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(Dynamic link) STILL can't get After Effects to send video to Media Encoder, even on 17.5

Community Beginner ,
Oct 20, 2020 Oct 20, 2020

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Why do I STILL have trouble with trying to export my video from After Effects to Media Encoder, even on this new version!? Most of the time I try and export, nothing appears in ME. If It actually does appear and I try to render it, it says "Connecting to project" forever, sometimes after a few hours it reaches "reading XMP" and gets stuck on that.

 

I've tried everything, I've checked every forum post with everyone else having this issue, tried everything from deleting plugins to uninstalling every trace of adobe software from my system and even using the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool to make sure it's gone. Even after re-installing (and losing all my preferences, watch folders etc in the process) I still can't get it to work!

 

I've been paying monthly for this software for years and the lack of quality control is astounding.
Seriously, the worst part is that some of my projects export fine, but most of them don't. I can't pinpoint anything particular the projects that dynamic link can't connect to have in common.

 

This is seriously frustrating. I remember having this bug before and Adobe would fix it with an update, then break it again with another update.

TOPICS
Dynamic link , Error or problem , Freeze or hang , Import and export

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LEGEND ,
Oct 21, 2020 Oct 21, 2020

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we can't know. You have not offered any system information or details about your project. Sure, Adobe's QC sucks, but it doesn't help to attribute such failures to their sloppiness. The circumstances are always specific or else there would be a whole littany of posts here on this forum. Since there isn't, it must at least work for some people...

 

Mylenium

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Oct 21, 2020 Oct 21, 2020

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Hi UON VISUALS,

 

Sorry to hear about this.

Is this happening in all your projects? Sometimes, "connecting to project" appears if the project is very complex.

  • Do you have any third-party plugins?
  • What kind of computer and OS do you have?

If nothing works for you, please follow the next steps given in this community discussion.

 

Thanks,

Rameez

 

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 21, 2020 Oct 21, 2020

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It happens on both complex projects and projects with just a couple of compositions and 6 layers of video files in them.

Third party plugins (still happens without all of these):

Neat Video 5.3
RealGlow
Trapcode Soundkeys

PC Specs:
AMD Ryzen 1800x running at stock speeds
32GB DDR4 Ram at 2933 mhz
1x RTX 2080 TI
1x GTX 1080 TI
256 GB Samsung 960 EVO NVME system drive
1TB APACER SSD for scratch disk
7 hard drives (3-6 TB) for footage
Windows 10 Pro with every latest update
Nvidia Studio Driver 456.71 (latest)

Things I've tried to fix this:
- Fully uninstall everything adobe from my system, use creative suite cleaner tool to clean up everything else
- Deleted all adobe folders
- Re-installed without importing preferences
- Clean wipe of Display drivers
- Full permission for adobe apps in Windows Firewall
- Taking my most complex projects that I couldn't send to AME and importing them into a new project, and deleting almost all the unnecessary files and comps from the new project
- Removing all markers from project
- Setting different workspaces in AE, disabling hardware acceleration, clearing everything from disk/media cache and memory, force-quitting different adobe processes.
- Installing AE 17.5 and AME 14.5 when they became available, when the same thing still happened I repeated the Adobe removal process above but got the same results!

Findings:
- So I have a stack of comps that I use to denoise each layer of a psd image sequence. The first comp is the psd sequece separated into layers, which is withing the second comp which denoises it, then that goes to the third comp for color correction etc. I activate each layer from the first comp and export it from the last. Usually only the first one I try after I open AE gets sent to AME, then no other ones get send, even if I restart AE.

 

I noticed in my windows processes that AfterFX.exe appears twice, one using around 10 GB of memory, the other only using 1-2 GB. If I force-close the smaller one, AE stays open and I am able to send another layer to AME. The smaller AfterFX.exe shows up in the process list again, so I have to force-close it again to send another layer. If that doesn't work, I have to quit both AE and AME, kill their processes which stay open for some reason, then open AE and try again.

Now even when using this method, if I either click on render or on the encoder settings, it'll get stuck on "Connecting to project" or "reading XMP" for at least 20 minutes. It will still render eventually, but it gets stuck on the next render the same way. So encoding a series of files to video takes like 5 hours instead of 1.

I tried something else today. I manually re-built my layer denoising project from scratch instead of importing anything from the previous version. It seems to work like it should, but I seriously do NOT want to rebuild my most complex projects from scratch.

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 21, 2020 Oct 21, 2020

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I'll try the logging thing when I have some free time, with both my working and non-working denoiser projects

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Oct 23, 2020 Oct 23, 2020

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Thanks for your detailed post and for trying to troubleshoot this on your own.

Upload the log files whenever you get time.

 

Thanks,

Rameez

 

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 23, 2020 Oct 23, 2020

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https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/d1d5460a-70cd-40ce-739f-0d5fce72b2ee 

I've included 2 folders, one with a project that Dynamic Link won't work with, and the project I made from scratch that does the same thing that works perfectly.

Additionally, now my watch folders don't work properly with the new update. Every time one file finishes rendering to different outputs, it stays stuck at 100% and doesn't move on to the next file. The only way I can get it to move on is to pause then unpause AME, meaning I can't leave my watch folder encoding overnight because I have to do this every time something in my watch folder finishes encoding.

This is beyond frustrating at this point

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 24, 2020 Oct 24, 2020

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Another update, recreated another project from scratch. A very simple one, it just took existing videos of mine and cropped them to a vertical orientation.
Using the original PRORES 444XQ files, I was getting the same thing, wouldn't export to AME, and if it did it would try to "connect to project" forever. I tried all the force-quitting processes tricks, nothing. So then I replaced all the PRORES files with their h.264 mp4 versions, killed the afterfx.exe and adobemediaencoder.exe processes and tried again. This time it worked.

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Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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Thanks for your detailed posts and for sharing the files. Appreciate it!

I'll take a look at the files and test it on my machine. I'll also test the watch folders workflow and file a bug if I am able to reproduce it.


Thanks,

Rameez

 

 

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 29, 2020 Oct 29, 2020

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Thanks, keep me posted I am pretty stuck right now

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 21, 2021 Aug 21, 2021

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Still happening to me on After Effects 18.4.1 and Media Encoder 15.4.1
This is unbelievable. How can dynamic link still be broken after all these years?

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New Here ,
Sep 20, 2021 Sep 20, 2021

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Hey UON,

 

The same thing is happening to me. Fairly new to AE and ME but I have taken the same steps as you to resolve this issue to no avail. 

 

I was able to workaround by exporting my AE file to a .mov and then import that in to ME. Once I did that, I was able to render and export from ME without any issue. 

 

I agree, however, from what I understand the issues with Dynamic Link Server have been going on for a long time and despite countless updates, there is still no fix. Extremely frustrating. 

 

Let me know if you have heard anything new. 

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 11, 2023 Oct 11, 2023

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LATEST

OCTOBER 2023 NOW, THIS BUG HAS COME BACK YET AGAIN!

How is this still a thing? I've gone through several windows installations, new computers, new project files of every imaginable configuration and this bug comes back and breaks my workflow. This is so frustrating just sitting there waiting for Media Encoder to connect to my after effects project for up to 30 minutes at a time (if it even connects at all), just to encode a video that takes a few seconds.
Please fix this once and for all. Or get rid of dynamic link entirely and find a new way to link the apps? 

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