Steve, could you shed some light on Smart Rendering: will it work in a scenario with Adobe Dynamic Link involved?
Here is the workflow. When I'm done with complex dynamically linked comp, and it's ready for rendering digital intermediate, there are two options:
- send the composition to After Effects Render Queue;
- send the composition to Adobe Media Encoder.
Pros for the latter one:
- an ability to keep working in After Effects while AME is rendering.
Cons:
- AME doesn't include the After Effects project link into the media file metadata. Hence, it's impossible to use 'Edit Original' option in PrPro timeline.
So as to enjoy the best of both worlds, I render out dynamically linked comp in AME and then set that digital intermediate as a proxy for the comp.
Pros:
- no needs to import and replace anything in PrPro project;
- an ability to keep working in After Effects while AME is rendering;
- an ability to use 'Edit Original' option in PrPro timeline.
Cons:
- since dynamiclinkmanager is involved, there is slight performance worsening: without rendering preview the playback in full resolution may be jittery (at least on my machine, which is not a modern multicore beast, but that's not an issue at all though).
So, the question is: will Smart Rendering be able to recognise my digital intermediate set as a proxy for dynamically linked comp and, therefore, not to re-encode the piece (considering the DI's and the final output formats are identical)?