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Adobe After Effects Help
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You can use multiple systems to render only single-frame sequences; you cannot use
multiple systems to render movies. You can use any combination of Windows or MacOS
systems.
Note: If you are rendering a project using Production Bundle effects on multiple systems,
each system must be running the Production Bundle version of After Effects.
To render a single-frame sequence with multiple systems:
1 Install After Effects on each system that will be rendering the project. Make sure that
you have the same fonts installed on each system.
Note: Do not share plug-ins across a network. Make sure that you have a copy of the plug-
ins folder on each system that is running After Effects. When using third-party plug-ins,
also be sure that the same plug-ins are available on all systems and that you have suffi-
cient licenses for the plug-ins.
2 Open the project on one system, and then choose Composition > Add to Render
Queue.
3 In the Render Queue window, specify the Skip Existing Files option in the Render
Settings section so that multiple systems do not render the same frames. Make sure that
the Use Storage Overflow option is deselected.
4 In the Render Queue window, specify a single-frame sequence in the Output Module
section and specify a folder in the Output To section. This folder must be available for all
the systems that are rendering.
5 Save the project on the system where you opened it in step 2.
6 On each system that will be rendering, open and save the project. This ensures that
After Effects records the new relative paths to each system in the following step.
7 Unless the network can handle large file transfers rapidly, copy the project file and all its
source footage to each system that will be rendering.
8 Open the Render Queue window on each system and click Render. You do not need to
start rendering on each system simultaneously, but to ensure equal workloads, start them
at approximately the same time. As each system finishes rendering a frame, After Effects
searches the Output folder for the next unrendered frame and starts rendering again.
9 You can stop and start any system at any time. However, if you stop a system without
starting it again, the frame that it was rendering may not be finished. If one or more
systems stop during rendering, starting any one system will ensure that all frames in the
sequence get rendered.
Network performance
There is no limit to the number of systems you can use for rendering; in general, the more
systems, the faster the rendering. However, if too many systems are used across a busy
network, network traffic may be significant enough to slow down the entire process. You
can detect network slowdown by observing the time spent in the Compressing & Writing
stage in the Show Details section of the Render Queue window.
Note: Adobe does not provide technical support for general network configuration;
consult your network administrator.
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Rendering a Movie
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