Ch keeps crashing mid-export via Media Encoder

[RaizelDesign]

Hi all!

I'd really appreciate any help on this, the sooner the better, as I'm working on tight deadline.

I have a project in Ch with six scenes. The first five exported fine, but with the sixth one, I keep getting an error report from Ch sometime midway through the export that Ch has crashed - despite Character Animator remaining open and appearing to be working just fine. Simultaneous to the error report from Ch, Media Eporter freezes on whatever it's up to, not even updating how much time has elapsed and not generating any error reports of its own - except to say "export interrupted by user" when I finally give up waiting for it to move hours later.

I'm not the most tech savvy of users here, so I can't figure out how to open or read the .dmp file for the report from Character Animator. I attempted to attach it here, but that doesn't seem to work either.

I'm working in Version 23.1 (Build 79) of Character Animator, Version 23.2.1 (Build 2) of Adobe Media Encoder. In Microsoft Windows 11.

I looked at other people's posts for help and what I've tried so far includes:

uninstalling and reinstalling Adobe Media Encoder

uninstalling and reinstalling Adobe Character Animator

Exporting via software only

Deleting the cache files

Force-quitting Adobe Character Animator in the Task Manager (I saw this as a solution for AE exports and thought the same might hold true in this case.)

Here is the log from Adobe Media Encoder:

- Source File: C:\Users\Toveedo\Desktop\raizel-s\shepsalach\shepselach_s1e1_dress-up-contest\shepselach_s1e1_dress-up-contest_final-audio\shepselach_s1e1_dress-up-contest_final-audio.chproj
- Output File: E:\Toveedo Dropbox\Dropbox\The Shepsalach\Season 1\01 Dress Up Contest\Video\DRAFTS\Scene 06 Draft 03.mp4
- Preset Used: Custom
- Video: 1920x1080 (1.0), 24 fps, Progressive, 100 (63% HLG, 51% PQ), Hardware Encoding, Nvidia Codec, 00:00:30:00
- Audio: AAC, 320 kbps, 48 kHz, Stereo
- Bitrate: VBR, 1 pass, Target 10.00 Mbps
- Encoding Time: 00:06:08
03/01/2023 02:11:29 PM : Encoding Failed
-------------------------------------
The Operation was interrupted by user
-------------------------------------

Here are any screenshots that I think might be relevant:

(Just blacked out the image to protect s/o else's work, preview is working fine.)

I'm slowly edging into the tearing-my-hair-out stage of frustration here, so if you can help thanks a ton!

[RaizelDesign]

I tried resaving the project with a new name and now I get the error message as soon as I try to open the project file.

[RaizelDesign]

I thought that the issue might have been caused because I originally started this project way back in June in Beta, so I tried opening it now in Beta and exporting via Media Encoder Beta and I'm encountering the same exact series of events.

[RaizelDesign]

But this latest fiasco did produce a different error report - meaning it actually failed, instead of just hanging on the same second for hours:

- Source File: C:\Users\Toveedo\Desktop\raizel-s\shepsalach\shepselach_s1e1_dress-up-contest\shepselach_s1e1_dress-up-contest\shepselach_s1e1_dress-up-contest.chproj
- Output File: E:\Toveedo Dropbox\Dropbox\The Shepsalach\Season 1\01 Dress Up Contest\Video\DRAFTS\Scene 01 Draft 02.mp4
- Preset Used: Match Source - Adaptive Low Bitrate
- Video: 3840x2160 (1.0), 12 fps, Progressive, 100 (63% HLG, 51% PQ), Hardware Encoding, Nvidia Codec, 00:00:37:00
- Audio: AAC, 128 kbps, 44 kHz, Stereo
- Bitrate: VBR, 1 pass, Target 9.20 Mbps
- Encoding Time: 00:05:31
11/03/2022 04:53:56 PM : Encoding Failed
-------------------------------------
The Operation was interrupted by user
-------------------------------------
- Encoding Time: 00:08:55
03/01/2023 03:46:24 PM : Encoding Failed
------------------------------------------------------------
Export Error
Error compiling movie.

Accelerated Renderer Error

Unable to produce frame.

Writing with exporter: H.264
Writing to file: E:\Toveedo Dropbox\Dropbox\The Shepsalach\Season 1\01 Dress Up Contest\Video\DRAFTS\Scene 06 Draft 03.mp4
Writing file type: H264
Around timecode: 00:00:02:03 - 00:00:02:05
Rendering at offset: 1.625 seconds
Component: H.264 of type Exporter
Selector: 9
Error code: -1609629695

------------------------------------------------------------

[TheOriginalGC]

Have you tried exporting to a local drive?

[RaizelDesign]

No, let me try that now.

[RaizelDesign]

@TheOriginalGC I just tried and I got the same error. 

On the bright side, the error is happening immediately now, so I have less false hope...

[RaizelDesign]

I also tried, as a last ditch attempt, that surprise, surprise, didn't work and caused the same bug, to import the scene as a dynamic link to Premiere and export it from there.

[RaizelDesign]

I've isolated the issue to this specific scene because I was able to make changes to the others and export. I recreated this scene but the issue remains. There are no new puppets in this scene versus others, so I'm lost.

[RaizelDesign]

I isolated it further to a specific 1.5 seconds that was happening mid pan-out. I was able to export a scene cut to that point and another scene cut from that point, but not that actual 1.5 seconds. 

I finally copied the scene, changed the pan to a jump cut and after two days of trying, it exported, thank G-d!

If anyone knows why in the world this happened, I'd love to hear it.

[DanTull]

Based on the info in our side conversation on this, I did find the crash report and a few very similar ones for AfterEffects that give us some leads to go on for how this was failing. There's only a couple of people that have hit it, but in your case it seemed amazingly persistent for a bug that is otherwise apparently fairly elusive. Thanks for the report!

[RaizelDesign]

Thanks for looking into it!