Scripts crash AE, have to click off program to save project, memory errors

[dskessler]

I've been having these 3 issues with AE for literally years. I'm assuming that they are all related but I don't know. I've never found any kind of solution for any of them. 

1. New projects work fine but a couple of days in, any use of any script plugin like Motion3 causes AE to drastically slow down and eventually crash. The project then becomes so unstable that I am forced to create multiple tiny projects and attempt to stitch them all together in the end.

2. On any of these slightly larger projects, it takes up to 5 minutes to save a project unless I click onto another window or program, and then it saves the project like normal. This is such a weird bug that I haven't seen posted about anywhere. 

3. I'm constantly getting memory errors even after I've purged memory which I have to do frequently despite having a 200gb SSD dedicated to cache and 64gb ram. It takes almost nothing for Physical Memory to shoot up to 94%. Purging helps for a little while but I have to restart my computer every hour or so. 

This is actually the 2nd computer I've had these issues on. This one, I've even wiped clean and started with a fresh Windows and Adobe install after these problems were keeping me from getting anything done. They all came back very quickly. I now dread doing any complex projects in After Effects.

[Mylenium]

Well, potentially the expression code your scripts create is simply not that great and the more you use it to build functions and keyframes, the more you bump into the limitations of AE's expression engine with stuff not evaluating and refreshing correctly, hence causing cache issues and potential other damage. Similarly, you could be using individual functions in the scripts in ways the designers never intended and thus create complex dependencies AE is struggling with. That's presumably simply the crux of it. Your project gets tainted by too much stuff that was never designed to go together and it's causing mayhem with the most likely solution being that a good chunk of the expressions and so would need to be manually edited, merged and optimized to avoid those conflicts.

Mylenium

[dskessler]

Thanks Mylenium, I'd like to think this was the case but I'm using some of the most popular scripts like Mt. Mograph Motion3 and Joysticks and Sliders and mostly just doing the basics of what they are designed for. In the case of Motion3 I'm just using it to make applying keyframe curves a bit faster. That doesn't even write an expression that AE could be tripping up on. Motion3 does seem like a usual suspect but even without it, I am plagued with issues. These problems happen on relatively simple projects too. I would say anything over 40 or so compositions and it starts going to hell. 
I think the thing about having to click off of After Effects to get it to save a project is the key. It seems to help with general hangups as well. Have you ever seen that happen before?

[fnordware]

Submit this as a bug with steps to reproduce. Kind of sounds like there are memory leaks in AE scripting.

[dskessler]

I submitted a bug report. I don't know how to give them steps to reproduce the error. I get it on every project over 30 or 40 comps no matter what I do.