After Effects Guru: Work Faster and Boost Performance

Get strategies to help you render faster and work less in After Affects. Explore how to use render settings templates, render with Media Encoder, set up a network render, and more.

Introduction

• Welcome
• Exercise files

1. Render Settings and Output Modules

• Using render settings templates
• Creating custom render settings templates
• Sharing render settings templates
• Using output module templates
• Creating custom output module templates
• Sharing output module templates
• Setting the default render and output settings
• Using multiple output modules
• Render with transparency

2. Rendering with Adobe Media Encoder (AME)

• Sending items to AME for background rendering
• Creating custom output templates
• Advice for working with Adobe Media Encoder

3. Controlling RAM

• Setting RAM usage
• Controlling cache size
• Purging RAM
• Using performance disk cache
• Checking processor and RAM details

4. Controlling Disk and Media Cache

• Using a disk cache
• Choosing the right drive for your cache
• The role of conformed media cache
• Cleaning the media cache database and drives periodically

5. Effective Preview Strategies

• Creating RAM previews
• Saving RAM previews
• Setting the work area
• Using the region of interest

6. Strategies That Impact Render Time

• Controlling composition settings
• Adjusting motion blur
• Using proxy files
• Use adjustment layers
• Collecting files
• Render and email
• Re-rendering
• Including a project link
• Post-render actions
• Render and replace dynamic linked compositions

7. Creating a Render Farm

• What is network rendering?
• Setting up a watch folder
• Creating a still image sequence with multiple machines

Conclusion

• Next steps