Keylight Crashing After Effects

[betterfeelingfilms]

Hello,

For the past few weeks Keylight has been crashing on me constantly while i use Ram Preview. It's a right pain especially when you are working on a green screen heavy project with a deadline looming. Several weeks ago it worked fine, no issues. However recently its just been crashing non stop, after checking my events viewer every error log states 'KEYLIGHT' as the problem. I currently have the newest most up to date version of the the software, have tried uninstalling/reinstalling the software, tried downgrading to previous versions of After Effects and have even re installed windows several times. I even changed my graphics card in a hope that would solve the issue but nope. My new graphics card driver is up to date and I have tried the keylight 1.2v16 update via The Foundry

I have contacted Adobe Technical support but they said that it's an issue with Keylight and to take it up with the. I have tried to get in contact with the Foundry numerous times via male and phone... but to no avail.

I have noticed several people have a similar issue to me, and I was wondering if they have found a solution to this?

I have attached images of my specs and error logs -

Previous Graphics Card

GIGABYTE - Graphics Card - NVIDIA - PCI Express Solution - GeForce 600 Series - GV-N650OC-2GI (rev. ...

Current Graphics Card

GIGABYTE - Graphics Card - NVIDIA - PCI Express Solution - GeForce 900 Series - GV-N960IXOC-4GD

I would really appreciate any help you guys could give me as this is affecting my job and I really have no idea what to do at this point.

Thanks,

Oliver Jones

[Szalam]

The GPU doesn't matter because the current version of AE doesn't use the GPU for much of anything.

What format and codec is the footage you're applying Keylight to?

[betterfeelingfilms]

They are MOV files taken from my 5D mk3 camera. I haven't had this issue before and have done several entirely green screen music videos with the camera, computer and After Effects 2015.

[Szalam]

So they're encoded with the h.264 codec. Try transcoding that footage to a proper production codec (Cineform, DNxHD, QuickTime with the PNG codec, etc.) and do the keying on that.

[supinders21917674]

thanks a lot , it worked 

[Szalam]

Alternatively, try downloading AE CC 2014 and use it instead. You can simply open your current project in CC 2014 - no need for any "save as" junk to get it to work!

AE CC 2015 is the first step in a major re-architecture, separating the renderer from the UI for the first time in AE's 20+ year history. This is a big job and it's clearly still in progress. It's a necessary

step for improving After Effects performance, but it's taking a while (and multiple versions) for them to get through it. So, during this time of transition as they're introducing elements of the new

architecture, sometimes it may be easier to use the older version to get a job done.

How to Find and Install Previous Version of Adobe Apps in CC 2015

[betterfeelingfilms]

I did downgrade to CC 2014 and It was still crashing. I will try and transcoding it and will get back to you.

Thanks for your help

[Dave_LaRonde]

I bet transcoding helps.  A lot.  The image quality coming out of H.264 may be just good enough to fool the human eye, but it's very computationally intense.  The first thing I do when I get H.264 footage is transcode.

[betterfeelingfilms]

Hello,

Thanks for all your suggestions. Sadly DNxHD still crashes, but I might be in luck with the Quicktime with PNG codec. Could you please suggest the best export settings for that.

Thanks

[Szalam]

If you're keying on DNxHD footage and it's still crashing, the footage isn't likely the issue. But if you want to try, just keep the quality level over 90 quality and you should be good.

[betterfeelingfilms]

Hello all,

Thanks for all you suggestions so far. I have now tried transcoding the footage using various different codecs - Quicktime with both Pro Res and PNG and and DNxHD, and it still continues to crash. To say this is frustrating is understatement.

[Szalam]

Have you tried contacting Adobe support? If you do, please let us know what they had you do and if it worked.

[betterfeelingfilms]

I have contacted Adobe Technical support but they said that it's an issue with Keylight and to take it up with them. I have tried to get in contact with the Foundry numerous times via e-mail and phone... but to no avail.

[davidw47313387]

Same thing here too

Spent so long testing my ram and such cause I felt one of the sticks was bad (Dropped it pretty hard)

Ram previews in keylight cause a crash

Messing with keylight settings too long? Crash

Pretty capable computer I just built a few months ago

I7 67k

DDR4 64 GB

Samsung evo SSD (x2)

windows 10 pro (a real copy)

GTX 960 FTW 4gb

Let me know when you plan to storm the adobe castle and flip cars over and burn shit. Ive got matches

[davidw47313387]

UPDATE

I also tried contacting the foundry via email. Just letting em know the specs of my computer, how new it was and what i was doing when keylight would crash (literally anything that involves moving settings or the timeline) and that there clearly was a bug.

A work around is to use PRIMATTE keyer from redgiant ($400!) Takes awhile to understand but works just as good, if not better than keylight

[Szalam]

Or, instead of buying a new plugin, you could try the Ultra Keyer in Premiere Pro. You would need to render the result with the alpha channel out of Premiere for further compositing in AE, perhaps, but that's easy to do. (QuickTime with the PNG codec set to RGB+A should do it.)

[Paul_Whishaw]

I'm starting to get crashes in AE also. I started with Premiere's key tool but that was even worse for crashing. Really bad. Up until 13.8.1.38 I had never experienced a crash using Keylight in AE.

[ProKaader]

I haven't had any issues with Keylight in last 8 years but when I updated to the latest AE CC 17 I have crashes in every two minutes. My project contains multiple layers with Keylight and I can't even disable the plugins, it just shows error and lets me save another copy and then stops working every time I open the project. Same happening with new projects. Someone please fix this.

[ProKaader]

This is the error I get.

[Roei Tzoref]

try this after making sure your are using 14.0.1 version:

1. make sure you GPU driveris up to date

2. see if under preferences->display you got Hardware acceleration. if you do - turn it OFF and see

3. clear you cache under preferences->media & disk cache

bare in mind you can still use other versions alongside your current one. see if this happens in 2015.3, (you will need to save a copy as CC (13))

[ProKaader]

So I reinstalled and unchecked the box "use hardware acceleration" but still no luck. I did not get the timestamp error but AE just showed me the dialog box "you have one last chance to save your project..." and then it quit. My project's due date is in couple of days and I'm out of ideas. Have not had such issues with previous versions.

[tcerci]

I still use Adobe cc 2015.3 (4). I have here massive crash-problems (nearly every move), too. I use keylight and several layers. I have the impression, it crashes more often, if I use pre blur. I also use matte and treshold. keylight I use in the "combined matte" view. codec: prores 4:2:2.. I am afraid to upgrade to cc 2017, because I have to finish projects till the end of this year and unexpected problems would be too much. Best greetz.

[Szalam]

tcerci wrote:

I am afraid to upgrade to cc 2017, because I have to finish projects till the end of this year and unexpected problems would be too much.

Remember, if you twirl down the "advanced options" and un-tick the box that removes older versions during the "update" to AE CC 2017, you can install the latest version of After Effects alongside the version you are currently using. (And, don't forget that you can also install older versions alongside the newer versions too including versions as old as CS6.) So, you can use CC 2014 to see if it crashes less (probably). And you can try CC 2017 to see if it crashes less (maybe).

[fuzzy34 · Accepted solution]

I know this thread is almost a year old but I have been having the same issue. However, once I turned "Pre Blur" back to "0" I have not had a crash. Knock on wood. That is the fix.

[solomons36702806]

August 2018: Yeah, so oddly enough Pre Blur is the issue for me as well. I can adjust everything else that I need to, just can't touch Pre Blur or the whole thing crashes.