After Effects crashes (Windows 10)

[dmtryk]

Hi!

I installed After Effects a couple of hours ago, just to try it for the first time. All functions seem to work with no problems, and I have even been able to do a simple animation involving a camera movement. However, I couldn't do much more because the program started crashing while I'm editing. It's hard for me to tell what's exactly wrong since the actions that were triggering the crashes include:

• adding a new layer
• resizing objects
• playing the animation
• changing the length of the frame loop
• adding a figure on top of the existing layer

What's even weirder is that AE can crash literally at any moment, no matter how long has the project been open.

I tried multiple solutions, from

• changing the amount of RAM in the settings
• reinstalling the whole Creative Cloud,

and yet nothing seems to be able to fix this issue. My version of AE is the latest one, and I'm running it on Win10.

If anyone knows anything about such problems, I would be extremely happy to hear it.

Thanks in advance!

Title was edited by: Mod

[khomthepreditor]

Hey! We definitely need more info to help diagnose what's happening. Can you post your system specs? It sounds like some part of your rig may not be able to handle the load that After Effects can put on a computer. Also, what type of footage are you working with? Resolution, framerate, and codec (not file type) are all helpful!

[dmtryk]

Hi! I'm glad you responded to my issue.

My specs are:

CPU - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5700HQ CPU @ 2.70GHz

GPU 1 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M

GPU 2 - Intel(R) HD Graphics 5600

RAM - 8 GB

So far I've been working only with pictures, and the two that I was importing were 5966x3977 px and 5184x3456 px.

[khomthepreditor]

I'm a little bit more familiar with how Premiere utilizes your system than After Effects, so I'm not sure how much insight I'll be able to provide. Also, since you're only dealing with pictures, I feel like it shouldn't weigh too heavily on your system. Those things being said...

I see that you're working on a laptop, which, right off the bat (unless it's made to handle compositing or video work in general) means it's going to have a hard time, simply due to the smaller components, smaller fans, less cooling space, etc. vs a full-size desktop. You mention this being the first time you've tried After Effects, but have you been able to run any other Creative Cloud software in the past?

Your CPU is four years old and only has 2 physical cores. From my understanding, multi-core isn't as important in AE as it is in PrPro, but the age and speed may be impacting performance. The GPU being a laptop card isn't going to help your renders, and I doubt your secondary integrated graphics card is helping much either. As for RAM, After Effects requires 8GB minimum to run, but Adobe recommends 16GB at least to get decent performance.

Basically, I think your issue lies in outdated or slow hardware, which I know doesn't have an easy solution. Maybe start with updating any drivers from the manufacturer's website.

[Peru Bob]

khomthepreditor  wrote

Basically, I think your issue lies in outdated or slow hardware, which I know doesn't have an easy solution. Maybe start with updating any drivers from the manufacturer's website.

I agree.

[Peru Bob]

....

[Shivangi_Gupta]

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. I read the entire discussion. I appreciate all the steps you've done to fix the issue. However, I'd like to mention that performance and stability are dependent on multiple factors like system's hardware, media files properties(format, resolution), project's complexity, etc.

Also, I noticed that your system does not meet the minimum requirement to run After Effects. To know the details, please check out this link: After Effects System Requirements

• I found one article which will be helpful to optimize the performance for After Effects: Improve performance in After Effects

You may follow the steps mentioned here and try to make After Effects work better. If it still gives you issues, please increase the amount of RAM on your computer. I'm sure that will help.

Let us know if you have any other question. We'll be happy to answer.

Thanks,

Shivangi

[dmtryk · Accepted solution]

UPDATE: I finally resolved the issue with crashes. It seems that there was a problem with NVIDIA drivers, and after fully reinstalling them (+ the PhysX engine) AE started to work smoothly.

However, it is true that currently my PC’s performance is far from great, and working with the program is sometimes problematic due to freezes and delays. I believe that it is mostly due to the insufficient amount of RAM I have, so I’m planning to upgrade it in the near future.

Anyway, thanks everyone for their answers!

[Rameez_Khan]

Thanks for following up and letting us know.

Best,

Rameez

[Guest]

I lived through it... I survived the freeway bomb that caused the crash, here.  I was never paid, as owner of the transnational line.  see Speedy Response Army Investigators