Weird after effects crashes? Maybe here is the solution.

Troubleshooting some weird after effects crashes?

Trying to open an After Effects project and it keeps crashing? 

Here is are a few solutions that have worked for me in the past.

If you are having unexplained crashes in after effects and left scratching your head, try one or all of these to get the show back on the road.

Full credit to Jonas Hummelstrand over at General Specialist for all these tips. I have simply cherrypicked the ones that I have had success with. Thanks dude!

5 Tips to stop after effects crashing on load

1. Hold down the Shift key while opening an old project 

This will force AE to close all comp viewers, so if one of the comps are causing problems you will be able to identify which comp it is.

2. Try to import the project instead of opening it.

Sometimes this works.

3. Move all source files into a new folder

... so that AE can’t find them, and then locate each source file separately by choosing “Replace footage -> File…” so that you can isolate which source is causing problems.

4. Enable the secret preference

If you are getting rendering errors it might be the codec that is hogging RAM. If you enable “Purge every 20 frames during Make Movie” you will probably get around the problem. 

You can do this in the Secret preferences by holding down the Shift key and then select Preferences… from the menu. In the Preferences dialog box you can then choose the “Secret” option that will give you hidden features (they are hidden since they will cause AE to render more slowly.)

Don’t enable the other checkboxes, just write “20″ in the text field. Also, make sure you enable the “Prevent DLL Address Space Fragmentation” under “Memory & Caches” if your on a Windows system.

5. Image Buffer problems

If you are working with large compositions, images and video files, you may get an error message about creating the image buffer. Here’s a tutorial on how to work around that problem. .. edit: sorry link has died!

Let me know in the comments if they do (or don't) work for you.

After Effects - Center anchor point with one click

Cmd + click the pan behind button. Done!

After Effects Power User - Custom keyboard Shortcuts

Here is a few custom shortcuts i use everyday to make my life easier

Another way to assign shortcuts is via your sys prefs. Note: Use with caution. Sometimes overwrites are buggy and causes stuff to break.



For reference, the cryptic mac keyboard icons deciphered for you

Easy Ease

Easy Ease
Cmd+E

Originally 'edit original', something i never used, never mind used a shortcut for. This saves you from reaching up to F9 or fn+F9

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Time Reverse keyframes

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Cmd+Option G
I dont think this is assigned to anything normally, but I've been using it for so long i forget!

Perfectly Looped Wiggle in After Effects - Floating Camera Effect

This creates a wiggle that loops based on the duration of the composition.

Works great when teamed up with Andrew Kramer's free plugin, Sure Target. 

Apply this to the orientation or individual X & Y rotation property of a camera for a bit of random handheld motion.

nb: Although its not a perfect solution to create a handheld look, it is a quick and easy way to get some more natural float in your camera moves.


I used this script for a job that needed a camera to fly through a bunch of images in 2.5 d space & had to be perfectly looped.

Original script is from the master of expressions, Dan Ebberts over at Motionscript.com
The extra bit's I've added to make it loop to comp duration are highlighted in orange.

Perfectly Looped Wiggle Expression 

---

 //CAMERA FLOAT

// This locks the random seed rather than base it on the layer index number  
 seedRandom(12345)   
   
 // Adjust frequency & amplitude here  
 freq = .1;  
 amp = 1.5;  
   
 // Set loop time to duration of the composition - nb can be set to fixed value, eg: "3.0" for 3 secs  
 loopTime = thisComp.duration;  
   
 t = time % loopTime;  
 wiggle1 = wiggle(freq, amp, 2, 0.4, t);  
 wiggle2 = wiggle(freq, amp, 2, 0.4, t - loopTime);  
   
 // Adding 'value' lets you fine tune the original property the wiggle is applied to (eg rotation)  
 linear(t, 0, loopTime, wiggle1, wiggle2)+value;  

Further Reading

For more in depth look at the wiggle expression and how powerful it is over in this tutorial over on Mattrunks' blog.

He shows you how to get a fixed random expression and talks about some cool nerdy wiggly stuff like octaves, amplitude & time multipliers. He explains why we have 5 numbers in the wiggle expression instead of the usual 2.

Credit: original expression from Dan Ebberts at Motionscript.com