Here are two quick tips to give you more control when you need to stop or re-render an item in After Effects.
A Better Stop
Normally when you click Stop on an item in the render queue, it adds it to the bottom of the list and will pick up where it left off. That may be what you want, but often you intended to bust the render, tweak it, and re-render. To stop a render and re-queue it to begin at the beginning, hold down the Option (Alt) key when clicking Stop Render. This will avoid the pickup and add the item to be re-rendered from the start of the original output settings.
Need to Re-render?
For one reason or another, it always happens, the need to re-render. Perhaps a small tweak to a keyframe or a timing issue. Chances are while your animation may have needed refining, the render queue was perfect. Save yourself some time and Re-queue that animation.
- Select a previously rendered animation.
- Press Command + Shift + D (Control + Shift + D) to duplicate the render item with the same settings and output name. This will rewrite over the previous file to the exact same destination.
- Save your work, then click Render when ready to output.
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