Red Giant Software recently released an update for Particular. This updated version (2.1.1) appears to address some crashes that we have seen with other 2.x versions.
So, if you use Trapcode Particular, now is a good time to go and get the update.
You should also be sure to install the recent After Effects updates. There are a lot of bug fixes in the recent updates.
We’ve gotten a few reports of crashes when applying the Directional Blur effect (and modifying its properties) in After Effects CS5 on a 12-core Mac.
First, we want to thank everyone who submitted a bug report. The detailed bug reports helped us to narrow down the issue relatively quickly.
It appears that there’s an issue that only arises when a very large number of threads is used by the Directional Blur effect, and that number of threads is only attainable on a computer with a very large number of processor cores (like a 12-core Mac with hyperthreading).
The workaround that has worked for us in testing is to remove the Mthread plug-in before starting After Effects (e.g., by dragging the plug-in to the desktop). The plug-in is in the following folder: Applications/Adobe After Effects CS5/Plug-ins/Extensions
Removing the Mthread plug-in disables multithreading, which prevents the effect from creating the overly large number of threads. Of course, this also means that you won’t get the significant performance improvement of multithreaded effects, so you probably don’t want to remove the Mthread plug-in unless you really need to get past the crash caused by the Directional Blur effect. You should put the Mthread plug-in back after you’ve gotten past the crashing issue with the Directional Blur effect.
If you have encountered a crash with the Directional Blur effect, please let us know whether this workaround works for you by responding on this thread. (Don’t respond in comments on this blog post. It’s much harder to have a conversation in comments on a blog post than on a forum thread.)
We are working on a much better fix now that addresses the issue with the effect plug-in directly.
In a previous post (“ProRes 4444 and ProRes 422 in After Effects CS5″), I noted that previews of ProRes 422 media looked very wrong (blue and pink) when AJA Kona software was installed.
AJA provided us with a pre-release version of their updated software, and it fixed the issue for us in our testing. Now, the 8.1 version of the AJA Kona software has been released for several of their devices, and we’ve been seeing lots of reports that this is fixing the issue of blue and pink previews with ProRes media.
So, if you’re using AJA Kona hardware, go and get the up-to-date drivers, and let us know whether this fixes this issue for you.
Please respond on this forum thread. Don’t respond in the comments on this blog post. It’s a lot easier for us to communicate on a forum thread than in comments on a blog post.