A render queue replacement for After Effects, powered by FFmpeg

1 · Add comps to the queue

Drag comps straight out of the Project panel and drop them on BetterQueue — or select them and hit + Add from project (or Browse…). Each comp lands as one row. Dragged footage files go to the Convert tab automatically.

2 · Tune rows like a spreadsheet

Each row is one export. Change its format inline (H.264/H.265, ProRes or DNxHR, VP9/WebM with alpha, AV1, HAP, GIF/WebP, or a PNG/EXR/DPX/TIFF sequence), or open the row’s ⚙ drawer for everything else — quality, encoder, resolution, alpha, audio, destination. Click-and-drag to rubber-band a run of rows (or shift-click the two ends), then bulk-edit them together — change one, change every selected row.

Pick a quality (CRF) and the file size follows the picture — no bitrate guessing. Down in the bottom bar, the Simple/Advanced switch hides the columns you don’t use; search and the All / Pending / Done chips keep a big queue manageable.

3 · Render — and keep working

The primary ▶ Render button sits at the top-right of the panel; the moment a run starts it turns into Cancel, so a render can’t be double-started and stopping it is always one click away. Each render runs in a headless background copy of After Effects — your live Render Queue is never opened, the panel never loses its dock, and AE stays usable while up to three renders run in parallel. Under the hood each comp renders to a lossless intermediate that FFmpeg encodes to the final file; temp frames are cleaned up after, and Cancel really cancels (it deletes its own half-written file).

While it works, live CPU and RAM meters beside the Render button show the machine at work, and the footer offers an optional 👁 preview of the newest rendered frame; each finished row is stamped with how long it took, and a ↻ requeues any finished row without overwriting the original. On the Convert tab the same button reads ⤓ Transcode.

Background renders need a saved project — the headless AE has to be able to open it from disk.

4 · CPU or GPU, per export

The default encoder is software x264 — the best quality per megabyte there is. When your machine has the hardware (NVIDIA NVENC, Intel Quick Sync, AMD AMF, Apple VideoToolbox), the row’s ⚙ drawer offers GPU encoding: much faster, at the cost of somewhat larger files. BetterQueue detects the hardware by actually test-encoding with it — the ⚙ Settings sheet shows what was found (hover any label there for the full explanation).

5 · Convert existing files

The Convert tab transcodes media you already have — no AE render involved. Every file in the batch carries its own format, quality, resolution, alpha, audio and destination, so one batch can send interview.mov → ProRes and promo.mp4 → H.265 at the same time.

Sign in once, then it just uploads

In ⚙ Settings ▸ Frame.io, sign in with your Adobe ID and choose a default destination — account ▸ workspace ▸ project ▸ folder. From then on every finished export uploads automatically: the row shows an ⇡ progress chip while it goes, then a link when it lands. Need a review link to send round? Share links are generated on demand from the row.

Any single row can opt out of the upload with its own ⇡ toggle, and image sequences are skipped — Frame.io takes flat files, not frame folders.

This is a beta. It runs on Windows only right now, and sign-in is limited to invited testers while the integration is in review — so if the Frame.io controls don’t sign you in yet, that’s expected.