I just updated to AE 2021 (18.0) and track mattes are suddenly not working in the timeline. It's an incredibly basic thing, I have footage on layer 2 and I want to use layer 1 (directly above it) as the matte. Pretty straightforward. But when I set layer 2 to Alpha Matte, nothing happens. It does turn Layer 1 off, as it's supposed to, but Layer 2 is still visible even outside the bounds of Layer 1. I can move Layer 2 around the frame and it's not being masked at all by layer 1, it just shows the entire unmasked layer.

See the attached screenshots as an example using simple shape layers. In the first image, Layer 1 is the matte layer, in red. Layer 2 is the footage layer, in green. In the second image, I've set the TrkMat of Layer 2 to Alpha Matte, which turns off Layer 1 of course. But Layer 2 is still visible in its entirety. We should just be seeing it where it intersects Layer 1.

Both layers are at 100% opacity and show as solid white alphas against black in the Show Channel button.

It doesn't have anything to do with the footage or the comp, the bug presents itself even in a clean comp with simple shape layers. Track matte will not mask the layer in any way. This also happens with Luma Matte or Alpha/Luma Reverse Matte. The track matte simply has no effect.

I'm on a desktop Mac, OS 11.2.3 and Adobe AE 18.0. I've restarted and relaunched the app and the problem persists.

I re-installed AE 2020 (17.7.0) and that works fine, so it's definitely a bug particular to the latest version.

Turning on the 3D Reference Axis in 2020 causes an automatic crash.

For days I've been trying to figure out why some of my older projects were crashing in 2020 when I opened a comp, and I just realized it's because the 3D Reference Axis was on in those comps.

To recreate the problem, simply add a Camera layer to any comp, and turn on the 3D Reference Axis.

I'm on an iMac running Big Sur, but I get the same results on Catalina, and on a PC running Windows 10.

Please fix ASAP. I have products that clients can't open. It's especially urgent because people on Big Sur like myself can not open the projects in CC 2019, since AE CC 2019 is not compatible with Big Sur (Another MAJOR issue!)

Error 83::2 - String Memory Leak
I get this error message every time I log out of AE 2019 whilst using one particular project that involves a lot of imports. Will not open the files again later. I can work around it by importing the file into a new project, but once I save the NEW project, under a different name and go to quit the program, I get the same error message and rinse and repeat. I don't know which, if any, files are corrupt and the program otherwise acts normally until I try and close out the program.It doesn't generate an error report or anything, so I can't access that. When I try to reopen, whatever the error is causes the files to open part way, and then the application stops responding. Any thoughts? I've lost HOURS of work on this project every time.

I love the new drop down expression control effect in AE2020. Unfortunately though I have a bug on opening the project file. I get a dialog box similar to the attached screen grab for each instance I've used the drop-down menu as a master property. The code in the dialog changes for each instance.

For context, my project file features one precomp with a number of properties controlled by 3x dropdown menus on a control layer for colour, text option and positioning. That precomp is used in 5 other compositions, where using Master Properties I have used different drop down options for each. That means on opening the project file I get this dialog box 15 times (5x3 = 15).

It also doesn't save my previous combinations of master properties across the five comps, instead it will default back to whatever is the first option in the drop down – so I need to reset with every time I open the project, regardless of saving the project file.

Using AE 7.0.0 on macOS 10.14.4, MacBook Pro 15-inch 2018

Having an issue with the new 2020 update that was not happening with 2019. First off, a lot of things are quite laggy when clicked so take a long time to react. Sometimes it's a second or two, sometimes it's so long I start thinking AE is locked up. I can start playback on a section and then it won't stop (by hitting 0, clicking the playhead, hitting Space). Sometimes it takes a few seconds to respond and sometimes up to a minute. Several times now I actually had to force close AE just to make it stop playback.

I updated the P5200 driver as I saw nvidia posted a new driver three days ago. This didn't affect the AE issue though.