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Rendering using a watch folder (PB only)
The Production Bundle version provides a Watch Folder feature that speeds up the
rendering process on a network. If you have a full licensed copy of the Production Bundle,
you can set it up to work with render-only versions of After Effects. Your license entitles
you to install as many copies of the render engine as you want on your network, as long as
one copy of the Production Bundle is installed on that network.
When you have multiple render engines on multiple systems monitoring a watch folder,
they cooperate to achieve optimal efficiency. If your queued rendering items are set to
Skip Existing Files (a Render Settings option), the render engines will all work on a single
render item at once. If this option is not selected, each render engine handles a render
item itself.
Note: You cannot use multiple machines to render a single movie file. However, you can
use multiple machines to render a sequence of individual still-image files.
To set up a watch-folder rendering process:
1 Install the After Effects render engine on as many machines as you want to involve in
network rendering.
Note: If rendering time is unusually slow, you may be rendering to too many machines,
and the network overhead required to track rendering progress among all machines is out
of proportion to the time spent actually rendering frames. The optimal number depends
on many variables related to the network configuration and the machines on it; exper-
iment to determine the optimal number for your network.
2 Create a watch folder on a system that's accessible to all of the After Effects render
engines on your network. For example, create a folder called AE Watch Folder.
Note: All Windows machines monitoring the watched folder as a mapped network drive
must map that drive using the same drive letter. If this is a problem, make sure that the
machine creating or collecting the project does not access the volume being watched as a
mapped drive letter. For example, connect to the volume as \\network\watch instead of
X:\watch.
3 In each render engine, choose File > Watch Folder, and select the watch folder that
you've created.
4 Create your projects and compositions, and set them up in the Render Queue with the
render settings and output modules you want to use. For multiple-machine rendering,
After Effects includes a "Multi-machine" sample template that you can use as a starting
point.
5 Choose File > Collect Files to copy completed projects (which are set up to use the
Render Queue) to your specified watch folder. You must perform the collect-files process
using the full licensed copy of the Production Bundle. In the Collect Files dialog box, be
sure to select the Enable Watch Folder Render option. In addition, you may want to select
the Change Render Output To option, so that the output directories for each project are
stored in the watch folder. All of the render engines need access to these output direc-
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