Scheduling a render

[SteveB]

Does anyone have a script that can start a render at a later, scheduled time? I'd like to be able to have my 3D program render an animation and then have After Effects start it's render at a time that I'm sure the 3D render will be finished. I'm using 6.5 on a Mac.

Thanks.

[Colin Braley]

I've recently been working on a standalone render automation program ive written in Java. This might be useful to you. It works fine on Windows right now, I'm just fixing up some UI issues and adding a few features before I put it online somewhere. This program can be used to schedule After Effects renders and Maya renders currently. It also has the option of defragmenting your HD when done rendering, copying your render to many different locations, or shutting down when done. If you know any Java it wouldnt be too difficult to get the program to run on a mac, since most of the code is cross platform. You would need to create a .sh file instead of a .bat file would be about all. I intend on doing this someday, but I don't have a mac right now....
So if you want to get the code and try to edit it yourself to get it to run on a mac, I could send you the source. Youd have to know a bit of java to do this however. But if you also have a PC this might be useful to you. If you want any more info email me at cbraley AT vt.edu .
~Colin

[scribling]

I think the easiest way to delay your render time would be to use the command line renderer and the sleep command in the Terminal.

If you wanted your render to start in 2 hours the command would be:

sleep 7200 ; "/Applications/Adobe After Effects 6.5/aerender" -project Project_Name.aep

Sleep is in seconds so 7200 = 2 hours, 18000 = 5 hours, etc ...

[scribling]

The easiest way to use the Terminal if you aren't familiar is to simply drag and drop files from the Finder into it.

1. Type sleep 7200; (with the semi colon to separate commands)
2. Then in the Finder, navigate to the aerender file and drop it into the Terminal.
2. Type a space and -project (telling AE to render what's in the Render Queue)
3. Type another space, then in the Finder, navigate to the project you want to render and drop it into the Terminal.

Doing thing this way you are sure to get the correct paths.

[scribling]

I forgot about this one. You could use Cronnix to schedule a cron event that fires off a Terminal render. Cronnix is a GUI for the unix Cron scheduler. It's pretty simple to use and is great for all sorts of things. I use it as an alarm clock.

Or one more option. You could use a scheduler like StarTime which I believe can activate scripts and apps.

Good luck.