Dynamic Link AE comps are "Pending"

Report · Nov 08, 2019

This is horribly infuriating.

I have a project with a lot of dynamic linked comps in the timelines. I have 10 hour long sequences that reference the same AE project. In 2 of my sequences, despite being online in the bin, I have the yellow "Media Pending" in my program monitor. I have tried EVERYTHING I can find. Trashing preferences, resetting Premiere, changing permissions, epty the cache, etc. Everything! I can't redo them because the info I need was delivered to me as Dropbox comments and the file is no longer available nor the person who made the comments. I have even tried this in the new 2020 version.

Why would some of the roughly 100 instances of this AE project stop working? I have already missed the deadline and if I can't figure this out yesterday, I'm probably not going the get paid. I don't know why I keep paying for somethign that doesn't work. I need and asnwer now!

This is happening across 2 computers. An iMac and Macbook Pro, both running Premiere 2019 and Mojave.

Report · Nov 10, 2019

No matter how many times you duplicate it in the Premiere project, if it's offline, you are going to relink it to the AE project.

If we go back to the lower third example. You would import the AE project into your Premiere project. If you have three talking heads, I would duplicate that AE project three times in the bin. I usually rename them just for organization purposes. In your bin, you would double click "Sue," enter the text you want and then put that in your timeline and then do that for the rest. To make changes Sue's lower third, you would go back to the duplicate in the bin that you renamed to "Sue" and make your changes. Then, everytime you use that specific duplicate lower third in the project, the changes would update in every instance of use.

Report · Nov 10, 2019

what I was suggesting is that you find the first iteration of the ae comp in your timeline. control click on it and choose "unlink" then select it again and choose "link" and if you look at the clip name in the link dialog I think it's giving you the text that you've used for this specific iteration of the ae comp. That should allow you to open the ae project, change the text and then render just this clip out and replace the problematic clip in the premier timeline. Make sense? see attached screen shot of the link media dialog. If that works, you'ld have to do this for all the problematic clips, but should be doable

Report · Nov 10, 2019

That gives me the clip name, which is a start for trying to figure out how to redo this, but it doesn't give me the actual text that I used.

Report · Nov 10, 2019

and you don't have a reference output? What was the client using to review?

Report · Nov 10, 2019

I'm a fool, and I would render previews directly to a Dropbox folder which have now been deleted.

I learned some lessons on this project.

Report · Nov 10, 2019

can you try an autosave version of the premiere project? I'd try a way earlier version and if that works, work your way to later version til you find where the problem occurs.

Report · Nov 10, 2019

and I've gotta leave the office now. Will check back tomorrow. good luck

Report · Nov 10, 2019

Thanks for your help.

Every auto save file has the same problem.

I'm keeping this at the top so maybe Adobe will see it and fix this problem.

Report · Nov 10, 2019

Jon,

You have a "10 hour long sequence" as if it were trivial. It's not! Man, that's incredible. If it were me, I'd try and devise a smoother workflow that was more nimble; and didn't involve so many dynamic linked comps. Those are really going to slow you down on any render or export workflow as dynamically lined comps only use a single thread for rendering. My guess is that your media might also be non-performant. Is it streaming footage, variable frame rate, 4K, H.264 or HEVC? These are all recipes for "media pending" on lower powered machines.

Furthermore, for any "media pending" issues, go back to AE and render out that file and cut it back in. Your media might be too non-performant and the effects you've added might be too great for putting all the info back into your lengthy timeline.

You might also have something going on with just too many items for that Timeline to handle and given the amount of RAM you have installed. For a 10 hour Timeline to operate very smoothly with so many "operations," I'd think you'd need much more powerful computers than any "iMac" or "MBP." Those are fine for simpler editing, but not for ultra long form programs which contain so many lower performing workflow items, like dynamically linked AE comps. IOW, I think you are expecting too much for the hardware you have on hand. I would take a serious look at your workflow to see if you could do some things differently which could get you from A > B more easily than what you're doing right now.

Let us know how we can help you with that.

Thanks,
Kevin Monahan

Report · Nov 10, 2019

I have 10 sequences that are roughly an hour each. The animated text is pretty simple - think VH1 Popup Video but less.

I don't normally like to use the DL files but it made sense for this project for various reasons. I should have made a motion graphic template.

The most frustrating thing is that it works about 80% of the time. It's just 2 of the 10 sequences that are giving me a problem. I would have happily and easily redone it by now but I need the text that I entered into those DL clips. That is the biggest thing that is holding me back right now.

I apologize for my frustration.

Report · Nov 10, 2019

What is the source media and/or cam you are using again? Is it Long GOP? Perhaps transcoding on ingest could get you over the hump on performance issues.

Kevin

Report · Nov 10, 2019

I read it as ten 1 hr sequences...

Report · Nov 10, 2019

Oh, yes. I see you're correct. I would still probably troubleshoot this as too much stuff for not enough hardware power. Not a firm believer in using a lot of dynamic links. Media pending is usually performance related. Too many effects or media not performant enough given the circumstances. Combine this with dynamic link's known performance limitation: 1 thread for processing.

Kevin

Report · Nov 10, 2019

but actually I first read it the way you did and stopped before posting and thought... that can't be right.

Report · Nov 10, 2019

10 hour timelines are actually rather common these days, as crazy as it sounds.

People game and stream on Twitch for longer stretches than that. The expectation is that these 10 hour streams should perform in Premiere Pro perfectly and without A/V sync drift. I also think they should, but that's probably something that could be done sooner or later via background transcoding or some Sensei process.

Now? I think you need to set reasonable expectations if you're doing something kinda extreme. However, this is now turning away from the user's original problem. I think the OP has a reasonable expectation that his workflow should work as expected. Sure hope we can help out.

Report · Nov 10, 2019

Kevin, you're hopefully the expert here. Shouldn't the autosaves at some point in the past contain the correct dynamic link? I'd never worked this way, but it seems clear that the text must be saved as part of the premiere project since you're not going back to ae to alter the text... Also, I get the feeling that there's a missing piece to this puzzle... may be miscommunication, maybe my limited experience with this workflow.

Report · Nov 10, 2019

Reading through more carefully, I see now that this is beyond simple performance issues. Sometimes making recursive changes in a dynamically linked After Effects project can confuse Premiere Pro. There may be errors in execution order going on (we editors are such rule breakers!). I have found you have to be somewhat careful step order and workflow when dealing with dynamic link. I can look more into this when I get into the office in the morning.

Kevin

Report · Nov 10, 2019

Thanks for your help.

This is a three-camera Multicam project shot on a DSLR at 1080p. Editing the Multicam was getting pretty sluggish so I proxied the footage to ProRes LT to improve performance. I edited, tweaked the sound, color corrected the footage and then started adding these very simple bullet point animations throughout each sequence. Everything was fine. I had to make a change to the intro animation and when I went to make my final exports last week, that's when I ran into this problem. On these two sequences, the render gets to the first instance on the AE comp and the export fails. I have gone through every auto-save project the same problem exists every time.

I just need that text so I can redo this and get it to the client

Report · Nov 11, 2019

This issue looks like it reared up on Facebook too.
I'll investigate further.

Report · Nov 14, 2019

Any updates on this?

Report · Jan 18, 2020

Have you found a solution yet? I have the same issue. It is always a big problem for me once there is a new AE update (or Premiere, since I am not sure which one causes the issue). I do the same as you described by importing 1 master dynamic link AE composition to the timeline, then in Premiere I ALT COPY it to make another one so I can modify its text easily. Then the text will be different than the original one. You can use tons of these in 1 project. But once there is an update it gets problematic and some files are not connecting by showing the pending message. I even updated the AE project as well to the latest and it did not help. Even Adobe (multiple) agents were trying to get it fixed over the screen share app, but they did not even know that there is a copy feature in Premire itself :). Luckily I am not on a deadline as last time, but the issue is a big pain for a software we pay a lot of money. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Report · Oct 28, 2021

Know this is a pretty dead thread, but in case anyone else is having a similar issue in 2021...
Wound up being a font issue for me. I use a font manager (suitcase fusion) that has some integrations across the creative cloud. Disabling all plugins and triple-checking that I have all the appropriate fonts installed & activated worked for me.

Report · Oct 28, 2021

Thanks for this follow-up. Never think to ask about font managers but figure they could cause all sorts of issues.

Report · Oct 28, 2021

Hi i've got the same issues or at least similar:

once it worked the other day it doesn't work anymore:

here the comp in the media browser:

and the preview windows which says media pending, a lot of freezing of premiere pro if i try to link the comp again. don't know what to do.

Report · Oct 07, 2022

If the problem is that you made some comps in AE, send it to Premiere and after sometime the comps are showing up as "Pending" in Premiere, it is because of an issue that occours in the "dynamiclinkmanager" folder. I only needed to reset it by renaming the folder to "dynamiclinkmanager_old" and the programs when opened created a new one automaticly, solving this issue once for all.

My path for this folder is Disk Local C: > users > my personal user > AppData > Roaming > Adobe > dynamiclinkmanager

I hope I can help someone else with this.

Adobe Community

Dynamic Link AE comps are "Pending"