I need to do a few things:

1. Create & Bake in a look.
2. Debayer to adv. detail 2 or 3 (depending)
3. Speed change (add pulldown) to make clip shot at 18fps, playback at normal speed in a 23.98 timeline.
4. Resize 2048x1152 > 1920x1080

Currently, I'm doing steps 1 & 2 in First Light
Steps 3 and 4 are done in After Effects
I render out the movie in After effects as a new Cineform File and give that to the client.

Each 3 mins takes approx 25mins to render.

I'm looking for a faster, more productive workflow.


Thanks!

Adobe Media encoder should be able to do that, but it depends on how you want your speed change applied. If you want it to duplicate frames of frame-blend, AME or PPro will work. If you want to use Pixel-Motion, Twixtor, or Kronos to interpolate the missing frames, you will hae to go through AE, which will always take longer to render.

I would do it HDLink or Remaster, which misses all but the 18fps with pulldown, but much faster. Can't your client add that part themselves?