Keeping settings across projects

[rurik2000]

Hello
I'm rendering a set of different animations inside a fractal on various computers, and also trying to pick up certain renders that failed, or continue renders I had to stop after a computer crash etc...

The issue I'm having is succeeding in maintaining identical settings across
1/General "parameters" as in the .m3i file (this seems easy)
2/Lighting parameters that don't always seem to come through with the .m3i
3/Animation parameters.

It seems that if I open the exact same project on a different machine, load the m3i, the m3a and the ligthing, and then try to, for example, add a keyframe before or after existing keyframes, I still get odd discrepancies..
For example I'm currently rendering the continuation of a scene I realized was missing frames, so I just continue the very simple translation I had in my previous keyframes, render, and now I realize that for some reason my camera FOV is changing with the animation somehow...

Do seasoned users have a set of best practices to recommend in terms of keeping projects homogenious?

Thanks
Alex