Can't export to AME from AE

[jmottle]

I'm using AE 16.1.2 (Build 55) and AME 13.1.3 (Build 45) on a Late 2013 Mac Pro (32 GB RAM with 6 core 3.5GHz Intel Xeon E5).

I am trying to export my comp to AME and 90% of the time it does nothing.  Nothing shows up.  I have tried the following:

1) reinstalling both AE and AME

2) Export direct to AME from File -> Export

3) Manually trying to open a comp from within AME

4) Using File -> Export to Render Queue and then Queue in AME

About 10% of the time the comp will be added to AME, but when I press start it just hang trying to read the XMP file.  I spent 3 hours on a live chat with Adobe where they got onto my machine and could still not figure out how to fix it. They re-installed everything again, wiped the adobe folders, made me create a new user login, messed with folder permissions, and nothing works. They have given up and escalated, but that process is so ridiculously flawed I am still waiting for a call back.

I am able to render without issue inside of the AE Queue and have been able to render these same files in previous years on the exact same machine.  The only difference is the version of these softwares.

Meanwhile I have a deadline for a live event and am stuck rendering 1-2 hour comps one at a time. Of course I can't work on anything else in the process.

Any ideas?

[Martin_Bns]

Any ACP expert on AE can help my friend please?

[Rick Gerard]

I would spend $100 on Render Garden, use the Render Cue, and render in half the time or less if you have enough cores. Render Garden works in the background, uses the GPU, and does not slow down AE enough to notice.

There are other BG rendering solutions, but I think this one is the easiest to set up and use. More info here: RenderGarden

Trying to diagnose your problem without a detailed workflow and screenshots of the layers that are giving you problems that show all the effects and modified properties of the layers is like trying to guess how many seeds are in a watermelon without opening it up.

[jmottle]

Thanks for the recommendation on RG. I'll take a closer look.

However the issue is not the layers, effects etc. I can't even get these comps to load into AME. Even if they do, they won't even start rendering.  There are no errors, just nothing happens. 

[Rick Gerard]

With details and maybe a sample of one of the problematic source files I might be able to help. I use Render Garden for all renders that are going to take longer than about 10 minutes. It will even create a production-quality visually lossless master and render an MP4 for client review without slowing down enough to bother you. Almost every comp that is going to take longer than 20 minutes to render or any comp that I think might give me problems is always rendered to an Image Sequence. If you do that and your render breaks (crashes) on frame 350 of 400 you can fix the problem then pick up the last 50 frames. This can save you hours if not days when you have problems or the client, wants 20 frames to change in the middle of a 10-hour render. You can't do that when you render most movie formats.

[jmottle · Accepted solution]

Posting here for the benefit of anyone else who runs into this.  The issue was a recent change Adobe made in AE and how they handle scripting.  The issue was a simple checkbox that needed to be enabled.

Under Preferences -> Scripting & Expressions - check the box "allow scripts to write files and access network"