RT vs RT Unlimited and how does it affect your renders?

[Tom Brooks]

The best description of Unlimited RT is in the manual. Unlimited RT allows you to play stuff at a lower quality in real time. You can also output to tape at lower quality if you so desire. But if you want to output at full quality, no, there is no difference in what needs to be rendered whether you choose Safe RT or Unlimited RT.

Final Cut tells you with the color coded status bar over the timeline whether your sequence will play and at what quality. If it’s dark gray, dark green or green it will play at full quality without additional render. If it’s any other color, it will require a render in order to play at full quality. Choosing Unlimited RT and adjusting the settings allows you to play those pieces at LOWER quality in real time. Frames may be dropped and/or video quality reduced.

Again, to get full quality on output, you’ll need to render the parts that are anything other than dark gray, dark green or green. To be reasonably sure you’re rendering everything that needs it, set your sequence for Safe RT. That will force a render on everything that needs it based on processor power. It still does not guarantee you won’t drop frames due to a slow media disk.

FCP Manual Chapter 28 and 29 cover the topic well.

[Andy Mees]

>if it’s dark gray, dark green or green it will play at full quality without additional render

of course, a render status bar in bright green denotes preview quality playback rather than full quality playback, so if its bright green then it will require rendering (for full quality export to file or tape)