already rendered. No edits mind you just moving to a previous frame (yes, render direction was forward.)

 

Ex. 2 Opening my Firefox tab to look up something then closed it. When AE had focus again the propogation started over. MADDENING!!!

 

I've been putting off looking into Boris Silhouette but I have been reading and hearing so many good things about it I think I have to at least check it out.

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New Here ,
Nov 25, 2022 Nov 25, 2022

same

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Participant ,
Nov 01, 2022 Nov 01, 2022

I don't use rotobrush because the results keep changing as I keep working. Any footage that rotobrush will handle well can usually be roto'ed more effectively and consistently with keying + roto in Mocha.

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New Here ,
Dec 10, 2022 Dec 10, 2022

To put this in perspective,  rotobrush treats each  layer as a new task. With that being said if you have a rotobrushed layer that you douplicated 5 times, it will need to root it 5 times. The more you split the clip the more cycles it goes through. Also, it does not take trimming into account. As it treats it as a completely new layer.

 

reccomended solution:

solution 1)  chop up the footage first and rotobrush each clip as you go. If this disrupts your work flow do not do this.

solution 2) rotobrush what you need and pre render it and put it back as actual footage ( don't forget to enable transparency grid)


Mr Gerald has a great input but it's complex and the technical jargon is tedious to understand..

 

Remember, even if your just making tiny edits, if you chop up an already rotobrushed layer AE will propagate each one you chop

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New Here ,
Jun 16, 2023 Jun 16, 2023

My problem is the robobrush keep re-propagating during rendering. I have a clip with about 5000 frames.  I let it propagate in the project. Then when I export, about 10% in, it starts propagating again.  Even when there are <1000 frames to render, it keeps re-propagating 4500 frames, rendering a few frames, then re-propageting 4500 again. 

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Participant ,
Jun 16, 2023 Jun 16, 2023

Did you freeze the rotobrush before rendering?

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Participant ,
Jun 16, 2023 Jun 16, 2023

This is not accurate, and looks like a bot wrote it. What are you doing?

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 01, 2023 Dec 01, 2023

So I think you need to freeze the rotoscope, there's a little freeze button in the viewport toolbar when rotoscoping so it needs to be pressed before leaving the rotoscoping and going back to your normal composition.
Here's a video tha shows how to do it: https://youtu.be/_DLd1UKqvp0?si=GWUcmV6NVieCoRRt&t=235

In this tutorial, we will take our selected subject and go frame-by-frame to refine any areas that were missed or incorrectly selected on the first pass. This is tedious and will take time. Once we like our selections, we will freeze the edges to allow After Effects a chance to commit our work to
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New Here ,
Dec 01, 2023 Dec 01, 2023

Freezing the rotoscope was the step I was missing.

Thanks ya'll. 

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New Here ,
Dec 22, 2023 Dec 22, 2023

OMG I love Adobe products but If i could punch a component in the face its totally aimed at rotobrush. Once the orginal propogation is complete it needs to stop being a goof every time I move something.  So first, good job rotobrush on the original propogation. Second this brush is out of control. Once task is complete how do i stop this?

 

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 23, 2024 Jun 23, 2024

Hi, I've the guy who wrote the comment with all the upvotes on it on page one.

It's been a couple years, but I stopped getting this problem about a year ago when I stopped pirating After Effects and started using a legitimate subscription. 

If you happen to be pirating the software and you get this issue, try buying a subscription and see if that works.

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 30, 2024 Oct 30, 2024

For me I just didn't have enough RAM, still if I slap a lot of refine edge and have Premiere pro open alongside AfterFX I have to remake the whole thing

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 30, 2024 Oct 30, 2024

Also, for anyone finding this, don't use roto brush in a linked composition, at least for me it's broken as hell

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Participant ,
Feb 15, 2025 Feb 15, 2025

Just my two cents on this, as I've recently been running into the same problem:

It seems to be a RAM issue. I think, at a certain point (and this might vary with different RAM setups from 3 seconds into the clip to 6 f.i.) After Effects seems to forget the previous propagation and starts all over again and then it is not possible to go on with the roto job unless doing some of the suggested precautions (splitting up the file, precomposing, cropping to area of interest …). One thing also mentioned here or in another thread: You mustn't have any other layer activated than the roto layer. Otherwise repropagation will be triggered even sooner. What might help before splitting up the clip, though, is to apply a new starting point for propagation. To do this, I shorten the right marker of the green rotobrush span to the frame where the issue arises. Then I proceed one frame. There is no roto mask now and I paint a new one. Now I can go on from that point and repropagation will start from this new base frame when triggered and not from the very beginning of the clip. However, why is it not possible to apply the current roto mask to a new base frame without redoing the whole masking procedure? If I'm missing something, please let me know.

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New Here ,
Feb 21, 2025 Feb 21, 2025

I have these issues everytime I try to use the rotobrush. Since we pay for a subscription, I wish they'd put some effortg into making this tool work in a reasonably intuitive way rather than bring up features we never asked for and which bring little value to the production.

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New Here ,
Jun 20, 2025 Jun 20, 2025

What worked for me, I had a very simple video 5 seconds long with high contrast and barely any movement, was usign rotobrush 1 instead of rotobrush 3. For some reasons rotobrush 3 didn't work at all, it would go into loop rotoscoping for hours. I tried frame by frame, it would still mess up everything after hours of frame by frame work. Rotobrush 1 solved the issue. I have now successfully rotoscoped my first clip. 

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New Here ,
Jul 15, 2025 Jul 15, 2025

If AE Rotobrush keeps propagating, try freezing the frame after refining, or clear the cache and restart the app.

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New Here ,
Jul 16, 2025 Jul 16, 2025

Try freezing the Rotobrush after refining. This stops it from re propagating.

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New Here ,
Jul 18, 2025 Jul 18, 2025

following;

  1. Freezing the roto once done.

  2. Trimming the comp to needed frames.

  3. Clearing cache if it best loops.

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New Here ,
Jul 19, 2025 Jul 19, 2025

Rotobrush keeps re-propagating try freezing the roto to stop it

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New Here ,
Aug 22, 2025 Aug 22, 2025

The long awaited SOLVE, an immaculate dicovery, the extensive workflow allowing you to keep as many rotos as you want in your composition, unlocking max power and ENDING auto propagation from your roto brush comps ....

 

STEP ONE: LOCK YOUR LAYER.

Lock the layers using roto brush and the problem is fixed.

 

Thats it. Enjoy

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