Adobe 65008009 - After Effects CS4 Using Manual page 734

Last updated 12/21/2009
When you have multiple render engines on multiple computers monitoring a watch folder, they cooperate to achieve
optimal efficiency. If your queued render items are set to Skip Existing Files (a Render Settings option), the render
engines all work on a single render item at once—no render engine renders any frame another render engine has
already worked on. If this option is not selected, each render engine handles a render item itself.
Rhys Enniks provides a video tutorial on
render a composition with a watch folder.
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A
Computer with full version of After Effects (A) saves a project and all source files to a folder (B) on a server. Computers with the render engine
installed (C) open the project and render a still-frame sequence to a designated output folder (D) on the server.
Network considerations
When working with multiple render engines on multiple computers, keep in mind the following guidelines:
• When possible, identify folders using absolute file paths so that the paths are correctly identified for all render
engines. Identifying folders using absolute file paths may mean mapping network drives to a particular drive letter
on all computers (for example, H:\renders\watch\). Avoid using relative paths (for example, \\renders\watch).
• Each Macintosh computer monitoring the watch folder must have a unique name. Because the default names of
computers are often identical, you should rename your computers to not use the default name.
• Make sure that all servers and clients (computers monitoring the watch folder) have hard drives with unique names.
• Do not use the same computer to serve a watch folder and to run After Effects in Watch Folder mode. Use a
dedicated server that's accessible to all render engines to serve your watch folder.
• Do not render to or initiate Watch Folder mode on the root of a volume or a shared folder that appears as the root
when viewed from another computer. Specify a subfolder instead. Also, avoid using high-ASCII or other extended
characters and slashes in filenames. For multiple-computer rendering, After Effects includes the Multi-Machine
sample template that you can use as a starting point.
When rendering across a network that includes volumes using different network or operating systems, such as
Windows, Mac OS, Novell, and UNIX, make sure that you specify output files using a file-naming convention that's
compatible with all rendering or destination volumes.
Project considerations
Make sure that you install all fonts, effects, and encoders (compressors) used in the project on all computers
monitoring the watch folder. If a computer monitoring the watch folder can't find fonts, effects, or encoders used in a
project, the render fails.
his website that demonstrates the use of multiple computers on a network to
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USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
Rendering and exporting