Watch Folder

Watch Folder

The slightly senile grandaddy of network rendering on
After Effects is Watch Folder. File > Watch Folder looks in a
given folder for projects ready to be rendered; these are set
up using the Collect Files option. The help topic “Rendering
on the Network: Using a Watch Folder” page includes
everything you need to know, so there’s no reason to reiterate
setup here.
Watch Folder is okay on small, intimate networks, but it
has to be set up manually on each machine, and if anything
goes wrong, it has to be re-queued. A single machine
has so much rendering power these days, it is years since
I’ve bothered using it even though my studio is about the
right size for it: big enough to have several systems, small
enough to have them all in the same physical space.

Adobe Media Encoder

Adobe Media Encoder is a dedicated render application
for certain video formats, including Flash Video, H.264,
MPEG-2, and Adobe Clip Notes. Choose one of these in
Output Module settings and the Encoder reveals many specialized
options having to do with that particular format.
Owners of Adobe Production Premium or Master Collection
can also access Media Encoder from Premiere Pro,
where it can perform multipass encoding (essential for

the best quality compression) and Speech Search, this new
ability to convert spoken words on the soundtrack to timed
text. Each word shows up as a layer marker, theoretically
making it easy to time footage that includes speech, a very
cool concept.