Footage I import into After Effects all comes out green and distorted

[willabs]

Hi there,

When I import a movie clip into After Effects it appears green and distorted.

I have tried .mov and .mp4 files and they are the same.  I have tried files saved on my computer and files downloaded from Adobe Stock via the Library

Here is a screen shot:

Can anyone help me please?

Thanks in advance!

[Mike_Abbott]

Open the movies in an independent player - QT movie player, windows movie player, VLC etc - do they look corrupted as above? If so, probably a corrupted video file.

[willabs]

Hi, thanks for the help.  No they are fine an independent player.  They are also fine when I open them up in Premier Pro.

[Mike_Abbott]

OK - my next thought would be to check your video drivers are reasonably up to date and also look in prefrences under the Display section and try switching the  'Hardware accelerate...' option off to see if that affects matters.

[willabs]

Thank you, the video driver seems to be the up to date version.  I've tried switching Hardware Acceleration off and that made no difference.

[Mike_Abbott]

What I would do is take your footage and either do a simple 'save as' in a player that shows it OK, or if that offers no joy, re-export it out of a player or Premiere.

[willabs]

Hi Mike, thanks again, I already tried re-exporting it from premier pro but no joy.  It seems to be every video file I try in After Effects not just one certain file.

[Mike_Abbott]

Ah, OK.

1. Might be worth trying: Prefs > Media & Disk Cache...

Empty disk cache, also Clean Database & Cache.

If that doesn't help... you could try a full prefs reset.

Hold down Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) Option Shift immediately on launch - you'll get a small dialog asking if you want to reset prefs.

Let's hope this works - I'm running out of ideas... : )

[willabs]

Thanks Mike, I tried both of those things and neither worked.  I also uninstalled AE and reinstalled it but no joy.

[willabs]

OK so I exported the green distored footage via Media Encoder and it came out perfect!

So does that mean its only the AE preview that's messed up?

[willabs · Accepted solution]

OMG I just solved the problem, and I feel like an idiot... I had the preview window set to half... changed it to full and the footage appears as it should.

Thanks for your time Mike

[Mike_Abbott]

Glad you got it fixed : )

These sort of things can be a real head scratcher... Not sure why it was doing that even at half rez...

Anyway - you got it fixed, that's the main thing.

[Little-Bacchus]

I know this is for some time ago but so happy you made this mistake as I have just spent 20 mis in panic as I'd done exactly the smae thing.