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Using Help | Contents
tories to complete their rendering tasks. Once you choose Collect Files, After Effects copies
the project or composition and all source files to the watch folder. For more information
on the Collect Files options, see "Collecting files in one location" on page 294.
Once the collected files appear in the watch folder, all monitoring render engines
start rendering automatically. If you prefer, you can use the Collect Files command to
store compositions and their source footage to a specified location and then initiate the
watch-folder rendering process later. Doing so renders the projects in alphabetical order,
rather than in the order in which they were saved to the location.
6 Monitor the progress of the render engines by using a Web browser to navigate to
HTML pages saved in the watch folder. After Effects generates these pages automatically
when the rendering begins. Click the Reload button in your Web browser to see the
updated status. If errors occur, these HTML pages will describe the errors.
After Effects renders the item to the specified destination folder, and if necessary, to the
overflow volumes you have specified in the Output preferences. When After Effects
finishes rendering all of the queued items in a given project, it closes that project without
saving it and then scans the watch folder for new projects to render. Because it doesn't
save the project, After Effects ignores the Import into Project When Done option if that's
set in the Render Queue Settings.
A
Computer with full version of After Effects Production Bundle (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.
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.
Rendering single-frame sequences on multiple systems
Although the preferred method of rendering for multiple systems is using the Watch
Folder feature, you can also use multiple systems and multiple copies of After Effects to
render a project across a network. Rendering in each copy of After Effects starts at approx-
imately the same time. By specifying that each copy skip existing frames or frames in
progress, multiple systems can render the project simultaneously, writing the single-frame
sequence to a single folder.
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B
D
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Rendering a Movie
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C
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