Error "Could not convert Unicode characters" | After Effects

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Applies to: Adobe After Effects Adobe After Effects CS4 Adobe After Effects CS5

某些 Creative Cloud 应用程序、服务和功能在中国不可用。

Issue

The following error occurs when you start or use After Effects CS3, CS4, or CS5:

"After Effects error: Could not convert Unicode characters. (23::46)"

Solutions

Solution 1: Use single-byte characters for filenames, paths, and hard disks.

Change instances of multibyte characters (such as Chinese, Hebrew, or Japanese characters) to single-byte characters (such as English characters). 

Solution 2: Replace the AMT.zdct file for the target language.

Mac OS

  1. Open the Applications/Adobe After Effects CS5 (or CS3 or CS4) folder.

  2. Right-click the Adobe After Effects CS4 application icon and choose Show Package Contents.

  3. Open the Content/Resources/AMT Languages folder.

  4. Note the name of the .txt file in this folder, which is the code for the language that After Effects was installed in. This language is the target language. For example, US English is en_US, Turkish is tr_TR, Russian is ru_RU, and so on. A list of commonly used language codes is available here.

  5. Go back to the Resources folder and open the AMT folder.

  6. Open the folder named with the target language code you identified in step 4.

  7. Place a tilde character (~) at the beginning the AMT.zdct filename. This step causes After Effects to ignore the file, but preserves this file as a backup.

  8. Go back to the AMT folder and open the folder for en_US.  (You can also choose other languages that are unaffected by this problem, such as fr_FR for French or es_ES for Spanish.)

  9. Copy the AMT.zdct file from this folder to the target language folder, from step 6. To copy the file, hold down the Option key while dragging it from one folder to the other. Or, select the file and choose File > Duplicate, then move the file to the other folder and remove "Copy" from the end of the filename.

  10. Launch After Effects.

Windows

  1. Open the Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS4 (or CS3)\Support Files\AMT Languages folder.

  2. Note the name of the .txt file in this folder, which is the code for the language that After Effects was installed in.  This language is the target language. For example, US English is en_US, Turkish is tr_TR, Russian is ru_RU, and so on. A list of commonly used language codes is available here.

  3. Go back to the Support Files folder and then open the AMT folder.

  4. Open the folder named with the target language code you identified in step 2.

  5. Place a tilde character (~) at the beginning the AMT.zdct filename. This step causes After Effects to ignore the file, but preserves this file as a backup.

  6. Go back to the AMT folder and open the folder for en_US.  (You can also choose other languages that are unaffected by this problem, such as fr_FR for French or es_ES for Spanish.)

  7. Copy the AMT.zdct file from this folder to the target language folder, from step 4.  Select the file, choose Edit > Copy, navigate back to the target language folder, and choose Edit > Paste.

  8. Launch After Effects. 

Additional information

The AMT.zdct files contain text phrases for menu items that are translated for specific languages. A problem in After Effects prevents it from translating special characters used in some languages correctly if the OS language does not support those characters.

After Effects was installed in a language that uses a non-Roman Unicode or Cyrillic character set on an OS that doesn't match the language. For example, you installed After Effects in Turkish on an English OS.

Affected languages include the following:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese, Simplified
  • Chinese, Traditional
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian