Adobe Media Encoder dynamic link fail just missed deadline...

The kind of render failure you are describing can be avoided by babysitting the project a little better. There will be failures caused by human errors, problems in the comp, background processes and bugs in the app or in 3rd party effects you use in your projects. No matter what you are doing, you owe it to yourself to set up a workflow that includes checking on renders. There are other steps you can take to protect yourself and keep the project on schedule.

Here's some advice from somebody that has been rendering projects with After Effects for 25 years.

1. If your render is going to take more than a few minutes render an image sequence as a production master
   • If the render fails at any point you can pick it up again on the failed frame and continue from there
   • Image sequences can be loaded in Premiere Pro or directly in the AME and they render very quickly
   • Image sequences can be visually lossless and high bit depth so there is no quality loss when you have to do more processing or render another copy.
   • An Example: recently I had a 6-second effects shot with about 40 layers that involved camera tracking, motion stabilizing, warp stabilizing, a 3D model (Element 3D) and a ton of color matching, blurs, shadows, lights, and blend modes. There was also some roto involved. After rendering the image sequence the director insisted we shift a key effect element in the scene by 9 frames. A total of 26 frames needed to be re-rendered. The comp was edited, the work area adjusted, and the frames were sent to the render cue/ Render Garden was used to render replacement frames in just under 10 minutes. The standard output module would have probably taken about 40 minutes. There were no changes required in Premiere Pro because the image sequence automatically updated and we saved about five hours of rendering time.
2. Make each shot a separate comp - don't edit a movie in After Effects
   • The more shots you put in a comp the more layers you need, the more likely it is you will have a rendering problem
   • Complex visual effects can require dozens or even hundreds of layers - the more complex a comp becomes the more likely it is to run into problems
   • Editing shots together and mixing sound for final output is much easier to do in an NLE like Premiere Pro, the render takes less time and the work of the final polish takes a lot less time than trying to combine all of those elements in a single AE comp
3. Use a background render like Render Garden or at least render your effects and motion graphics shots using the Adobe Media

Encoder so you can keep working on the other comps while you are rendering the pieces of your movie. More than 90% of my comps are one shot under seven seconds because more than 90% of the shots in any narrative film are under seven seconds. There is a vicious virus that infects filmmakers that did not grow up shooting film and sending shots to the lab for printing. It causes them to believe that the most efficient way to work is to put everything in one timeline so that they can see what they have got before they render it. Most of the time it takes several missed deadlines and rendering failures to affect a cure. Keep it simple. As soon as you get effects shot nailed down, render it. Edit your scenes in Premiere (or your favorite NLE) and stop painting yourself into a corner. Visual Effects comps that are only one shot, motion graphics that are short sequences and image sequence renders are life and career savers.