After Effects Warning: Illegal Command Sequence

[Lure Digital]

Hello!

I have been trying to open a few older projects, and when I do I keep getting the same dialogue box : After Effects Warning: Illegal Command Sequence

I have to hit OK over 50+ times (the box just keeps popping back up), and once it finally goes away, the project just closes. I am unable to access the project in any way.

Does anyone have any advise on how I can get these projects to open?

I have had success opening these projects on a coworkers computer, which leads me to believe there is something wrong with my after effects program. I have also uninstalled and re-installed after effects. I am running the latest CC version.

Thank you!

[Mylenium]

Sorry, but your post is pretty much useless. You have not provided any exact info like exact version of AE, system info, computer specs and of course details about what is actualyl going on in the projects. From specific effects to external resources to expression there could be a million things triggering these errors, but it's impossible to make any sense of it based on your non-information. Start by analysing what may be different between the computers.

Mylenium

[TheRealBarackObama]

I'm experiencing the same problem and your smarmy response is very unhelpful. Not everyone spends all their time on this forum when they need help–you should be mindful of that and instead offer useful suggestions on what information people specifically need to uncover the issue.

This doesn't appear to be isolated to specific builds. I know several other people experiencing this problem, so if you haven't anything to contribute beyond haranguing posters, I politely ask you to stop replying.

[Dave_LaRonde]

TheRealBarackObama wrote:

I'm experiencing the same problem and your smarmy response is very unhelpful. Not everyone spends all their time on this forum when they need help–you should be mindful of that and instead offer useful suggestions on what information people specifically need to uncover the issue.

Well, how 'bout you toss us a bone and supply some actual information people can use for diagnostic purposes. Mr. President???

FAQ: What information should I provide when asking a question on this forum?

People get a little tired of trying to use crystal balls in this forum about thirty times every day, y'know?

And then sleep in on Saturday and have a really nice breakfast with Michelle and the girls.  Schedule some quality family time.

[NickLUFC]

i hope your rudeness is simply a "lost in translation" reason.

[higinior42756273]

I am in the same situation. Running after efects CC. The box wont let me do anything in after effects or even let close the computer

[Disischarlie]

I had the same problem and I found a workaround. I usually open my After FX files by clicking the Open Recent option from the File menu. Instead of that, I closed After FX and went directly to the file and opened by double clicking it. At the beginning there was a message saying that some fonts were missing, I dismissed that message and everything went fine. Hope this can also work for you

[devonburgoyne]

That's funny, I had to do the opposite thing. File > open instead of opening in finder

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hello lurefilms,

After Effects Warning: Illegal Command Sequence

Looks like you're having trouble with an After Effects warning preventing you from continuing work on an existing project. Sorry to hear of your troubles. I will look up your error message and see what I can find out.

I have to hit OK over 50+ times (the box just keeps popping back up), and once it finally goes away, the project just closes. I am unable to access the project in any way.

OK, that sounds like a terrible problem.

Does anyone have any advise on how I can get these projects to open?

Try double clicking the project file instead of opening it from the File menu. Does that work better? This technique worked for another user.

I have had success opening these projects on a coworkers computer, which leads me to believe there is something wrong with my after effects program. I have also uninstalled and re-installed after effects. I am running the latest CC version.

You might try launching these projects from another user account to see if your user account might be corrupt. Otherwise, please contact our support representatives to get you back on track.

Please return to the post if you need additional assistance, and I will see to it that your issue gets resolved.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Nickophant]

Double clicking the AEP at file level (with AE already open) worked for me

[Animedia SAC · Accepted solution]

I had the same problem. My solution was to import the AEP project to an untitled one.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Thanks for letting us know, Jorge HG.

Kevin

[MaxAff]

I'm currently experiencing the same message : "Illegal command sequence"...

First, i was expecting the police to come and arrest me, then i figured out it just meant "close and re-open your doc, something went wrong".

Dear Adobe, I really would like to know the train of thoughts that led the guy of yours to imagine that peculiar sentence. Was he/she really sure that it would be the most clear and helpful information for the user?

Your loyal customer,

-me

[ryanh51705840]

New user so if im missing info you need let me know, thanks. I have adobe after effects cc 2019, Lenovo 64  bit laptop, I went to get on after effects and it starts to load then gives me some message about "Adobe crashing,  processor: Destroying Vulcan Client resetting mVulcanClient" then it goes to the adobe illegal command sequence and gives me the option to save a project that I haven't even started on before shutting after effects down, then I can't even bring it back up unless I restart my computer and then I get same message again.

[trashcaneron]

Opening the illegal-project within another project solved the problem for me too. Great work around.

[CaptnCapsLock]

Had the same issue on my After Effects project after my comp stumbled a bit on a render in Media Encoder working with that file,  and on restart of the AE file, I got this message.

I got the "illegal command sequence" error while trying to open the file from the file location AND after trying to open from the "Open Recents" option in AE. Program also froze up when I tried cleaning database and cache/empy disk cache.

Solution was system restart, and cleaning database/ emptying disk cache for good measure before reopening that file.

Save early, save often.

[ercee89857529]

This is quite old, but still was headcracking us recently.

We had the same error poping up during our project. The file created by someone could not be opened by some other collegue. Nothing helped - no import, no uninstall, no reset - simply nothing. It drove us completely nuts. We thought it was performance releated. A Mac Pro (dual xeon / 256 GB Ram vs Mac Studio). The project contained a lot of png sequences, some lossless mov's and a lot of high-res images. When we started to strip the file down by deleting a bit, saving and trying to open it on the other machine, we located a .mov (apple pro res 4444 codec) which was fine on the Mac Pro, but caused the issue on the Mac Studio and coming up with that error message. It was for that machine even impossible to re-encode it in Media Encoder. It plays fine with quicktime but for some reason AE and ME crashed heavily.
After re-encoding it with the Mac Pro to the exact same codec, we were able to get the file open on the Mac Studio with no issues anymore.
Maybe this helps.