Thanks Walter. I think that a little beyond what I was looking for, but appreciate the the logic and thought behind it.

It feels like a wish list item for AE development to be able to continue work while a project is collecting and not have to wait for its completion.

Would this post be better in After effects Expressions? @dan_ebbert

Thanks Dan I did wonder if this was even achievable. Another wish list item prehaps

Is there a way to link the colour of the Comps in the project panel to already submitted render queue items for those comps.

Natively it takes the colour when you submit the comp to the render queue, but if you change the comp colour after you have to manually colour the render output as well if you want it to match

AE Collect feature locks up your workstation, so I am trying to use AErender.exe to do it in the background but it doesn’t want to play ball, is this even possible do you think? Has anyone tried the same, or is there another solution? Here is what I have so far – at the moment a simple modification of a background render run command with a collect… Read more