Is rendering destructive

[billysurfmartin]

Hi!  I have spent many hours exporting and have decided to get my render game on (using spacebar, without in and out points).  Quick question - Can I re-edit this video?  Once rendered in the timeline, is this reversible?

[salvo34]

original source material isn't changed by editor. You can't undo a render but you can just do it again if you want ( with different settings ).

[salvo34]

your message says, I export a lot and now wonder about rendering...and I hope you realize those are 2 different things ??

[billysurfmartin]

I do.  I wanted to speed up my export by rendering.

[Phillip Harvey]

Kevin Monahan wrote a pretty thorough blog post about utilizing what Adobe calls the "Smart Rendering Workflow": https://www.kevinmonahan.net/?p=88

It's like you said, utilizing preview files (the video files created when you render) to speed up the export process by using 'Match Sequence Settings' and 'Use Previews'. It's pretty nice when you're in a situation where you're able to pre-render your timeline.

[salvo34]

What happens when you render it goes to cache ( the rendered stuff, which is usually set to a nice editing format ). On my old PPro program it is set by default to I-Frame something or other...

So, let's say I'm editing a mov h264 full HD video ( which is long GOP highly comressed stuff and hard to edit ) and I get a red line on my timeline ( meaning it should be rendered )... I render it and it turns green ( happy ) and now I'm editing more smoothly in the timeline. In a sense, rendering is trying to make it easier and faster to edit the stuff and scrub through stuff, etc. When you make changes, though, you usually have to render those new changes if it turns red.  I don't know if your new version has that red, yellow and green line indicator above your timeline.

So the answer to question, is NO, it is not destructive. And NO you don't go back to before you rendered, cause there's no reason to. It has no influence on your edit or original source stuff. It just makes it more smooth to scrub and watch your current project.

That's the basics, anyway.

[salvo34]

After that, then there is the faster export thing that does work if you export the same dimensions and frame rate as your project setting ( so the cache matches too ) and use the cached files ( use rendered clips) you will get a faster export but I never really used it for that. The main benefit for me was the smooth editing ( scrubbing and looking at result of effect or whatever ).

🙂

[salvo34]

hehe,  kinda hard to explain. The rendered stuff doesn't get in between your source material and your timeline. As you edit it's always the source or proxy if you made one ( or your transcode). The cache is more like a 'viewing' and elimination of that long GOP type stuff in terms of scrubbing etc.