That does sound wacky and I have not seen this before. Paul is out on vacation I can have him take a look when he gets back. In the meantime you could manually use Distributed Rendering by using the File Continue Recorded Sequence option from the Animation Producer. The Distributed rendering controller uses this too it just automates the process for you.
If you have the necessay files and textures visble from multiple machines you can start MicroStation and load the file with the animation script it will be read only from all but the first machine but that is okay.
Start your record script on the first machine and make sure you are rendering frames to a location that all machines can access. Go to the second machine and open the model read only and then choose File Continue Recorded Sequence, browse to the folder where the frames are being rendered and double click on the .asf file (animation settings file) and the machine will start to render and pick up the next frame. Go to the rest of the machines that you wnat to chime in with and repeat the process.
One advantage you have with this process is you can start and stop machines and pick up where you left off. You don't have to say render frame 799 to 1750 if the original asf file had 0 to 1750 it will just pick up the next frame in sequence and go from there.
Jerry