How to debug a plugin loaded from Render Queue / Media Encoder ?

[r2d3_]

I have a project that uses my plugin and I want to debug it when it is loaded/ran by AE Render Queue or Adobe Media Encoder.

I have some breakpoint positioned in Xcode, when I use the plugin in After Effects, the breakpoint are trigerred. 

If I "Composition | Add to Render Queue" in After Effects and click Render, rendering happens but my breakpoints are not triggered. Same behavior when using Adobe Media Encoder (AME).

So I suspect, that AE and AME are using some kind of subprocess to do the rendering ?

Thanks in advance

[shachar carmi · Accepted solution]

as far as i know, indeed AME runs some invisible AE instance for the rendering. i tihnk that if you take a look at the windows task manager and you'll see the these processes.

if that's the case, you can attach your debugger to an already running process like so:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/debugger/attach-to-running-processes-with-the-visual-...