User Guide

381
ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS 5.0
User Guide
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 sufficient 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.
UG.book Page 381 Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:05 PM