Participant

Question

After effects defaults to old project location

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
July 30, 2021
18 replies
18284 views

Hello community, hoping someone can help me with a small issue, but that has been driving me really crazy. After Effects always defaults any new file I create to an old project location. Both when I first click Save As, as when I try and render, it always goes to this obscure folder. I'm used to After Effects trying to create a new project in the C:\Users...Adobe\After Effects folder and then navigating over. But this hasn't been the behaviour for the last 6+ months.

To exacerbate the issue, when I open a project from the Recents splash screen and then upres to a new version, I expect this new save to happen in the same folder I'm operating in, but instead of that, it goes to that one project folder. Same with rendering, when I queue something up, I expect it to want to render it next to where my file lives. Nope, each time it just wants to throw everything into that old folder.

Is there any workaround to this? I don't seem to be able to find a setting for default saves. Just to be clear, this is not my Auto-Save, that I have set to go to the After Effects root folder. This is for my projects and renders. Even when queing through Media Encoder it insists on using that folder. By now I've upgraded AE and ME a few times, but the bahavior is still the same.

Any help would be appreciated as this is truly not only driving me crazy, but also making me constantly have to look for projects and renders in the wrong place.

Thank you

I

installshield wizard

Participant

For years I've had the same issue, whenever I went to save a file for the first time it would land me in the same project folder for a job I worked on 3+ years ago. I couldn't find anything in AE preferences, but just discovered that re-naming the specific folder which AE is obsessed with seems to force it to default instead to regular behavious (the last saved project folder).

priyeshp48020232

Participant

Since we`re having this issue for three years now, maybe Adobe could just label it as a feature instead?

artema50335318

Participant

I found a simple solution. You need to rename the folder where After Effects wants to save the project. Then start AE and try to save the new project.
This will reset the save settings, after which you can return the folder you renamed to its original name.

M

Maverick327138039y3g

Participant

Thanks! I will try that.

D

default26668338ix365s

Participant

This is driving me crazy as well.

D

Dave MP

Known Participant

Had this issue for a while now too.

Should probably move this into the Bugs section if you want anything done... even then, it would be a miracle if they actually listen and do anything about it.

J

Jaydude-wb

Inspiring

I'm experiencing the same behaviour on Mac. For several versions of After effects and for a months, may be years.

jackthegiantkiller

Inspiring

Pretty great to watch a community of users come up with a solution for a known and frustrating bug, yet sadly revealing that after a year and a half not one Adobe employee deigned to chime in. If anything to at least acknowlege the issue and offer a future fix.

P

PinkWaterFairy

Participant

Hi

I also had this problem, I'm running Adobe 2023. The solution is documented by Adobe here https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/after-effects/using/basics-rendering-exporting.html#specify_filenames_and_locations_for_rendered_output

by "underlined text" I they mean the name of your rendered output, mine is not underlines, but is blue in colour, doesn't look clickable, but it is 🙂

J

jpRay

Participating Frequently

I think you're talking about something else, because the manual doesn't mention anyting about setting a default output path.

P

PinkWaterFairy

Participant

Hi

It's not a default output path. People are complaing that when they render a composition in Adobe After Effects, the rendered output goes to a previously used folder on their pc/mac, not the folder that the project is located in. The link I added is to an Adobe Article entitled 'Basics of Rendering and Exporting', and the image I added (Specify the filename and location for a single render item) is a screenshot of part of that article, which tells you how to specify the location for the rendered output for that particular composition.

It's not anything to do with setting a default path 🙂

priyeshp48020232

Participant

The easiest way to solve this sh*t, at least to me, after having dragged this crap around since January, always giving me the "Ikea" default when I worked on a project for them:

- go to preferences and click on the "reveal preferences in explorer" button at the bottom

- close afx

- delete "Adobe After Effects 22.2 Prefs-indep-general.txt" and "Adobe After Effects 22.2 Prefs-indep-output.txt"

- I had to recreate my templates after that but the nonsense stopped

Sigh. Adobe is a big effing mess.

Pokke

Participating Frequently

This stuff still works though, as I've just experienced. AE2022.
Open the preferences file as explained above (Edit>Preferences>General>Reveal preferences in explorer)
Search the text for the 'wrong' path that After Effects always comes up with and which bugs you.
Adjust those with what you want the path to be.
(In my case it were several lines right after each other, not sure what the different options stand for but they clearly dated back to very old directories from stuff long gone)
Make sure that After Effects is not running because (as also mentioned above) it overwrites the preferences file with what it has in memory upon closing.
Save the text file.
After that it works for me. I now get the path that I entered in the file.

A

andrea_stewart

Known Participant

Thank you to those who solved this terribly annoying trait. I would render something and then have no idea where it went. And soon realized if I couldn't find my render it was in a folder from a project from two years ago!

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

If you open After Effects and select File/Open Project or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl/Cmnd + O to bring up the Open Panel, and you navigate to the folder where the AEP file exists, add a composition to the Render Queue, and select Output To you should be in the same directory as the Project File. The selected folder is shown at the top of the panel when the Project file (AEP) has been chosen.

You get the same folder with you use the Render Queue:

If you do not navigate to the folder that contains the AEP file by spinning down folders in a file list like this:

You end up using the last folder from the previous project where you added a Composition to the Render Queue.

I have never known of or seen a different behavior.

You can edit the Output Module templates, and I have done that, but unfortunately, there is no option to set a directory or preference for the "Output To:" part of the Output Module. That is a feature request I made a long time ago that I should make again. Maybe it will happen if more folks visit the After Effects Bug Reporting and Feature Request Forum

J

jpRay

Participating Frequently

Thank you very much Rick!

It's very helpful to understand how After Effects chooses the path for new renders.

However the issue at hand, where After Effects will get stuck to a folder for months, seems to be a preferences issue. The only way to fix in my case, as well as IsoFox', is to manually delete entries in the "Most Recently Used (MRU)" part of the preferences. There was one other file I removed the entry from but I don't recall which one it is - I found with by searching the whole preference folder for the troublesome path.

IzoFox

Participating Frequently

I think that the problem appears, when AE 2022 transfer settings from previous version.

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