Adobe After Effects Renders Taking Forever? You Can Speed Them Up with Network Rendering

If you don’t have the latest and greatest system (and even if you do), there is a great way that you can actually speed up your renders in Adobe After Effects. If you’ve got another computer system or two hanging around collecting dust, you can put those machines to good use by setting up Network Rendering in AE. Check out the tutorial below from Aetuts+ to get the full scoop and get your renders flying:

 

It’s great that the other machines don’t need another license of After Effects to actually participate, so you can take as many systems as you want and as long as they are on your network, you can get Network Rendering up and running. Faster is faster, so even if it’s an older system, shaving off a few minutes from a render can be a big deal in the end (especially if it means you can go home early, or move on to something else sooner).

Check out this link for more information on different render setups in AE.

Who has set up Network Rendering? What would you recommend if you’ve faced any issues?

Links:

How to Set Up AE for Network Rendering on Multiple Machines — Aetuts+
Automated rendering and network rendering — After Effects Help

Premiere Pro Tutorial: Create Highly Stylized Looks in Your NLE

We've been talking quite a bit about Adobe over the past few months, as they've announced new versions of all their major desktop applications andended the Creative Suiteas we know it. Even though some folks are none too thrilled with Adobe right now due to the complete switch to the Creative Cloud, they still make what many consider to be the rising star of NLEs with Premiere Pro, and it's more packed than ever with features to make filmmaker's lives easier. Today we're going to explore two of the lesser known color effects that come with Premiere Pro, the Leave Color and Change to Color effects. While these might not be something you will use day-to-day, they're an excellent option when you need to create some highly stylized shots at a moment's notice. So without any further ado, here are the tutorials, straight from Creative COW

                                   

The most obvious example of how effects like these can be used is Robert Rodriguez's Sin City. However, they can also be used in much more subtle and sophisticated ways. For example, by layering your video tracks and putting different instances of the leave color effect (alongside another color effect such as the Three Way Color Corrector or RGB Curves) on each track, you can push various chrominance values in the image to their extremes while leaving others under-saturated. By using the Change to Color effect alongside a method such as this one, you can completely warp your color palette into something entirely different from what you shot (although your DP may never speak with you again). 

Of course, if you work with moving or handheld footage frequently, After Effects or DaVinci Resolve will be better solutions for creating these types of effects due to their advanced tracking functionality. However, being able to stay in your NLE and create these effects quickly can be an invaluable tool for the one-man-band types of filmmakers who are on tight deadlines, as well as for bigger productions where the producer or director want to see some temp effects before the picture lock is sent off to the VFX and color departments. 

Quite frankly, there are some astounding (and downright bizarre) things that you can do with color inside of Premiere Pro. By better knowing all of the color effects inside of Premiere and how they interact with one another, you can better prepare yourself for anything and everything that a director or client could ever ask of you. If you want more of these fantastic Creative Cow tutorials, hop on over to their Premiere Pro Techniques series and get to it. 

What do you guys think? Have you ever used these effects, and to what degree? Do you have any suggestions for how to creatively apply them? Let us know in the comments. 

Link: Premiere Pro Techniques (CS6 and Above) with Andrew Devis — Creative COW