Ain’t really a debate–rendering video?

[Richard Herd]

[Neil Goodman] “in this day and age – not sure what you even need to render?”

Maybe I don’t know what “render” means–although I’m pretty sure I think I do.

What does render mean?

[Neil Goodman]

to me rendering = letting the comp do its thing so you can playback an edit or portion of there-of.

[Bill Davis]

Basically, rendering is giving the computer time to mathematically compute the results of all the instructions you’ve given it (by design or unknowingly!)

Various operations like import media transcoding and processing all the transparency layers in an image or footage stack require a LOT of high speed calculation operations.

Rendering is the machine processing that type stuff and repacking complex instructions with simpler and cleaner ones that your machine can process efficiently.

My 2 bit definition anyway.

I’m sure the actual engineers who might be here will weigh in if I’m too far off target here.

(BTW, good on you for asking the question!
“No questions = no learning.” would be a really good sig line.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

Hey wait! That’s Richard Herd asking? Why do I feel like I’ve just been punk’d?

[Greg Janza]

[Neil Goodman] “Exporting sure – but has been years since Ive waited for something to render before I could play something back.”

I’m with Neil. The only rendering that needs to be done these days is on export.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmprods
tallmanproductions.net

[Oliver Peters]

[greg janza] “The only rendering that needs to be done these days is on export.”

There is a caveat to that if you work in Premiere, FCPX, or Resolve. If you render as you go (or cache in Resolve) and set your settings to the output codec (such as ProRes), then the export effectively becomes a file copy. You typically have to enable using this media in the export dialogue, but it can make the exports – especially in FCPX and Resolve – lightning fast, IF you are exporting to the same codec and settings.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “There is a caveat to that if you work in Premiere, FCPX, or Resolve. If you render as you go (or cache in Resolve) and set your settings to the output codec (such as ProRes), then the export effectively becomes a file copy. You typically have to enable using this media in the export dialogue, but it can make the exports – especially in FCPX and Resolve – lightning fast, IF you are exporting to the same codec and settings.

– Oliver
“

This.

But also, even if you’ve got background rendering turned off, if you’re working with decent hardware, when you go to export a master, X is happy to grab all the computing resources it can in order to do the export as fast as possible. So “render the master during my coffee break while my machine is otherwise idle” is often a sterling strategy.

That’s largely why I work nearly exclusively with background rendering turned OFF – at least unless I”m doing higher raster projects.

YMMV.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.