After Effects error: Internal verification failure, sorry!{preferences structure invalid}

Message interpretation:

Some data in your preferences file is damaged or not formatted correctly.

Possible causes:

The preferences file may not have gotten written to disk correctly the last time you exited After Effects. On foreign language systems it may contain invalid characters due to directory names containing them.

Resolution or workaround:

Trash the preferences file and have the program create a new one from scratch. Either hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift (Cmd + Alt + Shift on Mac) during the launch of the application or delete it manually. The location of the preferences is explained on this page.

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.

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 Outdated drivers or unusual configurations may have prevented that.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: Didn’t delete empty file " " because it was larger than
expected.

Message interpretation:

A temporary file could not be deleted.

Possible causes:

This error was noted in the render log of a user and is related to multiprocessing (Render Multiple Frames Simultanously) and possibly the use of specific formats handled through MediaCore. In both cases After Effects uses temporary files. They are either duplicates of source footage files to allow multiple render instances to access the same data without causing trouble with the operating system’s file handling routines or they are uncompressed conform files associated with compressed audio footage sources, e.g. embedded audio in AVCHD and otehr MPEG derivative files. When the program does no longer need them, it will attempt to delete unnecessary duplicates but may not always succeed. Because of the nature of the method of using multiple program instances, this error may also apply to network rendering.

Resolution or workaround:

File I/O errors can best be resolved by keeping your drives healthy and clean. Tips on how to do that can be found on this page. Any leftover temporary files can be deleted manually without risk once the render has been completed successfully. For the location of the individual directories, refer to this page.

After Effects can’t continue: Damaged item.

Message interpretation:

An effect returned an invalid value and caused the program to crash.

Possible causes:

This is an internal error that eludes the user’s ability to influence or correct it. It may be caused by plug-ins "that do not behave" because they are either outdated and thus incompatible or still under development (Beta).

Resolution or workaround:

Get the latest version of the plug-ins that are compatible with your version of After Effects from the manufacturer.

After Effects error: Not enough storage is available to complete this operation.

Message interpretation:

There is not enough drive space available to store a file.

Possible causes:

This is one of the classical cases of "The program gets it wrong!" and it was observed while attempting to save a layered PSD file to our company’s server. The file was a 4K document intended to be further modified for later printing, but could not be saved directly, even if there was enough free space. Only saving it locally resolved the issue.

Resolution or workaround:

Save the file to a local drive and then copy it to the server.

After Effects error: Shatter: Internal Error (512)

Message interpretation:

The Shatter effect produced an unspecified internal error.

Possible causes:

This error seems to have no clear cause. In the given case, the effect refused to accept a custom Gradient map produced in a pre-composition, but would happily accept the same comp after restarting the program. This would indicate that there was a problem with the composition buffer and the caching system that prevented an internal operation.

Resolution or workaround:

Restart the application and try again.

After Effects error: CT bad param:invalid translator.

Message interpretation:

The code page range for a given character could not be converted to be compatible with the present system settings.

Possible causes:

See this error

Resolution or workaround:

See this error

After Effects error: Not enough memory to initialize PSL.

Message interpretation:

After Effects is unable to initialize a specific core component.

Possible causes:

There is no clear cause for this error, but since it was noted for CS5 on a Mac, it may relate to compatibility issues between 32bit and 64bit components.

Resolution or workaround:

Reinstall the program along with specific critical operating system components such as Quicktime from the original discs.

After Effects error: Writing to file “$filename” (1450)

Message interpretation:

The host program failed in writing a file to disk.

Possible causes:

This error regularly occurs with image sequences. The most common source of trouble seem to be delays caused by large files in compressed formats or formats that require color space conversion (Cineon, DPX, YUV-encoded TIFF). Of course simply slow disks, problems with RAID drivers and others might also be the cause for trouble.

Resolution or workaround:

In the particular case the problem could be solved by disabling asynchronous read/ write in the After Effects prefs. This can be done manually following the steps laid out below:

- go to your application preferences directory as explained on this page

- open the Adobe After Effects x.0 Prefs.txt file in a text editor (Notepad)

- look for a paragraph called ["Misc Section"]

- find the line that says “Asynchronous file reading and writing” = 01 and change the value to 00

The next time you launch After Effects, the change will be in effect. The downside to this approach is that the program will now wait until all files necessary for rendering a given frame before writing the last rendered frame. If you are using many footage sources, this might considerably prolong the rendering process. Another solution to consider is simply choosing a different target drive.