Dynamic Link failure in Premiere Pro and After Effects CS6 [Windows 7]

[fraktiv]

Just a heads-up, but I had a complete failure of Dynamic Link today between AE and PPro (in either direction), and spent a long while discussing with customer and tech support, with no solution forthcoming.

To all intents, it looked like a corruption of the Dynamic Link DLLs or similar code, and as a side-effect, QuickTime dependent files were also failing to play (I'm on a PC system). The errors I received all centered around Dynamic Link not being able to start when I tried to import PPro into AE or AE into PPro, either via the 'File > Adobe Dynamic Link' menu, via 'Import' or concerning AE comps already on a PPro timeline. Attempting to re-link media in PPro also failed (though without any errors).

I tried numerous fixes, including de/re-activating, multiple restarts, internet disconnection, etc, but to no avail and was about to try a full reinstall.

However, and by chance, I found the culprit to be a malware app that installs silently (no idea how mine was installed) and is frequently not detected by spyware/anti-virus tools. The offending malware is called RelevantKnowledge, and installs as a DLL to track browser activity. On a Windows system, you may see a small globe-type icon in your system tray indicating its presence, but sometimes (I gather) this is hidden. Standard add/remove via Windows doesn't remove the app, only the entry, and it must be manually removed from 'Program Files', though some DLLs and the folder will not remove until you reboot. You may also have to check that the silently installed add-on in Firefox (etc) has been disabled, so more than one restart may be required.

Once removed, Dynamic Link was back, as was QT playback. Obviously, reinstalling (which was tech support's suggestion), would not have had any effect even if I had taken that course of action, as I believe the malware works by blocking some TCP/IP ports that Dynamic Link utilises (I may be wrong, but this seems to be the only explicable cause).

Hopefully this issue won't affect any of you, but please do check this if you get any Dynamic Link weirdness, and don't lose a day like I have just done, or worse still, hope that reinstalling will fix things!

[Jim_Simon]

silently installed add-on in Firefox

What version.  Firefox a while back eliminated the ability for plug-ins to silently install.  Now they require user confirmation first.  (Though admittedly I do use Nightly, which may have features not yet baked into the Stable Release.)

[fraktiv]

I'm on 16.0.1, and it's not so much that it installs silently - there was a prompt for this plugin, I seem to remember, which I refused (and it was marked as disabled in FF's add-ons panel) - but that it 'hooks in' to Firefox and all other browsers whether you like it or not, and seems to reside as a system/background process, pouncing on browser activity whatever flavour of browser that might be.

[Todd_Kopriva]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'll share a link to this thread with our technical support staff so that they can see another example of software that interferes with our software through blocking TCP.

I also added a note to my article here to point to your example on this forum thread.

[bomaeremie]

Is there any particular software that could be interrupting the Adobe Dynamiclink?

[John T Smith]

All this is very interesting... some people here say to have 2 computers... 1 for editing and the other for everything else, including Internet access

I don't have office space or $$ for that, so use my one computer for everything

I am "reasonably" careful about web sites I visit (always knowing that even a "good" web site may be hacked) and rely on Norton Internet Security to keep me safe in case I do visit a hacked web site... so far, as far as I know, I have not had any problems

I also use http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-linux.htm to make a full system backup 2-3 times a year, so I may do a full restore in case of problems... with only any new data files between backups that I need to individually copy to backups

The only time I have ever actually done a restore from my Image backup was to install a new boot drive... but that worked perfectly

[Jim_Simon]

Here's something from McAfee.

"Relevantknowledge is not a virus. It is a genuine software. If you find it annoying, you can uninstall it from control panel. You can read more about this software on their website relevantknowledge.com

I think spyware is not the right term becasue software is installed with user's knowledge and permission and can be removed easily using uninstall program from the control panel. It's not malicious. It is just a program that gathers some information about user's browsing habits. It is a genuine piece of software."

Seems you may not have refused the plug-in after all, which makes more sense as Firefox is pretty secure against this kind of thing.

[bomaeremie]

Hi. I run Windows 8. My Adobe Media Encoder no longer imports projects from Premiere Pro CS4 or After Effects.

I get the Dynamilink Errror message. Please how do I fix it?

I have also gone through the uninstallation and stuff...no show.

[bomaeremie]

Right now I am uninstalling all the stuff I installed from last week to see if any will unlock my AME...

[JonOfAllGames]

I'm having this same problem with no sign of the malware present, I've done everything under google about this sort of problem to the point of a complete format and reinstall of windows. Works at first then hardly at all after. Usually will work once after reboot but then I have no idea.

For me it only seems to be Ppro that wont import into AME. And yes it is a Dynamic link server problem because thats what is trying to connect to everytime you queue up a project. (even though it would seem you are not using a dynamic link in the sense of importing AE to Ppro or vice versa)

Help!

Jon

[srukweza-PhMhaR]

I just had exactly the same problem and fixed it by following the instructions from fraktiv.