Message text:

After Effects error: There was an error processing the PDF document. The file may be damaged or corrupt.

Message interpretation:

A PDF file could not be used as a layer for rendering.

Possible causes:

The PDF specifications allow visually identical features to be expressed in different ways. Therefore different programs use different methods to retain exact formatting of text or placment of images. Some of these methods may be problematic in certain combinations, especially when using features such as Continuous Rasterize on vector elemnts in the PDF when it also may contain conventional bitmap images. Doing so may damage the file when After Effects reads it and tries to figure out the logic of the individual elements.

Resolution or workaround:

Remove all unnecessary elements in teh file in Illustrator or Acrobat and save the file again. Use the optimazation options in both programs to further streamline your document by grouping elements, cleaning up paths and so on. If you do not need the infinite resolution of vector elements, save a pixel based image at a suitably high quality and resolution from these programs. Additionally, try to create as many elements inside After Effects using text layers, shape layers, masks on solids and of course effects.

Message text:

After Effects error: After Effects format plug-in error (1).

Message interpretation:

A specific file handling plug-in failed.

Possible causes:

This error was observed when trying to render an animated GIF file from After Effects CS4. Since this is a legacy feature dependent on Quicktime, it seems to be more a compatibility issue with a given version of Quicktime.

Resolution or workaround:

The user was able to get it to work by updating to After Effects CS4, 9.0.2.

Message text:

After Effects error: Parser cannot read this file or clipboard.

Message interpretation:

A file or data from the clipboard could not be interpreted because there is no suitable parser module for it.

Possible causes:

Some file formats such as TIFF have a variety of sub-formats and variations. Therefore it is possible, that even with a proper generic file format handling module in place, specific files cannot be read. Similarly, data transferred via the clipboard may not be possible to read.

Resolution or workaround:

Some generalised tips can be found in this post. Also check out information included in 26 :: 269. For specific image formats, open them in the original application and save them to a different format. In particular images saved from 3D programs often contain extended data that can throw After Effects off track and they therefore must be converted. This can be done e.g. with Maya‘s fCheck utility. If that’s not possible, more generic image viewing and conversion tools such as XnView or Irfanview may help out. sometimes also specific plugins for Adobe Photoshop can do the job.

Message text:

After Effects warning: " " uses one or more fonts which are unavailable on this machine.

Message interpretation:

A font referenced in the file is not installed on your system..

Possible causes:

Vector file formats often provide multiple ways of dealing with text generated from fonts. You are usually free to convert them to normal outline objects, embed the font file (kind of like an attachment in an e-mail) or only store a reference to the local fonts in it. The latter case will cause the error message if the font cannot be found.

Resolution or workaround

Open the file in the original creator program e.g. Adobe Illustrator. If the font is missing, you will get more info about its name this way. Once you know that, either replace the font used in a given text object or install the original font on your system.

Message text:

After Effects error: Not enough memory to create AGM display list. 24576k requested, 18748k available

Message interpretation:

The elements in your composition could not be drawn or rendered.

Possible causes:

The source of the problem is unclear. In the given case a user was trying to create a composition with a large number of 3D layers. Possibly this has to do with sorting the layers to determine their blending, both in 2D and 3D.

Resolution or workaround:

Unknown.

Message text:

After Effects error: Cannot allocate enough memory to antialias file.

Message interpretation:

The vector element you were trying to use could not be rendered because there was no memory to store the resulting pixels.

Possible causes:

When you continuously rasterize vector based elements and scale them very large, the layer itself or elements in it may occupy so many pixels that it is impossible for After Effects to properly calculate blending operations, including semi-transparent pixels for antialiasing.

Resolution or workaround:

Do not use such large sizes. Try to simplify the document e.g. by cleaning up the paths in Adobe Illustrator. Removing unnecessary vertices will accelerate calculations and consume less RAM as will a simplified grouping structure. If the adjustments still result in failure, export a rasterized image out of your vector graphics program at sufficiently large resolution.

Message text:

Adobe After Effects error – could not find the main entry point for 3DStroke.plugin.

Message interpretation:

A plugin cannot be loaded.

Possible causes:

As After Effects evolves, so does the interface for plugins. The message seems to indicate a problem with the address offsets in the binary code interface between the host application and the plugin. Since the example provided was recorded on a Mac, it stands to reason that this was caused by an unqualified version of OSX that does not fulfill the minimum requirements to run the program flawlessly.

Resolution or workaround:

Updating the operating system and thus its execution abstraction layer might solve the issue.

Message text:

After Effects can’t continue: Sweetpea failure.

Message interpretation:

The program has crashed due to a failure in a core component.

Possible causes:

Sweat Pea is a component in the MediaCore system introduced with After Effects CS3. It is responsible for realtime playback of audio, importing Premiere Pro projects and accelerated playback of various footage formats such as HDV. Depending on the configuration of your audio hardware or your graphics card, the plugin will refuse to initialize and crash the program.

Resolution or workaround

Try to adjust your audio and graphics card configuration to circumvent the issue. Depending on the severity, removing some plugins may solve the problems. As reported by a user, removing the OpenGL plugin (which is also responsible for acclerated footage playback) fixed the issue and prevented the crash. The plugin can be found under

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS3\Support Files\Plug-ins\Extensions

on Windows and in

/Applications:Adobe After Effects CS3:Support Files:Plug-ins:Extensions

on Macs.

Message text:

After Effects error: Plug-in "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects 7.0\Support Files\Required\Audio Palette.aex" could not be loaded (127).

Message interpretation:

A plugin cannot be loaded.

Possible causes:

The plugin file is possibly damaged and thus not recognized as a valid element during initialization. Some plugins also use secondary architectures that contain the actual routines and the plugin is only used as a hook to the host program. Well-known examples for such plugins are Magic Bullet Looks, Sapphire or Silhoutte Roto. All these plugins use external libraries (DLLs on Windows for instance). When one of those auxiliary components is not found or also damaged, using the plugin also fails. A further reason is the inability of some plugins to support certain processor types or multithreading. In case of the audio palette there is an very obvious dependency to the audio functions of the operating system, so if something’s wrong there, it may not initialize.

Resolution or workaround

In most cases only re-installing or installing a newer version of the plugin will fix any problems.

Message text:

After Effects error: Can’t dispose locked routine.

Message interpretation:

For reasons of optimization, a function, subroutine or a plugin has accessed a special mode. It cannot break out of this mode.

Possible causes:

No specific scenario can be made ot to reproduce this problem consistently. It seems arbitrary based on the combination of what tools and options you use.

Resolution or workaround

Usually deleting the effects or exiting the program and restarting it solve the issue.