aescripts + aeplugins

Matthew Macy

Has anyone tried to use this on CS6 yet?

Eric Bowman

Matthew, I've used it. Been working pretty well. I will however say that I've had more issues with this on Mountain Lion and CS6 than I did with Snow Leopard/Lion and CS5.5. Lloyd is convinced that it's on Adobe's side however and I don't have a reason to doubt him. I've had issues with jumping between Photoshop and AE while BG Renderer is working it's magic. Sometimes the render will just stop prematurely. All in all though, it's still such a great help I can't live without it. I will say I've had great luck with Adobe Media Encoder as well.

Stevan del George

Is a CS6 update planned?  It's not as bullet proof as it's been in the past and this is one of my go-to tools!

Moises Regla

Hi, all of a sudden my BG Renderer stopped working, I always get this error: 

aerender Error: Afer Effects error: this module does not support getting output suffixes

aerender version 11.0.2x11

can you help me?

mihai wilson

I've been using it with CS6 on SL and it seems to be working pretty well - although I have been recently having some complete lockups of the os. It always happens with BGR is running, but I don't know that it (meaning Adobe's code that it is using) is at fault.

Lloyd Alvarez

@Moises - Which output module are you using?  BG Renderer only works with OM that work with file extentions.  If you let us know why OM doesn't work we can see about adding support for it.

Lloyd Alvarez

@mihai - What do you mean by SL? And lockups can be caused be many things, have you checked the error console to see what process caused the lockup?

Mama Tlau

can you please made it for CS6 to be compatible with Mountain Lion 10.8.2. I think v2.12 is not compatible with Mountain Lion

Lloyd Alvarez

@Mama What problem are you having with Mountain Lion?

We just tested it with Mountain Lion and it works as expected, if you are having trouble please contact support

Nick Dixon

Any plans to make this compatible with Windows 8?

Lloyd Alvarez

@Nick What issue are you having with Windows 8?

We just tested it here on Windows 8 and it is working for us. If you are having trouble please contact support

Nathan Biehl

I am having the same problem Franz mentioned here: https://aescripts.com/forums/discussion/250/bg-renderer-ends-early/p1

Rendered files are shorter than compositions.  Animations are getting cut off.  

Lloyd Alvarez

This is an After Effects bug. Have you updated to the latest version 11.0.2 yet?

Jan Van den Bossche

Hi, on iMac, OS10.7.5 with AECS6, having the same issue: BG Renderer says render is finished but in fact it didn't render the whole composition.

Using the newest version.

Lloyd Alvarez

Please file a bug with Adobe as this is an Adobe bug.  You can file it here: http://adobe.com/go/wish

Navarro Parker

If I cancel a render (CTRL-C) before it's done, what happens to the rendered frames? Do I need to empty out a cache folder somewhere?

Lloyd Alvarez

Frames are rendered to the output location indicated in the render queue, same as when rendering in the foreground.

Martin Radtke

I´m working in CS6 (win7, geforce 670) and bg renderer works pretty good. Unfortunately, bg renderer doesn´t use the GPUs to render 3D-Raytrace compositions which results in very long render times. Are there any solutions to set up GPU rendering in bg renderer, or is there an update coming soon?

Lloyd Alvarez

Since aerender works on the command-line it doesn't have access to the graphics card and it's GPU.  For the record multi-processing in the main AE application also doesn't work for Raytrace rendering for the same reason.  If you would like Adobe to implement support for this please file a feature request with them here: http://adobe.com/go/wish

Adam S.

Been using BG renderer for a while but now that I need to have both CS 5.5 and CS 6 on my computer due to non updated plugin issues, whenever I run BG renderer in CS 5.5 it uses the CS 6 AE render engine with the unusable plugins. Why is it using the AE 6 render engine instead of the CS 5.5 engine and how can I fix this?

Lloyd Alvarez

@Adam: Not sure why that is happening. Is you AE installed in the standard location?  Never had anyone report this before so it must be something unique to your setup

Adam S.

@Lloyd Yeah sometimes its ok, sometimes it doesn't work... not quite sure the pattern yet. The folders are correct, installations were clean and proper. I will update if I can figure it out.

Nik Ska

Win 7 64bit, AE CS6, BG renderer pro. Stopped rendering, raising the following error:

After Effects Error: Unable to call openFast because of parameter 1. Path is not valid. Path: {path to project file}

The problem appears only on one project, the one I'm currently working on and it slows me down a lot.

Lloyd Alvarez

This is an internal After Effects error that usually means the path to the project file or one of the output modules is not valid or accessible.  If the paths are valid make sure the After Effects application has permissions to read that path and that there are no unusual characters (such as punctuation or foreign characters) that might be causing a problem.  If the problem is due to an illegal character and you would like Adobe to fix that please submit the bug report here:  http://adobe.com/go/wish

basil Iskandrian

Hi,
I am using the trial on with CS6 on MAc OS 10.8.2. At first I was having success suign teh sciprt and re-rendering the comps already placed in the queue as needed. Now when using BG2 the script keeps crashing terminating the render. The message in the terminal  window is the following:
RENDERING: EBroken_v18.aep

Launching aerender...

aerender version 11.0.2x11
PROGRESS: Launching After Effects...
PROGRESS: ...After Effects successfully launched
aerender ERROR -609: AESend failed to send apple event at line 769


BG Renderer is done, have a nice day!
logout

[Process completed]

This is occurring with every comp in the queue. I have tried deleting them from queue and re-adding, same results.
Please advise.
Thank you.

Lloyd Alvarez

aerender ERROR -609: AESend failed to send apple event at line 769

This error is generared by aerender (which is Adobe's command line renderer) for various reasons only known to Adobe.  In the past I've found that you get this error if there are errors when launching the project.  Do you get any errors when opening the project in the main AE program such as missing or duplicate fonts plugins?  Also some plugins that render on GPU will fail in aerender with that code.  You can check this by testing a simple project with the plugins turned on one at a time.  The error could be caused by other reasons but this is one to check.

Misha Mazor

Hi,

There seems to be an important change in BG Render's behavior in CS6: 

BG Render will reference the CURRENT STATE of the AE project when rendering consecutive Queue items. Seems like BG Render is no longer rendering from a separate copy of your project and changes you make to it after sending off a render will unexpectedly show up in the renders.

In other words, in CS6:

1) send off a BG Render with 2 items in Queue

2) wait for BG Render to start rendering the 1st Queue item

3) Make a change to the 2nd Queue item in AE

3) Save Project

THEN: When BGRender reaches the end of the 1st Queue item, it will start of the 2nd one WITH THE RECENT CHANGES

Can you confirm this new behavior?

Thank you,

Misha Mazor

Misha Mazor

Also, AE/BG Render now has the ability to overwrite files. Correct?

Misha

Lloyd Alvarez

BG Renderer has always worked the same way.  If you have a notification set for each render queue item then it will stop and restart aerender (and load the project) for each RQ item.  If you want it to work off a separate project file then you should use the 'Make Portable App' feature (pro only).  And it should overwrite files but that depends on your server configuration so please test it first.

Misha Mazor

Been using BG Render for years pre-CS6, just now noticing this different behavior. Stange that you don't. Even the Terminal window readout is different now. In the past, it used to go straight to the next Queue item, now it loads the entire project for each Queue item. "Make Portable App" may solve my problem.

Thx

Lloyd Alvarez

Tutorial on how to use it:  http://bit.ly/Y6y7su

Misha Mazor

If you have a notification set for each render queue item then it will stop and restart aerender (and load the project) for each RQ item.

Ah, so that's what's going on. Thanks!

Orrin Zucker

Hi Lloyd-

So I'm a bit puzzled. I've been playing with BG Pro and AE6 (11.0.2.11) / OS 10.7.4. I can render a very simple test file and get notification no problem. But when I tried a more complex file, it crashed...though I can render that file fine without BG render. I've been getting this error message:

aerender ERROR -609: AESend failed to send apple event at line 769

Any ideas?

Orrin Zucker

I think I've isolated the problem...it looks like it has something to do with Element. I doesn't crash when I take that out..and it crashes when I just render that effect...does anyone else have this issue?

Lloyd Alvarez

I believe Element might require the GPU to render.  Since BG Renderer uses aerender on the command line to render, it does not have access to the GPU. If you would like to see this implemented please file a bug with Adobe here: http://adobe.com/go/wish

casey hupke

Error:

2013-04-04 20:24:53.104 After Effects[921:203] *** NSTask: Task create for path '/bin/bash' failed: 22, "Invalid argument".  Terminating temporary process.

Any reason this would be happening? I just purchased this to use in CS6 on my mac because I heard such great things about it. It can't detect my python install

which is installed, 

Bahamut:~ csy$ python

Python 2.7.2 (default, Oct 11 2012, 20:14:37) 

[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple Clang 4.0 (tags/Apple/clang-418.0.60)] on darwin

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> 

and it can't seem to launch any renders. 

system specs are 

dual 6 core mac pro 32gb of ram, more SSD's than I could shake a stick at. and a GTX 580.

Lloyd Alvarez

The NSTask error is an After Effects error which says it is not able to access the OS.  Do you have any restrictions or unusual setup in your user account?  BG Renderer uses the OS for many functions (including accessing python) so if AE is unable to access the OS then BG Renderer will not be able to operate.  If you don't have anything unusual I would suggest testing it in a different user account, if it works then there is something corrupted with your account so I would recommend installing AE in a fresh account. Sorry we can't give you more specific help but that error is out of our domain.

Lippy Tan

Hi, 

I have been using BG Renderer on CS4 and recently convert to use CS5. BG Renderer works fine on CS4 all these while, however, in CS5, BG Renderer tried to load aerender version 9.0.3x8 (which i think is for CS4) and return this error message:

"The file you are attempting to open was created with After Effects version 10.0.2 and cannot be opened with this version. See www.adobe.com/aftereffects for information on upgrading your software."

Can you help me on this? I need BG Renderer to be able to work in CS5. Thanks!! 

Lloyd Alvarez

Sounds like you have an issue with your installation of After Effects. Make sure you install to the default location and don't change the names of any of the folders or move them after installation.  You can have both CS4 and CS5 installed but if they are not in their default installs then you will run into issues.

Lippy Tan

Sounds like you have an issue with your installation of After Effects. Make sure you install to the default location and don't change the names of any of the folders or move them after installation.  You can have both CS4 and CS5 installed but if they are not in their default installs then you will run into issues.

Thanks for pointing that out... what i did was re-install both CS4 & CS5 .. and just installed BG Renderer for only CS5.. at least it works for now! Cheers!  

Chris Jeffries

Hi Lloyd,

Finally bought a full copy of BG Renderer today - have used the trial version and older versions since you first released them. Wanted to leave a note to say thanks, and that the cost was well worth it. This site has been an amazing resource for me as a freelancer, and I'll continue to look to it for the foreseeable future.

Thanks again!

-Chris

Lloyd Alvarez

Thanks. Glad you like it!

Jan Van den Bossche

Hi, on iMac, OS10.7.5 with AECS6, I can launch BGrenderer but it needs about 5 minutes to launch aerender. The AE project file is really small, it's a simple project. Same issue on every launch.

Thank you.

Lloyd Alvarez

Are you using Multi-Processing?  If so make sure you have enough ram for it. At least 2gb per proc plus 2-3GB for AE and 2GB for the OS.  If you don't then this would cause a delay as the system will start swapping memory to disk.  If you are not using Multi-processing then there might be an issue with your After Effects installation, so would re-install

Tony Mueller

Just to point this out again... you can't use background rendering if your comp uses Element 3D. This is a limitation of the render engine, not a problem with BG Renderer. This information should be posted on your compatibility tab, or as a footnote on the description page.

I was a bit confused when I tried to render my latest project and the terminal reported the job finished without rendering a single frame. It said finished, as if it were a successful render, but I had two clips of 0 length and the SMS notification didn't actually go through, even though the terminal said it had. All worked fine when I rendered a non-Element comp.

chris forrester

Hi Lloyd, I love using this script.  I had a suggestion that I think you might be able to implement fairly easily. 

I often use this script to render full size proxies of precomps or generally to create low res versions of footage; the more traditional use of proxies.  I was thinking wouldn't it be great if once a pass finishes it would create a script that could be run to automatically set the newly rendered footage to the comp as a proxy.  Automating the set proxy function I know its not a huge amount of clicks to set a proxy but I often set up a huge batch of comps that I want to render out proxies for whilst I am working and left with the task of remembering which I did and setting the links.  Would be cool to automate this ( in my eyes at least).

Thanks again for a great script!

Chris Forrester

izwan helmi mohd mokhtar

Hello, i'm Helmi. i had a problem. 

BG Renderer v2.12

https://aescripts.com

RENDERING: High Tech OS V.2 (APC 2012) part 1.aep

Launching aerender...

aerender version 10.0x458

aerender Error: After Effects error: Unable to call ∟openFast↔ because of parame

ter 1. Path is not valid. Path: C:\Users\Helmi\Videos\HIGH TECH OS V2\High Tech

OS V.2 ^(APC 2012^) part 1.aep

BG Renderer is done, have a nice day.

Press any key to close this window...

How can i fix it? please help me. i'm new here.

Lloyd Alvarez

That means that after effects cannot open the path I suspect it is due to these characters: (^) try removing them to see if it works

Chas Fries

Hi Lloyd, I'm curious how the licensing works.  I normally work off two computers for work and home.  If I use my registration code, will I be able to deactivate it to use on my work computer and vice versa or will I need to buy more than one?

Lloyd Alvarez

The license allows you to install it on two computers as long as they are not used at the same time so this arrangement would work without you having to deactivate the license on either computer.