Message text:

After Effects error: Internal verification failure, sorry! (Folder name must be between 1 and 31 characters)

Message interpretation:

Exporting failed, because the target folder has a name that is too long.

Possible causes:

Exporting clips for web usage carries with it some limitations on the file naming. Since the items will be viewed on different browsers on different operating systems, old and new, in a multitude of languages, not every file name is valid. Many web servers require strict use of 8bit Unicode Latin1/Western encoding (which, to simplify, refers to standard English and European languages for the most part) without special characters thrown in and correct use of small and capitalized letters. Especially on Linux and Unix servers, the file MyFile.html is not the same as myfile.html.

The same applies to the length of the file name. On many servers it defaults to a maximum of 32 characters. This is in order to boost performance by not having to look for very long names as well as a means of security to prevent excessively long file paths serving as a doorway for malicious content. A part of such policies is implemented in several Adobe tools. For instance the Save for Web and Devices in Photoshop will truncate file names, if you target specific platforms. The same happens in Adobe Media Encoder for video content, when you output to FLV, F4V or H.264 for online distribution. Since After Effects uses this shared component as well, it inherits this mechanism and will produce the warning, if the intended file name length does not fall within the specs.

Resolution or workaround:

Chose as short a file name as you can. Instead of trying to express info in the file name, use the web servers virtual file system and metadata in conjunction with a Content Management System database to manage categorization, file dates and user access.

Message text:

After Effects: AEGP Plugin PNGIO Support: Unable to create PNGIO.

Message interpretation:

A PNG file could not be exported.

Possible causes:

This specific issue is still under investigation and pertains to the use of 16bit PNG files. The user reporting it used files that were converted from a digital HD camera (RED, presumably) and was unable to render them out. That does not affect al lof them, only specific ones from some sequences. I have not yet been able to reproduce the issue or find a potential cause with other means. Also see this related entry.

Resolution or workaround:

For the time being, selecting a different file type for output seems the only viable option.

Message text:

After Effects: AEGP Plugin PNGIO Support: PNGIO library error: Invalid color type in IHDR.

Message interpretation:

A PNG could not be exported due to a color space issue.

Possible causes:

This specific issue is still under investigation and pertains to the use of 16bit PNG files. The user reporting it used files that were converted from a digital HD camera (RED, presumably) and was unable to render them out. That does not affect al lof them, only specific ones from some sequences. I have not yet been able to reproduce the issue or find a potential cause with other means. Also see this related entry.

Resolution or workaround:

For the time being, selecting a different file type for output seems the only viable option.

Message text:

After Effects: AEGP Plugin MayaImport: Error reading Maya file.

Message interpretation:

A Maya scene file could not be read.

Possible causes:

This is not clear, but most likely the file contains extra info that cannot be processed or was exported from a newer version ofMaya that After Effects does not yet understand.

Resolution or workaround:

Re-export your scene from Maya using compliant settings.

Message text:

After Effects: AEGP Plugin MayaImport: Inconsistant number of keyframes for Maya camera.

Message interpretation:

The keyframes stored in the Maya scene file make no sense.

Possible causes:

The most likely cause is the use of a framerate not compliant with a standard framerate used for normal film or video. In that case the loader may misinterpret the time information. Another potential problem is errors during baking the keyframes. This can happen when rigging the camera inside a hierarchy, using timewarps or expressions, changing the default transform order or applying custom attributes. This wil leitehr change the order of channels and keyframes, may cause gaps or place keyframes too closely together, so the importer cannot decide what info to use. The same would apply to default camera attributes that need to be static such as the filmback setting. A last potential issue could be a change in the file format, when a version of Maya is newer than the latest version of After Effects and the specifics are not covered.

Resolution or workaround:

Re-export your scene from Maya using compliant settings.

Message text:

After Effects: AEGP Plugin Media IO Plugin. There is a mismatch between Output Module settings and Transcode Settings. Please verify your settings and try again. Property Data Invalid!

Message interpretation:

A document could not be exported because property data contained in it could not be recognized as valid.

Possible causes:

The message may at first seem identical to 5027 :: 12, but the cause is a different one. In the given case, a user was trying to use the XFL export feature in CS4 to transfer his animation to Adobe Flash. However, since he used image files that exceeded the maximum size of 1080 pixels in either dimension, it did not work.

Resolution or workaround:

Resize your documents in Adobe Photoshop to fall below the critical threshold.

Message text:

After Effects: AEGP Plugin LiveLink(?)

Message interpretation:

A connection required for Dynamic Link could not be established.

Possible causes:

Quite obviously in this case Dynamic Link was initiated without a valid parameter for the "server". This means, that either the host application was not able to launch the background instance of After Effects required for rendering compositions on the fly as assets in this program or that After Effects could not initialize e.g. Adobe Premiere Pro to render its sequences.

Resolution or workaround:

Close all programs involved and launch them again. On occasion, it may be necessary to restart the entire computer.

Message text:

After Effects: AEGP Plugin AEGP Internal: Leaked effect refs.

Message interpretation:

An internal error in the handling routine for plugins occured.

Possible causes:

This error is caused by effects plugins incompatible with a given version of After Effects. If a project is being transferred from an older version to a newer one, additional controls or functions in the newer version may have changed the order in which references to them are handled.

Resolution or workaround:

Update your plugins to the latest qualified version and make sure to use this version consistently across all your computers.

Message text:

After Effects: AEGP Plugin TIFFIO: Failed to open the file.

Message interpretation:

A TIFF file could not be opened.

Possible causes:

Similar to other TIFF format errors, this one is caused by the multitude of possible variations in this format. The most likely case in which After Effects would not open the file at all is, if they don’t have any header information and the remaining data does not allow to make sense of the internal structure. Such formats have been known to be used internally by some older graphics and compositing programs for creating proxies and cached files and they were never meant to be used outside those environments. Similarly, some fax TIFFs show this behavior if they were not adjusted before using them.

Resolution or workaround:

Attempt to open the offending file in the original application and properly export it from there. If that’s not possible, a generic image viewing and conversion tool such as XnView might be able to view and save the file to a usable format.

Message text:

After Effects: AEGP Plugin RPFimport: No camera data in the file.

Message interpretation:

The RPF Camera Extract keyframe assistant was unable to generate keyframes because it could not find camera information in the RPF file(s).

Possible causes:

In addition to custom image channels, RPF files can contain a variety of extra information as extra value streams. These can be extracted using tools such as the RPF Camera Extract keyframe assistant. However, the procedures for storing this data are not standardized and so sometimes either no data is stored in the file at all or it is contained in a format and value range that can’t be used. E.g. Maya will not properly normalize the ranges and thus often the result will be unusable.

Resolution or workaround:

Adjust the settings of your camera in your 3D program and try re-rendering. If that doesn’t work, try to find other ways of converting and transferring the data like exporting the scene via scripts or commercial plugins in a format that can be read via additional scripts in After Effects. This can include tools like TransMotion for Lightwave 3D or MAX2AE for Autodesk 3D Studio MAX. Cinema 4D has a dedicated export feature and a plugin. For Maya, using an *.ma scene file would also work for getting camera data. Other 3D programs may offer similar solutions.