Render queue
Window → Render Queue, or F6.
Queue several compositions, formats and resolutions, choose an output folder once, and let them render while you keep working.
The model
- Jobs target a composition, a format and an output resolution.
- Jobs run one at a time.
- Each job runs in the engine, the same code path as a single export and as the command line — including 16-bit ProRes 4444 with alpha. Nothing about a queued render is a shortcut.
Controls
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Add Comp | Queue the current composition |
| Render All | Start the queue. It reads Resume All when there are stopped jobs to pick up first |
| Stop (keep progress) | Halts the queue. The current job keeps its rendered frames and resumes from there |
| Pause / Resume, per job | Pause one render and keep the frames already rendered; resume at the frame it stopped on |
| Discard | The destructive one, and the only one that asks: throws away the frames already rendered, so the job restarts from the beginning |
| Skip | Leave a job in the list but do not render it |
| Duplicate | Copy a job, to change one setting |
| Clear Done | Tidy up |
| Output Module Settings | Per-job format, resolution and range |
Stopping and losing the work are separate decisions. Pause and Stop both keep what has been rendered; only Discard gives it up.
Progress and failure
Jobs report true per-frame progress and elapsed time — not an animated bar that means nothing.
When a job fails, it reports the actual reason, in one plain sentence, with the button that helps: Fix when the video encoder (ffmpeg) is missing or blocked — it repairs it and renders the job again — and Retry after a full disk or an output file held open by another app. See ffmpeg & codecs. Cancellation is enforced server-side as well as locally, so a cancelled cloud render actually stops.
Export formats added by plugins are offered here too, in a Plugins category, with the plugin’s own options.
Existing files are never overwritten. Pick an output folder once and the queue writes into it without interrupting you to ask.
Output resolution
Independent of composition size. A quarter-resolution review copy still frames the whole composition. Queue a full-resolution master and a quarter-resolution review copy of the same composition as two jobs.
Performance
The render runs in the engine process and the encode in an ffmpeg child process, so neither competes with the editor’s interface.
A useful pattern
For a deliverable that needs several outputs:
- MP4, Full — the master.
- WebM, Full — the alpha version for the web.
- MP4, Quarter — the review copy to send round.
- Still frame — the thumbnail.
Queue all four, choose the output folder, start, and go and do something else.