After Effects Network Rendering Guide

1 After Effects Network Rendering Guide
- 1.1 Submitting After Effects render jobs to Deadline

The Adobe After Effects network rendering guide for Deadline consists of the following sections:

Submitting After Effects render jobs to Deadline

You can submit After Effects jobs from within After Effects or from the Deadline Monitor

Step 1: Configure your After Effects Project Settings

In After Effects, place the comps you want to render in the Render Queue (CTRL+ALT+0). Due to an issue with the AE6 Render Queue, if you have more than one comp with the same name, only the settings from the first one will be used (whether they are checked or not). It is important that all comps in the Render Queue have unique names, and our submission script will notify you if they do not.

Note that under the comp's Output Module settings, the Use Comp Frame Number check box must be checked. If this is not done, every frame in the submitted comp will try to write to the same file.

Step 2: Launch the Submission Script

Launch the submission script by selecting File -> Run Script -> SubmitToDeadline.jsx

Step 3: Set Your Submission Options

The general Deadline options are:

Name: The name of your job (if left blank, it will default to "Untitled").
Comment: A simple description of your job (can be left blank).
Department: Your department (can be left blank).
Pool: The pool that your job is submitted to.
Group: The group that your job is submitted to.
Priority: Your job's priority (0 = lowest, 100 = highest).
Machine Limit: The maximum number of machines that can render your job at one time (specify 0 for no limit).
Concurrent Tasks: The number of tasks that can render concurrently on a single slave.
Task Timeout: The number of minutes a slave has to render a task for this job before it requeues it (specify 0 for no limit).
Limit Groups: The limit groups that your job requires.
Job Dependencies: Jobs that your job is dependent on.
Submit As Suspended: Submit your job in the suspended state.
Delete When Complete: You job is automatically deleted after it completes.

The After Effects specific options are:

Frame List: The list of frames to render.
Task Group Size: The number of frames per task.
Minimum Output Size (KB): If an output image's file size is less than what's specified, the task is requeued (specify 0 for no limit).
Submit After Effects Project File: The After Effects file selected will be submitted with the job.

The Memory Management options are:

Enable Memory Management: Whether or not to use the memory management options.
Image Cache %: The maximum amount of memory after effects will use to cache frames.
Max Memory %: The maximum amount of memory After Effects can use overall.

Step 4: Submit Your Job

Click the Submit button to submit the job to Deadline.