More aerender woes: 22.6 on M Cannot connect to a running instance of AE, fails with -1712 (timeout)

Question

I am trying to automate the rendering of a very large number of projects (5-15k), however on mac, whenever I use the -reuse flag (since restarting aerender every time becomes untenably slow, where %95 of per project render time is aerender opening and closing aerendercore/whatever render engine is being used).

Trying to launch with a simple test project from terminal:

% ./aerender -project ~/Desktop/test.aep -comp Comp 1 -output ~/Desktop/sap_out/out\[####\].tiff -reuse

aerender version 22.6x64

aerender ERROR -1712: AESend failed to send apple event at line 939

Where test.aep is just a comp with a single solid layer, although that doesn't matter since it obviously fails way before it ever connects to AE. I've made sure that an instance of AE is running (I've tried both render engine and normal), I've enabled automation of AE in privacy settings (and full disk access, just in case), and nevertheless the problem persists.

This error appears to be propagating from a call to connect with applescript, since the "-1712" (connection timeout) is an error I can reproduce using osascript by trying to connect to aerendercore directly (which I suspect is not officially supported behaviour).

I have tried downgrading to the version 22.5, but that fails with an older syntax error invalid flag: -reuse bug.

Any help as promptly as possible would be GREATLY appreciated! I'm currently resorting to rendering without the reuse flag which is ~20x slower than it should be.

SYSTEM:

MacBook Pro 16 M1 Pro 10 Core | Mac Mini M1 Pro 6 Core

Montery 12.6

JohnColombo17100380 · Accepted Answer

Hi @arise_fair_sun,Thanks for reaching out directly. For the benefit of anyone else who is encountering this same error with the "-reuse" flag for aerender in After Effects 22.6 or later, try the following steps to clear existing permission for Terminal. Since the command required admin rights, ensure your user account has admin rights and that your system is backed up beforehand.Close After Effects if runningRun this command in Terminal: sudo tccutil reset AppleEvents com.apple.terminal​Reopen After Effects.Run aerender in the Terminal using the "-reuse" flag. This will prompt for permission and will likely fail unless you are extremely fast at confirming in the dialog. After these steps, the "-reuse" flag for aerender should work on all subsequent executions. Please let us know if you continue to experience the Apple Event errors with "-reuse" after running this command. Cheers,- John, After Effects Engineering Team

JohnColombo17100380 · Answer

Hi @arise_fair_sun,Sorry to see you're experiencing this issue in After Effects 22.6. A fix went into that version for using the -reuse flag with aerender, but there is still a specific system permission required in order to use it. The permission required is in the System Prefs under Security & Privacy > Automation; be sure that "Adobe After Effects 2022.app" is checked under Terminal. You should be asked to grant this permission the first time you attempt to use the -reuse flag. Due to the permission dialog, that first invocation of aerender will fail, but all following renders should be able to successfully use the running instance of After Effects via -reuse. If you denied it, you should be able to re-enable it in Security & Privacy > Automation. Cheers,- John, After Effects Engineering Team

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