User Guide

377

ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS 5.0

User Guide

Change Render Output To: Use to redirect the output modules to render ﬁles to a named

folder in the collected ﬁles folder. This option ensures that you have access to your

rendered ﬁles when you’re rendering the project from another system. Note that the

rendering status must be valid (Queued, Unqueued, or Will Continue) for the output

modules to render ﬁles to this folder.

Enable ‘Watch Folder’ render (PB only): You can use the Collect Files command to save

projects to a speciﬁed watch folder and then initiate watch-folder rendering over a

network. After Effects also includes a render control ﬁle called project name_RCF.txt,

which signals to watching systems that the project is available for rendering. After Effects

and any installed render engines can then render the project together across a network. For

more information about using the Watch Folder command, see “Rendering using a watch

folder (PB only)” on page 378.

For Maximum Number of Machines (PB only): Use to specify the number of render

engines or licensed copies of After Effects that you want to allocate to render the collected

project. Below this option, After Effects reports how many items in the project will be

rendered using more than one machine.

Note: If rendering time is unusually slow, you may have set the Maximum Number of

Machines too high, 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; experiment to determine the optimal number for your network.

To gather ﬁles for rendering or archiving:

1 Choose File > Collect Files.

2 In the Collect Files dialog box, choose an option for Collect Source Files:

• All. Collects all footage ﬁles, including unused footage and proxies.

• For All Comps. Collects all footage ﬁles and proxies used in any project compositions.

• For Selected Comps. Collects all footage ﬁles and proxies used in currently selected

compositions (in the Project window).

• For Queued Comps. Collects all footage ﬁles and proxies used directly or indirectly in

any of the compositions with a valid rendering status in the Render Queues.

• None. Copies the project to a new location without collecting any source footage.

3 Select appropriate check boxes, as needed. (For descriptions of each option, see the

preceding paragraphs in this topic.)

UG.book Page 377 Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:05 PM