Okay, it's getting ridiculous. I'm not able to export from After Effects via Media Encoder anymore. I tried my luck with three different projects that all have a completely different timeline, different effects, everything. The export fails no matter what. Please, how am I supposed to work professionally with this software? Our clients don't care why we can't meet a deadline, we can't tell them "Well... The biggest software for motion graphics on the market isn't able to export your film. Sorry."

Pre-render everything takes time and disk space. Please fix this.

The reason you're experiencing this error is due to a dropped frame. Find the frame, cut it and you will be able to render.

Bill Luton's idea worked for me. Thank you, Bill! Perhaps the Warp Stabilizer sometimes corrupts a frame, maybe when speed or transitions are used (I had both). That corrupt frame might prevent the processing.

Happens to me at least once per project. I've had it happen when there's no video on screen. Done everything under the sun to mitigate this but resigned to believe it's all down to a coin-flip. Will the gods smile down on your render, or will you be smote? Only time will tell.

If the error comes from the Adobe native exporter you could try AfterCodecs Exporter https://www.autokroma.com/AfterCodecs

OMFG this error is killing me!

Been spending 3 bloody days on a 20 sec. vid that kept failing. First only managed to render at 480p.

Minimized the amount of comps, effects and other bells/whistles to finally get a 720p render.

Played around with GPU/nonGPU rendering and bitrate to finally randomly have it succeed at 1080p

To get it to 4K, I had to divide up the 20 secs in 4 pieces of various lengths, rendered those seperately, recombined them, again fiddled with the export settings and it finally worked!

For crying out loud this SUCKED DONKEY BALLS!

So, what I discovered is that there is a dropped frame in the video when I applied Video Transitions. I had 8 fails in a row and so I started watching it being processed in the Media Encoder and where it failed. I slow scrubbed in that area and a black screen would appear. I stopped in the balck frame and applied the Razor Tool and rescrubbed to make sure there was no dropped frame. Boom, it worked... at least for me and stopped the GPU fail..

This is beyond frustrating. It's unfortunate to see that this was and still is an issue after so long. I really wish it would just work reliably so I don't have to stress about my edits all the time at work

2021 Still having this error on a 2020 iMac.

This is ridiculous. One problem, apparently thousands of people encountering it and hundreds of potential reasons. I tried changing/removing/switching on and off like 15 different potential causes found throughout dozens of pages all around the Internet, and I still can't get a simple composition of still photos rendered.

First, I have to point out to my very basic, begginer knowledge. I've watched a bunch on videos on YT, read a lot of stuff regarding exporting problems, whether it's a GPU, acceleration, frame or any other error.
I've tried a bunch of things, but selectiong software only on rendering or on preview or both is a workarround, that I simply can not accept - why to buy and use expensive graphic cards if in the end you have to turn it off to be able to export.
Yesterday I found something that was letting me export 2 projects, that I couldn't export before that simple trick, so I have my fingers crossed it will work again the next time.
I have selected GPU/hardware both on project settings and in export media window - so no software! The trick is to select all files in project you want to export and copy them. Create a new sequence with same video settings, paste them and export it.
I have tried bunch of different approaches, but none of them worked in a way that I could repeat it succesfully. With other methods was just pure luck... One time did work, second time didn't. Hope it helps...

@guy bashan
TO AVOID THIS ERROR AND FULLY RENDER YOUR PROJECT,
Don't render straight off your timeline. Create render previews first.
First, click on your sequence, then go to Sequence > sequence settings.
Make sure that your video previews Width and Height are the SAME as your Video Frame size horizontal and vertical values.
Also, you may wish to use Preview File Format: GoPro Cineform (YUV 10-bit) rather than the default .mpeg.
say OK.
Now, put your In and Out points around your entire video, and select Sequence > render in to out.
Now sit back and watch it pre-render. If you hit the error again, you can just dismiss it. The rendering will stop, but you'll still keep almost everything you rendered so far. SAVE your project, and then move your IN point much closer to where the render failed. Try render in to out again. If it still gives you that error, save and restart premiere.
Keep doing this until the whole timeline has green render previews.
Now, you can smart render directly to .mov if you render with "use sequence settings" and "use previews" checked ON. It'll happen in mere minutes. Then, you'll convert that .mov file to whatever you want, using media encoder.
Alternatively, you can just turn on "use previews" and render directly to H.264 .mp4 or whatever else you like.
Keep in mind that render timeline previews can take up a lot of storage space. They live in a folder named "\Adobe Premiere Pro Video Previews"

This is incredible to the level of beyond explanation. How can it be that a tool that already released million of versions already is so buggy and unstable at the most important part of its product: the EXPORT.
It is really unbelievable, I simply can't work with this thing. It keeps failing on exports all the time. I succeed 1 of 5 exports and each export is 2.5 hours, so try to imaging how many times I have to start over. I change NOTHING in my project. Just export again and again and again. My hardware is working PERFECT and my disk has ZERO errors.
Someone need to sue this company on all the wasted time it caused to people.
It takes to import a project on premier around 1 week. Something similar that I do from my iPhone in 20 mins..
CRAZY. CRAZY. CRAZY.

2021 still having this issue (with an RTX 3060 ti GPU)... how exhausting!

@Tyrone Steele
Switching from Hardware GPU to Software render mode doesn't solve the problem. It's a workaround, but the software render is much slower than GPU render.

SOLVED!!!!
Set your Media Export to Software, not Hardware GPU (within the Media Export dialogue)
You may or may choose 1 pass or 2 passes. I've only tested single pass.
And increase your Windows Paging file to at least 55GB -

Restart the machine

I was able to export an entire 6K 30 minute film.
And PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED.

I had the same error, I solved it by changing the composition settings from HDTV 1080 25 to HDV 1080. It worked for me

I’ve experience this issue for 5 years!!!!!!

If it can be exported with software only the it should be able to be exported with CUDA!

I just spent few hours trying to render a simple, 3-minute sequence, with nothing but a few audio, video and jpg files. Deleted all the Lumetri color filters, still nothing. This is ridiculous.

2020 and its still happening...