AE CS4 crashes on startup (Mac OSX 10.5.5) : Adobe After Effects

After Effects CS4 refuses to start on my Macbook Pro (osx 10.5.5 with 4gb ram). It gets as far as 'Initializing MediaCore' on the splash-screen then crashes.

Interestingly After Effects CS3 works perfectly.

Premier CS4 does the same as well as Encore CS4.

I have tried uninstalling, using the clean-script several times now and all don't seem to work.

Make sure your hardware drivers are up to date.

There really aren't any drivers as such - OSX 10.5.5 is the very latest that contains all new up-to-date hardware 'drivers'

Try removing the OpenGL plugin which can often cause startup errors in AE with certain graphics cards. It lives in the plugins/extensions folder.

@Nic: thanks for that. Gave it a go and it still crashes. I don't understand how CS3 works fine yet CS4 doesn't

You may have created a mess of your MediaCore libraries. The CS4 versions should be in place, but obviously never were correctly installed. Or you may have no rights to read the newly created folder. I'm not sure, as on my MacBook Pro with identical config the same scenario works perfectly, so it must be merely one of those minor things. I would check your "Library:Application Support:Adobe" directory and all its sub-folders, in particular for permissions. you should also see separate directories for CS3 and CS4. If not, something is definitely up...

Mylenium

@Mylenium: thanks for the advice. I've checked but everything seems ok. Is it possible there is a problem with some Quicktime codecs? I installed Perian recently but uninstalled when I installed AE CS4...

Was there ever a resolution to this, I have the exact same problem. Thanks.

You are entitled to free support from Adobe for these kinds of installation and "getting started" issues. Contact Adobe via phone, find a local phone number at <http://adobe.com/support/>

These kinds of issues are very complicated to solve via a web forum, so call Adobe directly to get help.

The only reason not to get phone assistance is if you haven't actually bought a license, in which case you probably know why you're having problems...

- Jonas Hummelstrand
<http://generalspecialist.com/>

I fixed this problem. I formatted the drive and reinstalled everything and it works fine now! I tried unpicking my way through codec's etc but ended up just tearing out my hair.