An unspecified error occurred while performing a conform action on the following file

[Steven5FE3]

I'll try my best to explain the error. I am making a Youtube video essay, I've been working on this project for about the past four months. Halfway during those four months, my After Effects program crashed continuaslly to the point where I had to put the project on hold. I bought an external harddrive to store my disk cache and media cache files on, as well as updated my drivers and bought more RAM. A combination of these fixed the issue, until now. I'm finally ready to export this project, but now it is crashing at the same point in the timeline. The following error message appeared. Now, the project is heavy on effects, and I have had many issues with crashing due to intensive effects in the past, but never due to this error. Doing some personal research, I heard about misplacing media cache folders can cause conforming errors. This makes sense, as I did change the disk cache to be on my external harddrive. Similarly, my linked after effecrts compositions that were noted in the message to have encountered an error were missing their audio tracks in the timeline after crashing. 

Do I need to relocate my disk cache? Why would this be the case? Where should I store it specifically? I have limited space on my harddrive, and I honestly don't even know if there is a specific location it needs to be put like in an After Effects folder or if I can just put it on my desk top. Again, I've never encountered this error before, which leads me to believe it is more to do with the disk cache being moved instead of heavy effects. Also worth noting, the exported video (not completely exported due to computer crashing) does not have any audio, and despite labeling it to be an mp4 in media encoder, it was exported as an AAC file and M4V file. Thanks in advance!

[Rick Gerard]

I'm not sure what is going on in your comp, but there is a big flaw in your approach. 

After Effects is not a video editing application. It is a compositing, visual effects, and animation program designed to create shots. Every shot in your video essay should be a single comp. If you have transitions between shots that can only be done in After Effects, then the transition should be a separate comp. You might be able to save your project by breaking up the 4 month long project into segments that are only a few seconds long, rendering them, and then editing the rendered clips in Premiere Pro. 

Take a lesson from Feature Film makers and animation studios like Pixar and Disney. Every shot is a separate project, that is rendered. It would be impossibly difficult and dangerous to create an entire two hour movie as a single shot for several reasons. Editing for maximum effective story telling always requires a lot of changes. Re-doing shot 24 or moving it in front of shot 20 instead of in front of shot 25 is a lot easier if it is not stacked in a timeline with a bunch of other layers. If your video essay is 30 minutes long, you could have hundreds of layers. 

Let us know if there is any way you open up the project with the Caps Lock turned on and then start splitting things up into shorter comps and then save smaller projects. If you can get a few shots to render, you can start working on the shots that are causing the problems. Just changing disk cache allocation or memory is not going to help much. 

I hope this helps. I never wrap up a comp that I don't render, and most of my comps are less than 7 seconds. Some of those 7 second comps have over 100 layers and effects and some take several minutes a frame to render. I hope splitting comps up by pre-composing a few seconds of the timeline will go a long way to saving your project.

[Steven5FE3]

Hi Rick, 

Thank you for the informative reply, I really appreciate it! Although, I suppose I am a bit confused on the intended function of After Effects. Some clarification could help, as I think I am using the program correctly, but please tell me if otherwise. I did edit the video itself in Premiere Pro. I chopped up and sequenced the audio and other live action clips I wanted separate from motion graphics (attached an image for clarity) before placing a black video above the audio  where I wanted motion graphics, highlighted the two, and created a dynamic link to After Effects to begin making the "scenes" to use your terminology. The notable difference between my timeline and your notes are that, yes, my dynamic links can sometimes be minutes long, which I can now see how would be taxing on my computer. But my next questions is, is this incorrect? I've always thought the dynamic link was the most efficient way of creating motion graphics and adding them to my videos. Is there a better way to be editing and adding motion graphics to my Premiere timeline? Should I be separating the multiple scenes in each of my comps into smaller dynamic links? 

More specific to this video and my original question, I actually was able to render all of my dynamic links, and I even exported them as .mp4's, as the only solution I could think of was to replace the dynamic links with videos in my premiere timeline. However, it is only the last dynamic link that is giving me issues, and my computer crashes at the same portion of that dynamic link during the export process everytime. I've tried replacing the footage and disabling heavy effects, but no matter what I do nothing can keep my computer from crashing at the same moment during each export. Are there any solutions you have in mind for a problem like this? 

I'm sorry if these questions are confusing, I'm not the most advanced AE user and experience exporting issues essentially every time I make a project, so I want to make sure I can maximize the effeciency of my editing process.

Thank you for everything!

[Rick Gerard]

It is very seldom a good idea to have more than one shot in a comp. If there are transitions between shots that have to be done in AE, you can put in two or three, but several minutes is asking for big trouble. The longer a comp, the more resources are used up when it renders. Long comps are a lot more prone to render failures than short ones. The Render Time of a Dynamically Linked AE Comp is always longer than rendering the same comp with the Render Queue and replacing the DL file in Premiere Pro. 

Pixar and Disney have the best gear, big render farms, and hundreds of people working on effects and animations. Almost without exception, every single effects shot is a separate project. They make what used to be called Pencil Tests (low rez/not full effects) for the shots, see how the edit works, figure out what needs to be changed, and do it again and again until the full shot is compiled and rendered. Then the movie is edited. 

If you are doing a bunch of graphics that have basically the same kind of animation, learn how to Create MOGRTs in After Effects and edit the text, the color, the position, and the timing in Premiere Pro. It will save you hours and hours, even in a short movie. Do some research on Extended Graphics workflows. The last film I edited had an opening title, bullet points, lower 1/3 for about eight people, location identifiers, and even chapter markers and segment closing graphics that were all Graphics from MOGRTs that I created. There was not one nested AE comp in the timeline; all of the graphics were customized, and the render was very fast. Before Extended Graphics, every one of those graphics would have been created and animated in separate AE comps, and it would have taken days or maybe even weeks. Now it takes a couple of minutes to customize the text, position, color, and timing of graphics. They can even contain audio (my chapter markers do). 

Even though it sounds like more work, it is always advisable to break edits up into the smallest reasonable parts. It was that way when I was cutting 35MM film on a Moviola. Every scene was a separate reel; shots that needed effects or graphics were all handled separately, printed, and cut into the scenes. That's how they have been cutting movies since you could make a movie. I hope this helps.