My After Effects project render just stucks

[womsec]

Hi. First of all, I want to say that I did't know were to post this question, but it's after effects project render problem so i might do it here. To the point, I have done the biggest project in my ,,career" that includes a lot of rotoscoping, rsmb and twixtor plugins etc. Everything works fine in the timeline/project, but when the render comes something weird is happening. When i try to render that project, it totally hangs up randomly after 10 minutes - 3 hours. Time, preview, everything thats in media encoder stops and the render don't want to go. There is no error log or whatever, it basically hangs up. Even in After Effects render queue, using after codecs plugin it freezes. I had try everything - clearing cache, changing ram usage of ae and me, making a new project copy, disabling all effects in comp(which are the adjusment layers), making new comp and pasting there main comp, trying rendering with software only, decrease some render settings, moving my entire folder with project on another disc, reinstalling(repairing) adobe creative cloud and nothing helped me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, maybe I must do something diffrent with that type of very huge project. I have about 2 years of amatour experience (working with friends that making music). If you can please help me, I would be grateful. I've been struggling with this for 4 days and I'm running out of ideas. This is very important for me, I spent at this project month of time and put all of my heart in.

PC and project specs:
- GTX 1650
- 16GB ram
- i5-9300H
- Windows 11

4K 23.976 fps
Project weight - 156 MB
Layers ~ 700

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

First, try and break up your main comp and do the final edit and assembly in Premiere Pro. After Effects is not an NLE and it was never designed to edit videos. More than 90% of all my comps are under seven seconds and one shot. 

The process of breaking up a comp is very easy. Create a new comp containing your main comp so you only have one layer in the timeline. Scrub through the timeline and find places where you cut between shots and split the comp. If you don't have a place where there is a cut, just split the layer (Shift + Ctrl/Cmnd + d) every 10 or 15 seconds. Now go through the timeline and pre-compose every one of the layers giving them names like Part1, Part2, and so on. Send all of those parts to the Render Queue, not the Media Encoder, and render a production master using a visually lossless frame-based format like DNxHR or ProRez. 

When you have all of the parts rendered put them in a Premiere Pro sequence and render your MP4 distribution copy from the production masters. If you do not have access to Premiere Pro, drop all of your rendered files in a new AE project and create a new comp from the rendered parts, then send it to the Media Encoder to render the distribution copy.

If individually rendering individual effects shots is the preferred workflow for all of the major studios, for Pixar, for Universal, for every major film and professionally produced music video is their standard workflow, then that is because it is efficient, cost-effective, and reliable. I would never try and use After Effects to produce any kind of a shot sequence that was longer than a couple of shots in a sequence because it is not a good idea and a failed render.

If you have a consistent render on a specific frame you can diagnose the problem in the comp by moving the CTI (current time indicator) to the problem frame, then press the 'u' key twice to reveal all modified properties, and then start looking for things you can turn off or change to eliminate the problem. 

I hope this helps. Without knowing your complete workflow in detail, the type of source footage, and seeing a flowchart and timeline with the problem layers showing (the 'uu' trick), there is no way to figure out what is going on. 

[womsec]

Thank you very much for that long and precise answer. I wll try this methods soon and give a feedback.

[womsec]

Yes! That breaking up comp method is working! Thank you very very much for your reply and usefull tips. Best regards!