Message text:

After Effects error: AE_OpenGL: Unexpected Condition: No active gl context for line drawing (due to interrupt during N-up frame render?)

Message interpretation:

The view could not be drawn due to an OpenGL problem.

Possible causes:

The error would indicate an issue with internal resource management which terminates OpenGL based drawing prematurely, if multiple 3D views are used. No further details are available.

Resolution or workaround:

Not applicable.

Message text:

After Effects error: AE_OpenGL: Failed to load shader.

Message interpretation:

A specific code fragment could not be loaded and executed on your graphics card.

Possible causes:

This error indicates that your graphics card is either incapable of supporting the required shader features or you have a misconfiguration. More likely it’s the latter, as After Effects should disable these features, if no suitable card is detected. Outdated drivers or unusual configurations may have prevented that.

Resolution or workaround:

Check your graphics driver settings. If you have customized them, reset to factory defaults. Also choosing a different application profile may improve things. Always make sure to install a reasonably new driver which may already fix the issue. if that is not possible, turn off OpenGL in the preferences.

Message text:

After Effects error: Unknown checkout ID.

Message interpretation:

An effect returned an invalid parameter and thus did not produce a correct result.

Possible causes:

This error is pretty rare, as it indicates a bug in a plug-in or file format module and should not occur in publicly released versions. A first occurance was recorded during a specific render that involved audio files. Initial suspicions, that this would mean that a given frame could not be finalized (checked out) during render, could not be confirmed. Instead this seems to be caused by including audio in the render and a problem with Quicktime. The user affected by the problem was able to resolve the issue by simply removing the audio files from the project. Another incident was noted with GenArts’ Sapphire plug-ins, where the interactive overlay manipulators used in some effects would produce invalid numerical values.

Resolution or workaround:

If you are using an outdated version of a plug-in, try to obtain and install a newer version that is compatible with your current version of After Effects. If the error is related to rendering specific formats, re-installing Quicktime and Specific CoDecs may be necessary. Also converting source footage files to other formats may prevent these errors.

Message text:

After Effetcs: Not enough memory to create compress formats (424905K requested, 216828K available).

Message interpretation:

Some specific file format handlig extensions could not be loaded.

Possible causes:

The incident recorded here happened, after a failed update of After Effects CS4 to the 9.0.2 patch. This damaged the preferences and the CoDecs shared between After Effects, Premiere Pro, Encore and Adobe Media Encoder. Launching any of the applications thereafter did not initialize the post-install auto-install, that would repair these settings.

Resolution or workaround:

As a first step, delete your preferences file. The next time you start After Effects, they will be restored with default values. The location of these files and folders is explained on this page. If that does not help, consider downloading all the updater packages manually from the Adobe support pages and installing them. Make sure to include all of the tools mentioned above or else you may still end up with incomplete installs. Should that still not resolve the matter, you will need to run a full re-install and then attempt to apply the patches. When doing so, first uninstall all programs using the proper Adobe uninstall routines. On Windows they are in your Add or Remove Programs system control panel and on OS X in the /Applications:Utilities:Adobe Utilities:Installers directory. Include all Adobe tools in the process such as Adobe AIR or Adobe Reader, even if they were not originally installed with the otehr products. After that, run the CS4 Clean Script/ Utility and only then reinstall.

Message text:

After Effects error: Adding to movie – disk is full (-34)

Message interpretation:

The movie could not be saved because the disk you are saving it to does not have any space anymore.

Possible causes:

The message is pretty clear in that it already points out the cause that ultimately makes the program throw an error. However, on deeper inspection this can be related to different things. Of course the first and most obvious is, that the disks are physically full. A second, less apparent reason is, that only specific directories on the disk are full. Especially when using Render multiple Frames simultanoulsy, After Effects will generate temporary data in your user home directory. If the folder is full, and no more data can be stored in it, the rendering may fail. This must not be, because the program itself stores so many files, but otehr programs that use the same directory. Similarly, the Media Cache and Disk Cache may prevent successful completion of renders, if they are full. In workgroup environments, you may be restricted by a disk quota, either on your local machine or the server. As an last item, a common reason is simply disk fragmentation.

Resolution or workaround:

First, check whether the location you are saving to, really is full. If so, choose a different directory. As a next step, check all your temporary data directories. Use tools like CCleaner or e.g. Windows‘ own disk cleanup utility to remove any unnecessary files. In addition, manually verify your user home directory and its sub-directories. The locations of these directories are explained on this page. Of course by all means run a defragmentation tool, if you suspect this being the cause. As an last item, increase the available space alotted to your user by changing the quota or lifting it completely. You may need to contact your system/ network administrator to do that.

Message text:

After Effects error: Preference [Quicktime 64-bit Input Codecs] ‘NO16′ is 1230860 Bytes, max allowed is 63 bytes.

Message interpretation:

A value for Codecs that handle 16bpc (64bit) colors is incorrect.

Possible causes:

Due to a crash, disturbance during program exit or similar event, your preferences got corrupted and wrong configuartion values were stored. In the given case the info pertains to the None 16 CoDec and whether the user will allow to use it or not, which is expressed as a boolean value as 0 for no and 1 for yes. other values will cause this error.

Resolution or workaround:

Delete your preferences file. The next time you start After Effects, they will be restored with default values. Alternatively, open the preferences in a text editor and change the value in the section mentioned in the warning. The default for this value is “Auto”, which will always attempt to use the composition frame rate. The location of the preferences is explained on this page.

Message text:

After Effects error: Could not allocate sound memory.

Message interpretation:

After Effects could not preview sound due to insufficient memory available.

Possible causes:

The most likely cause for any audio issues are problems with the audio hardware and their settings or the audio file types that are being used. While it may seem otehrwise, it is only rarely true memory exhaustion that causes problems.

Resolution or workaround:

Make sure your computer’s audio hardware is working properly and it is using suitable settings. Use a commonly used sample rate like 48 kHz and turn off any fancies like perceptional audio enhancements or virtual surround. Additionally, check its audio buffer delay settings. Reset them to defaults and leave them at reasonably small sizes. There is no point in excessively large buffer settings. In After Effects, check your audio hardware preferences and verify that the application correctly recognizes everything. If not already the case, make the audio channels that act as your primary outputs the active ones. If you use audio effects that force buffering to RAM, chose a suitable size that does not bring your system down. When working with compressed audio formats, convert them to conventional PCM files (WAV/ AIFF) before bringing them into After Effects.

Message text:

After Effects warning: Audio conforming failed for the following file <filename>

Message interpretation:

A compressed audio file could not be decoded.

Possible causes:

When you import compressed media into After Effects, the program scans it in order to be able to access specific sections quicker. This also happens for audio, which in addition is also often fully decoded to a conventional PCM (WAV/ AIFF file). The resulting files are stored in the Media Cache directory. If this directory is somehow unavailable, locked or damaged, you will get a warning.

Resolution or workaround:

Adjust your preferences to point to a suitable directory for the Media Cache. Make sure you have full access to it and it is intact. Since the files stored therein are persistent, it is necessary to purge the directory from time to time to prevent it from getting full. Because of this heavy use, it is also critical that the directory is defragmented regularly.

Message text:

After Effects: For reliable output with H.264 compression, please choose it directly from the Output Module Format menu instead of via QuickTime.

Message interpretation:

For best quality output, choose Adobe‘s own H.264 encoder.

Possible causes:

This is a friendly warning if you want to output content to the H.264 format to safe you trouble later on. Particularly if you plan on moving the files to an authoring environment for BluRay discs, want to use it in Flash and other alternate players or plan on converting it with other tools, using the Quicktime version may impair quality and compatibility. Using the native exporters avoids these problems and in addition may produce better quality from the get go. the improved performance of those modules may also pay off if you have to encode large amounts of footage.

Resolution or workaround:

Not applicable.

Message text:

After Effects error: Starting to write to movie: bad QuickTime data reference (-2050).

Message interpretation:

A Quicktime file could not be written.

Possible causes:

Looking up the Quicktime exit code revealed, that this is caused by file names or directory paths being too long.

Resolution or workaround:

Shorten the file name and save to a different location.