Render Queue: Flight Check


The Render Queue itself is not terribly puzzling, but like many other key portions of the After Effects UI it contains a few features that many users miss, and a few gotchas that hit them from time to time.

There are two key sections for each Render Queue item: Render Settings and Output Module. You can click on each to adjust settings, but I find that almost immediately you will want to get into the habit of choosing a preset, or template, from the pull-down menu. And in the altogether likely case that one does not already exist, you choose the selection at the bottom of each menu: Make Template.

Why make a template for each render? Render Settings tends to be standardized across a project, and you likely will use one of just a few output modules throughout the duration of the project. So why waste time thinking about settings each time you render, when that only leads to a higher likelihood of careless errors (which are, probably more than anything else, the bane of a compositor's existence)?

Placing an Item in the Queue

After Effects is flexible about how you add an item to the Render Queue. You have a choice of two keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+M/Cmd+M and the one I always tend to use, Ctrl+Shift+/ (Cmd+Shift+/ for those of you on Macs). You can also select a number of items in the Project window and drag them to the Render Queue. If you drag footage without a comp to the Render Queue, After Effects makes a default comp for you to render the footage as-is, which can be handy for quick format conversions.

The output path you choose for the first of your active Render Queue items becomes the default for the rest of them, which is handy until you find yourself rendering lots of image sequences, because each of those typically needs its own folder to keep things well organized.

Render Settings: Your Manual Overrides

There's probably one set of parameters from the Render Settings dialog that you will prefer throughout your project; in fact, on a film or high-definition project, Best is probably pretty much that group, whether you are outputting still image sequences or movies.

Mostly the Render Settings dialog contains manual overrides for the settings in your composition itself (Figure 1.35). The window is divided into three sections:

  • The Composition area (top) has a series of settings that optionally override the Quality, Resolution, and Disk Cache settings, as well as the layer-by-layer Proxy, Effects, Solo, and Guide Layer toggles. The Best setting assumes you want to use all of these as they were designed, with Quality forced to Best and Resolution at Full. There is a school of thought (of which I've never been a member) that says you should default Effects to All On. The idea here is not to present yourself with any unexpected gotchas, but forcing on all effects turns on an effect you meant to delete at least as often as it toggles on an effect you accidentally turned off.

  • The Time Sampling section (center) contains settings that override decisions that exist in the composition itself: the Frame Blending and Motion Blur toggles, plus the Shutter Angle setting for motion blur. Field Render and 3:2 Pulldown pertain only to preparing the comp for broadcast video output; on projects you will either use them all the time or not at all for final output. The Time Span setting comes into play in situations where you need to re-render some portion of your total comp (otherwise, Work Area or Length of Comp should be preferable).

  • The Options section (bottom) contains precisely two mutually exclusive options: If you check Use Storage Overflow then the overflow volumes that you can specify in Preferences > Output come into play (Figure 1.36). If the first one fills up, the second is used, and so on. If you do not check this option, you can let After Effects look in the destination folder and skip any files that it finds whose output names match files already in that folder. This is designed specifically for the Watch Folder option, but you can use it in any case where you are creating an image sequence and have some, but not all, of the rendered images already completed.

    Figure 1.36. Storage overflow is insurance against bad planning; if you run out of space on the primary rendering drive, the volumes specified in this Preference dialog can be set to handle the overflow. With ample disk space, you should not need this, but it's preferable to a failed overnight render.


Figure 1.35. The Render Settings dialog has three sections: overrides for the composition settings (top), specific time sampling overrides and settings (center), and two extra options for where and how files are rendered (bottom).


The way to use Render Settings overall is as a checklist of all the things you need to think about to get your output footage to look the way you want. It may work to simply use Best settings and walk away, or you may be reminded of something specific that needs to be custom set.

Output Modules: As Many as You Need

Throughout the course of your After Effects career you will probably create a large number of Output Module templates. The settings themselves are not so tricky if you know what you're after: Once you've chosen a format, and set the appropriate options (under Video Output), you have the additional options of stretching or cropping the output, and adding audio.

Note that Output Module appears after Render Settings, item by item. This is with good reason: As you will see in detail in Chapter 4, the order in the user interface shows the rendering order, and so Render Settings are applied to the render prior to the application of the Output Module settings.

This becomes important, for example, when scaling output: To scale down a clip and retain the highest quality, you will in most cases want to apply the scaling as a Stretch setting in the Output Module rather than a Resolution setting in the Render Settings (unless speeding up the render is more important than quality, in which case the inverse advice applies).

There are several elegant problem-solving tools embedded in the Output Module setup, some of which many users tend to miss. Among the most significant are

  • You are allowed more than one Output Module per Render Queue item (Figure 1.37).

    Figure 1.37. So many usersand not just beginners, by any meansfail to notice that you can add multiple Output Modules to a single render queue item, via Composition > Add Output Module. This can be an immense timesaver, as several versions of a render can be created in one pass (for example, one at full resolution stills and a Web-compressed version).


  • You can change the Output Module of all of your Render Queue items by selecting the Output Module (rather than the Render Queue item itself) of the first item and then Shift-selecting the Output Module (again, rather than the item itself) of the last item (Figure 1.38).

    Figure 1.38. Oh no, I have to change all those? Fear not, you can select any number of consecutive Output Modules to change them, but don't select the render queue items themselves. Instead, select the first Output Module in the group and Shift-select the last, then change any of the selected ones and they all follow.


  • You can start numbering an image sequence from any number you like (Figure 1.39).

    Figure 1.39. To custom-number your frame sequence, clear Use Comp Frame Number and enter your own. This one is easy to miss, so it is highlighted here.


  • Stretching and cropping your output is often a quick, elegant solution to an otherwise thorny rendering problem.

  • Included in the Output Module Settings, and also hidden under the twirl-down arrow (Figure 1.40) is an extra option, to perform one of three Post-Render Actions to import or replace the composition that was the source of the render. Chapter 4 contains more about how to use these.

    Figure 1.40. Post-Render Actions save you steps, if you intend to view your render in After Effects (Import) or replace a pre-comp with the render permanently (Import & Replace Usage) or just temporarily (Set Proxy).


  • The shorthand for creating a numbered image sequence is simple if you follow the rules: After Effects replaces the string [###] within the overall output name with a three digit sequential number. The number of # characters in this string corresponds to the amount of digits in the sequential number; if you want extra padding, add extra # characters.

Paying attention to the options available with Output Modules and taking the time to customize and apply presets that you can use again and again are big parts of getting optimum output out of After Effects.

Optimizing Output Settings

Here are some general guidelines for the output settings (Render Settings and Output Modules) that you can use in specific situations:

  • Lossless output: Interframe compression (QuickTime with Animation/Most) is acceptable for movie files, lossless encoding (TGA with RLE, TIFF with LZW, or PNG) and for still images.

  • Low-loss output: QuickTime with Photo-JPEG at 70% is ideal for creating test renders that are relatively small at full resolution yet show little in the way of compression artifacts.

  • Web review: This is a fast-changing area. At this writing, QuickTime with MPEG-4 files offer some of the best results, but your mileage may vary.

  • DV/HDV: If working with these or other compressed source formats, remember that they recompress pre-renders, so make all of your edits to the source file and render once!

Obviously, there is much more to choosing your output settings than I've covered here; I only intended to help you get started. In many cases, the settings you need to use will be dictated by your delivery format or by what is needed by the next person after you in the production pipeline.



Adobe After Effects 6. 5 Studio Techniques
Adobe After Effects 6.5 Studio Techniques
ISBN: 0321316207
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 156

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