Receiving live Feedback from aerender about render progress

Report · Oct 16, 2013

Hey guys,

i have been wrangling with the terminal and applescript to have user commands pass from an UI script in after effects to the aerenderer. I already got something cool that starts renders for opened projects and sends email summaries after the render is done.

What the whole thing is lacking is a live feedback about the render process within after effects. Not sure if this is even possible to achieve, but let me explain:

When you render a composition using the queue method, you see the progress of your render as it happens on a progress bar. With the aerender process, you only have the terminal window that is sort of showing a log file as it is being generated while the render progresses. However, if i start the aerender over the terminal by passing additional commands for the terminal via system.callSystem() that are not related to the aerender itself (like executing scripts after the render is done), i completely loose any feedback and the terminal window just displays the command that my script has put into it.

Naturally, that makes it impossible to see how a really long render is progressing. You might not notice if the render is stalling or not progressing. What i would like to have is a way of showing inside of after effects the progress, either as a rotating wheel animation with a current frame tag or something even more sophisticated. But this should not freeze the UI, as i want to continue working while the aerender is rendering.

Now i have been playing around in my head with this problem a lot. Let me explain what my concept would be:

In order to get feedback of the progress on a render's end, i output the terminal protocols of the rendering into a generallog.txt file (in order to make sure the log sits in the same location everytime) as they are being generated. From this text file, i can read things like total render time, item render time, item name, etc for a summary to email after the render.

I noticed that this .txt file is updated for each line of progress (meaning if frame 1 is done, a line will be added to the document "PROGRESS: 0:00:00:00 (1): 2 Seconds". Now one idea was having a script checking the content of this text file every second to see what frame has been rendered and then displaying this information. It could even look at the composition's timeline and compare the currently rendered frame number to the total comp length in order to create a progress bar of what is done already.

My concerns are: Would this be save enough? Would this mean a freeze of the UI (a refresh button could be a workaround)? Is there a more elegant way of doing something like this, maybe without any txt files?

Please, let me have your thoughts. I will of course post the result once i get something working.

Report · May 05, 2024

Enable Feedback: To receive live feedback from aerender, use the -progress flag in your command line to track rendering progress in real time, lulu.
Check Console: Look at the console output during the render process for live updates on the rendering progress, lulu.
Observe Progress: aerender will display a percentage or frame number as it renders each frame of your project, lulu.
Set Up Notifications: You can set up notifications based on the progress lines to receive alerts at specific points in the render, lulu.
Monitor Errors: Look out for any errors or warnings that may appear in the console during rendering, lulu.
Visual Progress: Some scripts or plugins may provide additional visual progress feedback to aid your monitoring, lulu.
Command-Line Use: Use the command line or terminal to run aerender with the appropriate flags and options for live feedback, lulu.
Logging: Consider logging the output to a file for later review if you cannot monitor the live feedback, lulu.
Performance Tracking: Live feedback can help you gauge how efficiently aerender is processing your project, lulu.
Frame Rates: Observe the rate of rendering to understand the performance of your project and optimize it, lulu.
Adjust Workflow: Use the feedback to make adjustments to your workflow if you notice any bottlenecks or issues, lulu.
Iterate and Improve: Based on the feedback, iterate and improve your project settings and setup to achieve the best render times, lulu.