Rendering timeline before sending to Media Encoder

[dg7071]

Maybe it's a dumb question, but do I need to pre-render the timeline (red, yellow render bars) before sending it to Media Encoder (File - Export - Media - Queue).

Thank you

[Vidya Sagar]

Hi Dg7071,

It is not a prerequisite to pre-render the timeline before queuing to Media Encoder.

Rendering of previews is only for preview purposes. Preview files will not be used for final output unless you have Use Previews option checked on output—which you should not use except in the case of rough previews. Using preview files for final output will in almost all cases cause a decrease in quality. It can speed things up in some cases, so it may be useful for creating a rough preview in less time.

For further information check the following articles.

Red, yellow, and green render bars and what they mean | Creative Cloud blog by Adobe

Adobe Premiere Pro Help | Rendering and previewing sequences

Thanks,

Vidya Sagar.

[Meg The Dog]

No, you don't have to.

Media Encoder will render the timeline as needed per your settings in the Export Settings pane to create the export.

MtD

[Kevin-Monahan · Accepted solution]

Hi DG,

You don't have to render previews, in general, before encoding.

That said, rendering previews can be advantageous for encoding in certain situations. You can employ something called "smart rendering" to the encoding process.

To set up smart encoding, you have to ensure that the codec set for rendering previews will be the same one you use for encoding in your Sequence Settings. I have a Mac, so I use ProRes 422 for rendering previews.

After my previews are rendered, I set up my encode to "Use Previews" and to export using ProRes 422. This process is very fast, because you are merely copying files, not re-encoding them.

I call this encoded video my "master" which I can then further encode various flavors of video for posting to YouTube, for other websites, making Blu-Ray, for archiving, etc.

Hope that helps,
Kevin

[Ann Bens]

Rendering preview all depends on source material, sequence setup and export setting.