Rotobrush recalculates after every single change in the timeline.

[Fipsmeister]

This is super frustrating. I did a usual rotobrush just two days ago and everything was fine. Now I started another project and do the usual.

Duplicate the layer, go into the layer view, adjust the length of the rotobrush area, start on the first frame with one stroke, go into the propagations and change a few settings there and then I want to start rotobrushing the clip.

It's short without much movement so I didn't bother making several master frames, just the one.

It's just that now, every time I move on the timeline it starts calculating the roto from the very beginning.

I restarted AE, my PC, tried 17.0.2 and 17.0.0. Cleared the disk cache. Nothing helped. Started new project, still the same issue.

I am able to start from the first frame and just let it's do it's thing until the end. But the second I stop and try to correct anything it recalculates everything. So I decided to start and wait until it's done and then just freeze it in the hopes that it does the job somewhat decently without me interrupting.

And when I tried to freeze it recalculated everything AGAIN!

Not to mention that this means I will not be able to go back and put the refined edge on it!

Essentially it's unusable now and I have no idea how to fix this. I would very much appreciate some help here, I use the feature frequently and couldn't live without it at this point.

[Mylenium]

Without any info about your system, your footage the actual RB settings and so on noboidy can tell you much. This could be anything from messy compressed source footage continually re-decoding to the RB actually having nothing to properly latch an due to specifics of the image content. Imposssible to know since you haven't offered any info.

Mylenium

[Fipsmeister]

I get that you need that just in general, but in this case I performed the exact same steps as I always did and it worked like that for well over a year. Hardware is the same, footage is the same, settings of RB are the same.

But here it goes: I use Handbrake to get an m4v. Settings are all the same for the other dozens of files where it worked. Not just the same, 100% exactly the same. Start the project, import the file, start the composition. Duplicate it, get into layer view, start the rotobrush on the first frame, go into the RB settings and tick Alternate Colors and set it to Current Edges. Then the rotobrushing work begins and where the trouble now starts.

So now I tried the latest project where I used rotobrush. It still works in there. So I opened a new project with the SAME files, did exactly what I always do and now it doesn't work. So there is no way it is the fault of the footage itself.

Like, nothing changed except it's a new project now.

Also I don't think you quite understand the problem, it "latches" onto the footage just fine. Let me try to rephrase it a bit.

I start with the first frame, use the brush to cover everything I need. I move a couple of frames forward. I adjust the brushed area. Normally you can go back on the calculated frames between these two points and check if it looks out of bounds earlier to adjust the strokes. But I can't do that. Once I move back in the timeline where the frames were already calculated (And you get that little green line right where you set the duration of the master keyframes) it deletes the line and recalculates every single frame. And it does that every single time I move on the timeline, no matter what direction.

Let me know if that cleared it up a bit 😃

[Rick Gerard]

First, rendering a DI (digital intermediate) with a compressed format is a bad idea. Color compression, compression artifacts, and IBP frame sequences make it more difficult for Rotobrush to do a good job.

Second, you have a very odd Rotobrush workflow if you select your first area and then you just jump forward in the timeline. You should be propagating a frame at a time and checking your work as you go because it is way more efficient. Rotobrush should propagate from the Base Frame if you move more than one frame but it will take a while. Refine Edge only propagates forward so that should be your last step and you should start that from the first frame.

It does not look like you are getting propagation from the base frame and you are also not getting propagation forward from any new strokes you add. I'm guessing that it is a problem with Cache (purge everything) GPU acceleration or Preferences. Try resetting all.   

[Rick Gerard]

A DI should be rendered using a frame-based visually lossless production format.

[Fipsmeister]

It worked pretty well for me in the past so I don't see a reason to change up my workflow. I do go frame by frame if needed, but alas not even that is working because of the issues I explained here.

Purging everything didn't help either. =/

However, that lead me to resetting all of the preferences to an earlier version and now it's working fine again! Hooray!

So it has to do something with the preferences, I guess? But I did not change a single thing between these two projects where it was working and where it wasn't. Obviously I can reset it everytime it happens, but that is far from ideal, is there any setting that could cause this?

[Fipsmeister]

Here's a video of it: https://youtu.be/GPlumoFnaLE

[piotrh2335265]

This has just started happening to me as well. It's making my life hell. I've been working in the same way for a couple of years now and all of a sudden this new improved rotor brush is no good at all. How does one reset preferences to previous version

[Arthurb702]

I'm having the same problem.  I rotoscope brush something, then stack a bunch of layers that are rotoscoped brush.  Afterwards, when I return to the adobe premire file, or back to that sequence in After effects, there are blotches in the the rotoscope.  I searched online and can't find help.  It sucks because help will ask me a bunch of questions about my operating system, yet will still offer no help.  Ugh.

[Arthurb702]

You have to freeze the rotoscope, otherwise it will keep changing.  

Look at link below.  

https://helpx.adobe.com/mt/after-effects/user-guide.html/mt/after-effects/using/roto-brush-refine-ma...

Hope this helps.  Took awhile to find this info.  

[pangolinprods]

happening to me - it's a massive issue. And no i don't want to freeze it until i've finished the roto tweaking. It's a bug that's appeared in the latest version.

[Arthurb702]

You have to freeze the rotoscope, otherwise it will keep changing.  

Look at link below.  

https://helpx.adobe.com/mt/after-effects/user-guide.html/mt/after-effects/using/roto-brush-refine-ma...

[woconnell86]

I don't know if this is "the fix" but I was experiencing a similar issue and I cleared my cache. This seems to have worked for my problem. It no longer rescans all the earlier frames and is much faster. I hope this helps!

[MMazor]

Same issue here. Worked all day, now propagating every frame suddenly on the same footage. Purging doesnt help. 10.15.7

AE 18.4.0

[Will.B]

Yep, same issue here, was giving me an issue with the old version, and now after updating AE, same thing... I'm getting a weird bug as well on the very first frame of the roto, it is off, but every other frame is perfect. ONLY the very first frame that was used to make the roto selection is off...

[Matt Lundstrom]

A year later and rotobrush does the same thing for me. Things as simple as advancing one frame do it. This makes AE unuseable for me. Anyone have an alternate roto soution. I'd even look at different aps at this point. 

[Fipsmeister]

Howdy, just try and reset the settings to an earlier version. After that it worked again for me. However I moved on to davinci resolve like a few months ago, so if that doesn't help, I can't really help anymore with this.

[kyliep45843109]

I'm having the same issues, it's makeing it hard to do any preview playbacks. Each time I press play, the rotobrush propagates. It's made it where I have to sit and wait forever just to see what my composition looks like. All I did was add a picture for a background after using the rotobrush on a few layers. I only have a total of 8 layers! The rotobrush is the only tool I've used, I haven't even done a fade to black via opacity yet..