Unknown error with Media Encoder

Daniel Raebiger · October 9th, 2009, 10:53 AM

not really, too much dynamic stuff and layering in it :(

It really is the motion blur switch. I've experimented so much with all those 'how much ram per cpu' settings and 'how much ram to leave for other aps' that i am really not sure anymore what those settings are supposed to be. is there a Adobe KB article on those things?

Marty Baggen · October 9th, 2009, 11:11 AM

But have you confirmed that you CAN render your project directly out of AE?

That would seem to be an important element in trouble shooting your scenario.

Daniel Raebiger · October 9th, 2009, 12:24 PM

not with motion blur enabled... :(

Marty Baggen · October 9th, 2009, 12:42 PM

Okay.... In following this thread, it sounded as though you were dealing with what you thought was a Premiere issue, but this seems to clearly be an AE problem or a limitation of your system specs.

You may have already scoped out the related forums.

Without seeing your project, the only thing I can think of is to either do some preprod work in Photoshop with your layers, or break up your project by either time or layers, and recomp.

Either way, you are going to have to render that sucker because until you can render cleanly from AE, Dynamic Link isn't going to help.

Daniel Raebiger · October 9th, 2009, 01:06 PM

yep i agree on that. but what really makes me wonder is why i was able to render that project even with my old rig (4gig ram). I've now tried to render it without motion blur but get another error :(

maybe my settings are totally wrong? Could you advise on that?
Thanks so much!

Marty Baggen · October 9th, 2009, 01:09 PM

Daniel... is it possible you are attempting to output to a format that does not allow the size of frame that you are working with?

Perhaps you are missing a plug-in from your older AE version?

You've revealed two separate issues.... the RAM and motion blur, and now the frame size.

Try setting up a new AE project using one of the presets.... then import your existing project into it and try rendering from that.

Adam Gold · October 9th, 2009, 01:45 PM

You also mentioned Win7... is it possible that when the old project was working it was with a different OS and/or different machine? Yes, Win7 is supposed to be great, but perhaps CS4 isn't certified/optimized for it yet. And certainly if it was working two years ago it wasn't with CS4.

Has it ever worked on this system, with this OS, on CS4? It sure wouldn't be the first time that something which worked fine in CS3 went belly-up in CS4.

Daniel Raebiger · October 9th, 2009, 01:56 PM

its a standard 1920x1080 project - and basically is a remake of this tutorial:
VIDEO COPILOT | After Effects Tutorials & Post Production Tools

nothing too fancy.

i've been working with CS4/windows 7 since it's first beta, I've used the Project template last week and it worked fine. Then it suddenly stopped working. Then I've reinstalled my OS but still no luck :(

i've attached my AE ram settings.

Little summation:
- works if I disable motion Blur and Render within Premiere
- does not render at all in AE (either the 'not enough memory for shadow map' or 'unable to allocate space for buffer' error)

I hope you guys have an idea...

*looking really sad at my deadline*

Adam Gold · October 9th, 2009, 02:05 PM

Have you installed any new SW recently? Drivers, codecs? Updated anything? Virus checkers? Does the PC have a live Internet connection?

Daniel Raebiger · October 9th, 2009, 03:20 PM

freshly installed windows with office, adobe, skype and winamp. plus nod32 antivirus

Marty Baggen · October 9th, 2009, 04:21 PM

Daniel... have you installed the latest AE updates?

One process I have done, and it's tedious depending on the complexity of your project, is to switch on layers with each render to see if there is one element that has gotten corrupted or its effect is causing a hangup.

Have you attempted dedicating LESS RAM for AE? What about unchecking the render of multiple frames simultaneously?

This is a stab in the dark, but is AE's render queue a SEPARATE operation? Are you maybe choking render queue of RAM by allocating all but 1gb to AE?

It's strange that Premiere can handle the render (albeit with motion blur off), and AE can't. That seems to speak to the installation of AE, or a needed update.

I'm certainly not a qualified Adobe troubleshooter.

Daniel Raebiger · October 9th, 2009, 05:51 PM

All the latest updates are installed. I am going to try that layer switching now.

thanks for your ongoing support! :)

Eric Boersema · November 30th, 2009, 02:26 AM

I also got the same unknown error. In my case at randomn moments.

After some troubleshooting, it appeared that AME is taking a lot of CPU resource.
And that makes the processor so hot that the PC/CPU decides to stop the proces.
So that explains the randomness.
In my case I could turn up the FAN-speed so that my cpu is cooled better.
And after that all went fine again.

I hope this might help for some people...

Grtz Eric

Drew Mandac · November 30th, 2009, 01:28 PM

For me, it's the memory leak in Premiere Pro that prevents me from completing some exports. What I do when running AME is to also launch the Task Manager and keep an eye out on the memory usage. When it gets around 90%, I force an end process on pproheadless.exe. The memory usage immediately drops to around 50%, and then pproheadless automatically relaunches and starts the memory climb again. Sometimes I have to end the process 2-3 times, but I eventually get it to complete the export.

Paul Newman · December 12th, 2009, 04:24 AM

I'm using CS4 4.2 editing RED footage after working with Edius for years, and not using Premiere since 6.5 - how on earth can anyone work with this appalling software? the media encoder is so limited and slow in the extreme, as well as failing constantly, I'm at a loss as how to get my project off this platform in one piece.

My project is 4 mins 50 secs, RED 2k and I'm trying to render out a 1920x1080 lossless avi, it takes over 2 hours and always fails with "unknown error" this on an 8 core quad machine - hopeless indeed.

What on earth would you do if your project was 2 hours long?

Paul

October 9th, 2009, 10:53 AM	#16
Daniel Raebiger Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Landshut, Germany Posts: 143	not really, too much dynamic stuff and layering in it :( It really is the motion blur switch. I've experimented so much with all those 'how much ram per cpu' settings and 'how much ram to leave for other aps' that i am really not sure anymore what those settings are supposed to be. is there a Adobe KB article on those things? __________________ Important notice: There's still soup left!

October 9th, 2009, 12:24 PM	#18
Daniel Raebiger Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Landshut, Germany Posts: 143	not with motion blur enabled... :( Attached Thumbnails __________________ Important notice: There's still soup left!

October 9th, 2009, 01:06 PM	#20
Daniel Raebiger Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Landshut, Germany Posts: 143	yep i agree on that. but what really makes me wonder is why i was able to render that project even with my old rig (4gig ram). I've now tried to render it without motion blur but get another error :( maybe my settings are totally wrong? Could you advise on that? Thanks so much! Attached Thumbnails __________________ Important notice: There's still soup left!

October 9th, 2009, 01:56 PM	#23
Daniel Raebiger Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Landshut, Germany Posts: 143	its a standard 1920x1080 project - and basically is a remake of this tutorial: VIDEO COPILOT \| After Effects Tutorials & Post Production Tools nothing too fancy. i've been working with CS4/windows 7 since it's first beta, I've used the Project template last week and it worked fine. Then it suddenly stopped working. Then I've reinstalled my OS but still no luck :( i've attached my AE ram settings. Little summation: - works if I disable motion Blur and Render within Premiere - does not render at all in AE (either the 'not enough memory for shadow map' or 'unable to allocate space for buffer' error) I hope you guys have an idea... looking really sad at my deadline Attached Thumbnails __________________ Important notice: There's still soup left!

October 9th, 2009, 03:20 PM	#25
Daniel Raebiger Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Landshut, Germany Posts: 143	freshly installed windows with office, adobe, skype and winamp. plus nod32 antivirus __________________ Important notice: There's still soup left!

October 9th, 2009, 11:11 AM	#17
Marty Baggen Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: monroe, or Posts: 572	But have you confirmed that you CAN render your project directly out of AE? That would seem to be an important element in trouble shooting your scenario.

October 9th, 2009, 12:42 PM	#19
Marty Baggen Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: monroe, or Posts: 572	Okay.... In following this thread, it sounded as though you were dealing with what you thought was a Premiere issue, but this seems to clearly be an AE problem or a limitation of your system specs. You may have already scoped out the related forums. Without seeing your project, the only thing I can think of is to either do some preprod work in Photoshop with your layers, or break up your project by either time or layers, and recomp. Either way, you are going to have to render that sucker because until you can render cleanly from AE, Dynamic Link isn't going to help.

October 9th, 2009, 01:09 PM	#21
Marty Baggen Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: monroe, or Posts: 572	Daniel... is it possible you are attempting to output to a format that does not allow the size of frame that you are working with? Perhaps you are missing a plug-in from your older AE version? You've revealed two separate issues.... the RAM and motion blur, and now the frame size. Try setting up a new AE project using one of the presets.... then import your existing project into it and try rendering from that.

October 9th, 2009, 01:45 PM	#22
Adam Gold Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Woodinville, WA USA Posts: 3,467	You also mentioned Win7... is it possible that when the old project was working it was with a different OS and/or different machine? Yes, Win7 is supposed to be great, but perhaps CS4 isn't certified/optimized for it yet. And certainly if it was working two years ago it wasn't with CS4. Has it ever worked on this system, with this OS, on CS4? It sure wouldn't be the first time that something which worked fine in CS3 went belly-up in CS4.

October 9th, 2009, 02:05 PM	#24
Adam Gold Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Woodinville, WA USA Posts: 3,467	Have you installed any new SW recently? Drivers, codecs? Updated anything? Virus checkers? Does the PC have a live Internet connection?

October 9th, 2009, 04:21 PM	#26
Marty Baggen Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: monroe, or Posts: 572	Daniel... have you installed the latest AE updates? One process I have done, and it's tedious depending on the complexity of your project, is to switch on layers with each render to see if there is one element that has gotten corrupted or its effect is causing a hangup. Have you attempted dedicating LESS RAM for AE? What about unchecking the render of multiple frames simultaneously? This is a stab in the dark, but is AE's render queue a SEPARATE operation? Are you maybe choking render queue of RAM by allocating all but 1gb to AE? It's strange that Premiere can handle the render (albeit with motion blur off), and AE can't. That seems to speak to the installation of AE, or a needed update. I'm certainly not a qualified Adobe troubleshooter.

October 9th, 2009, 05:51 PM	#27
Daniel Raebiger Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Landshut, Germany Posts: 143	All the latest updates are installed. I am going to try that layer switching now. thanks for your ongoing support! :) __________________ Important notice: There's still soup left!

November 30th, 2009, 02:26 AM	#28
Eric Boersema Tourist Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Amsterdam Netherlands Posts: 1	My solution I also got the same unknown error. In my case at randomn moments. After some troubleshooting, it appeared that AME is taking a lot of CPU resource. And that makes the processor so hot that the PC/CPU decides to stop the proces. So that explains the randomness. In my case I could turn up the FAN-speed so that my cpu is cooled better. And after that all went fine again. I hope this might help for some people... Grtz Eric

November 30th, 2009, 01:28 PM	#29
Drew Mandac Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 28	For me, it's the memory leak in Premiere Pro that prevents me from completing some exports. What I do when running AME is to also launch the Task Manager and keep an eye out on the memory usage. When it gets around 90%, I force an end process on pproheadless.exe. The memory usage immediately drops to around 50%, and then pproheadless automatically relaunches and starts the memory climb again. Sometimes I have to end the process 2-3 times, but I eventually get it to complete the export.

December 12th, 2009, 04:24 AM	#30
Paul Newman Major Player Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Agua Blanca Ibiza Posts: 305	I'm using CS4 4.2 editing RED footage after working with Edius for years, and not using Premiere since 6.5 - how on earth can anyone work with this appalling software? the media encoder is so limited and slow in the extreme, as well as failing constantly, I'm at a loss as how to get my project off this platform in one piece. My project is 4 mins 50 secs, RED 2k and I'm trying to render out a 1920x1080 lossless avi, it takes over 2 hours and always fails with "unknown error" this on an 8 core quad machine - hopeless indeed. What on earth would you do if your project was 2 hours long? Paul __________________ Another Sunny Day in Ibiza