Persistent black frame problem in After Effects

[branker]

For many videos now I have had a black frame problem in After Effects. Random black frames appearing in the preview window and export. As well as random frames from a different part of the video, although that is less frequent.

It seems like it would be a frame rate problem, but it still happens when frame rates are all matched. As I edit in Premiere and then export, which is then brought into After Effects. I also bring in separate videos in the an After Effects comp for B roll that will have the black frame problem, and the frame rate of those videos is not something I have control over. That is unless I exported a copy of the video from Premiere and changed the frame rate settings before export. This would be tedious to do, and there is no guarantee it would work.

But if this problem does not happen in Premiere it seems like it is a problem that can be fixed in After Effects. Regardless it seems like something that should be possible to fix.

Can Adobe fix this problem for future updates?

[Edit] I don't remember this problem until a fairly recent update, so it's a possible glitch of some change that happened. Which affirms this problem is unnecessary.

[Alexander29202985rnkw]

Same here, i never had this bug bug, it started appearing suddenly, while having no effects on the timeline. It is in fact very annonying that there isn't any fix yet..

[JP28542652sve1]

Reload the footage, and it will fix it. 

[Ondrej2464823311dz]

Well it does not. At least for me. As I stated before, purging the AE disk cache and memory works, but only for a while (thus I must  perform the purge before each render).

[Kyle286841874eno]

Didnt work for me but I have a frozen rotoscope on it. This is reallllly frustrating Ive been working on this project for months and until i updated my stupid cpu drivers i didnt have this problem... Any help? from anyone? I think it also caused a VC orb to not diffuse a layer.

[defaultqm34dr2nedfz]

This is getting embarrassing. I've been seeing this bug for way too long to not be fixed. I work at an agency and we're constantly having to waste time rewatching every video we export over and over looking for black frames. You're going to start losing customers over this unless you can get this sorted out. Extremely unprofessional. 

[Kyle286841874eno]

Yeah I ended up having to dump memory and cache and it fixed it for me but I figured it was just because of my mediocre-ish hardware. Sounds like you are probably working on high end tech so yeah that is pretty bad. Best of luck to you. 

[Katarina23315812q3tp]

So i have a black frame issue as well. I opened the video with after effects from premiere pro. There is no issue with the video before i open it with after effects, when i scroll trough the video in AE random 2 black frames appear. When i then view the video in premiere pro the black frames have now appeared there aswell because the videos are now linked. It also shows some weird distortion on the video with the effects in AE, but that distorsion didnt appear in premiere pro at all when viewing it normally? Dont know what to do. I renedered the clip, still an issue.

[Ana Rita5C0D]

Also having the same problems which is weird because it started happening in the last 2023 version and to me it's only happening in the exported version, so in the timeline I can't see any black frames so they only appear in the exported file (I'm exporting in H264). Does someone has the same issue? I tried to clean cache and change to Mercury Software Only and the export is still the same :'( 

[Kartika Rawat]

Hi Ana Rita5C0D!

Sorry to hear that. Can you share your system details (OS, CPU, RAM, GPU)? What type of effects do you have in your project?

Let us know.

Thanks,

KR

[Ana Rita5C0D]

Hello Kartika,

Thank you for answering! 
So I'm using Macbook M1 Pro, 32 GB RAM with MacOs Ventura 13.5.1. and I'm using Mercury GPU Acceleration Metal. I don't have major effects, mostly typography and graphics transitions - basic motion design - and then photos and videos (several formats coming from cameras, phones etc). It's the second time it happens to me when doing a project with many kinds of content. So when I'm working with just graphics, at least last week, this didn't happen. But the previous versions (2022) I could work perfectly on After Effects with all the type of content.

Also, the frames appear mostly between the videos and photos, not graphics. 

Hope this helps to figure it out the solution.

[Kartika Rawat]

Thanks for writing back. Which camera and phone is used to capture footage? Does it happen with specific files or media?

KR

[Ana Rita5C0D]

Ki Kartika,

So I'm using jpg, mp4 and png files. I can't tell the phone or camera because some of the files are older so I believe there's a mix of types cameras since there are videos recorded from zoom, others broadcasted (DSLR, ENG, mirrorless). But most of them I reexported on premiere to make them shorter so I'm trying to make them less heavy and all the same kind of files.

At this stage I "solved" the problem copying the composition, removing some frames and copying again, and also the some video layers are starting a bit soon on top of others (see attachment) which in this project it's helping not to that black frame. In the previous project this approach was not enough.

Let me also tell you, the last time this happened I had a big crash between Premiere and After Effects. Premiere was not reading the AE comps and I thought everything was connected so we formatted the computer thinking the black frames could be some problem of my machine. But right now I'm not doing any dynamic links and the issue still continues with the black frames only on after effects.

[Kartika Rawat]

Thanks for the screenshot. Could you share some problematic files with us to test? 

KR

[C.Carlson]

Try Reloading your footage. That worked for me.

[The295245739fub]

All i did (worked for me atleast) was to clear my cache, when my cache in after effects reaches close to 100 GB everything starts to glitch out therefore i go into edit, purge and then all memory and disk cache.

Hope this helped!