The crashes I had were due to 3rd party plugins. I am slowly replacing AE with Blender now, but for certain stuff I still like it.
Also as an additional thought, is it really that good that they make such a big software that can be crashed because of a plugin? They know there will be a plugin Zoo out there, they know the plugins sometimes have to use GPU on their own, which brings many troubles with drivers etc, - they still can't manage to just isolate in in their own processes? Plugins are used all the time, it's an industry of itself. Company of the size of Adobe can't foresee that some plugins will be unstable and they need to take care of it? The dreaded chrome can isolate websites in their own processes, Adobe can't do the same with a mere plugin??
Sometimes this kind of thing turns out to be memory with a problem at some address. :/
Now, it's possible that this was technically the other programs' fault, but on the other hand you can't blame them for not testing their video playback with all different filters installed. Why does Adobe add these filters globally with a high ranking if they're not drop-in-replacements for the 'normal' ones?
Adobe's video editing suite of latest versions is actually well known to be buggy in terms of regular crashes and hangings. It took me many months to realize that the problem was not inferior CPU or drivers or other software or virtual machines or little memory, but that their software is straight up buggy. That's a company that charges hundreds of dollars for their suite and also a company that had a perfectly good software before and have also basically owned the market before. Now it is buggy and crashes. What other software even crashes these days? I have to think back several years when I remember office suites crashing or other complicated software. It is really a disgrace on Adobe's part. This is not a single user experience either, there is a general consensus now among video editors that this is the case with Premiere and After Effects.