How to resolve the “Unspecified Drawing” error in After Effects

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Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effect, animation, and compositing application developed by Adobe Systems and used in the post-production process of movies, video games, and television programs. After Effects can be used for key creation, tracking, compositing, and animation, among other things. It also works as a basic non-linear editor, audio editor, and multimedia transcoder.

After Effects users encountered an “Unspecified drawing error” just before the program crashed. Other affected users report that this error serves only as a warning to them, as they can continue to use After Effects after closing the command line.

This problem can be problematic and interfere with the application, but in this IR Cache article, we have some solutions that will surely help you fix this error.

What is the cause of the After Effects unspecified drawing error?

It turns out that several different causes can cause this particular error in After Effects. Here’s a shortlist of possible culprits:

Insufficient permissions: If you encounter this problem in Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, the After Effects executable may not have the necessary administrative access to perform certain tasks. In this case, you can solve the problem by making the main executable run as an administrator.

Damaged After Effects folder: In some cases, this error may occur because the After Effects folder in the My Documents folder is corrupted. If this scenario applies, you can solve the problem by making the operating system ignore this preference folder using the “old” extension.

Faulty custom workspace: If you are using a custom workspace, this problem may arise from a fairly common After Effects bug that causes the program to crash in certain configurations. To solve this problem, you must revert to the default workspace.

Conflict with the Audio panel: In some versions of After Effects, this error has been known to occur only when the user brings the Audio panel to the foreground. If you’re looking for a quick fix, you’ll need to remove the Audio panel from your workspace to fix the problem.

How to fix the After Effects Unspecified Drawing Error



Restore Mac from Time Machine

1. Reboot your Mac and hold down Command + R.
2. Once you see the Apple logo or a spinning globe, release the keys.
3. Select Restore from Time Machine backup and click Next.
4. Now select the desired Time Machine backup and click Continue.

Some users have reported that this method helped them fix the “Unspecified drawing Adobe After Effects” error on Mac, so try it if other solutions didn’t work for you.

Updating After Effects

The “Unspecified drawing” error was reported on Macs running Big Sur. According to Adobe staff, the problem can be resolved by updating After Effects to the latest version.

The Big Sur update changed or removed many components of the operating system, so many users get this error.

However, you can download the latest version on their website and use it to fix the error.

Deleting plugin directories

1. Go to the following path:
   / Library / Application Support / Adobe / General / Plugins / 7.0 / MediaCore.
2. Remove the plugin directories one by one and try to run After Effects after each removed plugin.

This is an easy workaround, but it will work if you get the warning: Character Error is not specified in Big Sur.

Updating the plugins

1. Check your After Effects plugins.
2. If any plugins are out of date, they should be updated.

Many users have reported that updating their plugins has eliminated the “Unspecified drawing” error in After Effects. Therefore, we recommend that you try this solution.

Running as an administrator

1. First of all, make sure that After Effects is completely closed. Make sure that the icon in the system tray is not running in the background, whether it’s After Effects or Creative Cloud.
2. Then right-click on the main After Effects file and choose Run as Administrator from the context menu. When prompted by User Account Control, click Yes to grant administrative access.
3. When After Effects is open, repeat the action that caused the “Figure not specified” error and see if the problem persists. If you conclude that this action fixed the problem, follow the instructions below to make the changes permanent.
4. If the same error still occurs, go to the next solution below.
5. Right-click the After Effects executable again and choose Properties from the context menu that appears.
6. On the Properties menu, click on the Compatibility tab, then go to Preferences and select the Run this program as administrator checkbox.
7. Finally, click the Apply button to save your changes and open After Effects again to see if the problem is resolved.

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