They are mostly used interchangeably in context.
In a more formal sense rendering is creating a new product from many different files, or from applying effects and so forth. Transcoding, on the other hand, is used more so to reference a straight conversion, for example going from a camera codec to an editing codec.
Transcoding can also happen during rendering, taking your camera original format and transcoding them to a final file suitable for delivery.
There is also preview rendering where Premiere will render out a low quality file to allow you to preview effects and such in the timeline.
In terms of rendering out a long sequence in chunks or as one long render… it depends on your workflow. Lets say you have three 30 minute chunks… you’ll need to render each chunk then render the final file where the chunks are married together. If you have a faster system and a fairly straight forward edit with little or no special effects, it’s usually less of a headache to render out the one long file than try to track a bunch of intermediate chunks through the process.
In terms of reading material… I learned from speaking to people and a lot of self-guided research. I can’t say I’ve come across one concise book or resource that covers everything worth knowing as a shooter/editor.
Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire – Digital Production Services
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services.