Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
It is a unique editor. And there's nothing like it out there.
CHARLES ROBERTS
MEDIA PROFESSOR, AUTHOR, EDITOR
Rendering is the process by which your computer builds each of the individual
frames needed to produce an effect. When you play back straight cuts in the
Timeline nothing needs to be rendered. The computer simply refers to the hard
drive where the original shot has been recorded and uses your edit information
to determine which section of the original shot is needed. When an effect is
applied to a clip a different process must take place.
People often complain about rendering - to wait seconds or minutes for
a computer to produce an effect can often drive people mad. I always smile at
these situations. My background was in the world of on-line tape editing where
the editor would work with several videotape machines, a separate vision mixer,
character generator, audio mixer and Digital Video Effects (DVE) generator. To
produce effects in this setup would often require an editor to record one or
more of the shots to separate tapes. Several tape machines would then be run
in sync with the layered effects built through the mix-effects banks of a vision
mixer. The output would be in real time, however, real time was only achieved
at the expense of the time used in the setup of an effect. These effects would
often take a considerable amount of time to set up.
It is not always necessary to render effects in Final Cut Pro to see a result.
Through the facility known as RT Extreme it is possible to see many effects play
back in real time directly through Firewire. One should be aware, however, that
the output quality is not always full quality and that the results are intended for the
purpose of gauging timing and other critical decisions, rather than for producing
full resolution output. The final output will still need to be rendered. The advantage
of RT Extreme is that it allows the editor, in many situations, to build effects
without having the render process getting in the way of one's creative flow.
Dynamic RT is a mode in RT Extreme which allows the computer to
automatically adjust image quality and frame-rate on-the-fly so you always get
the best possible real-time playback on your system. So if an effect is complex
the frame-rate and image quality will drop, so you can see the result with lesser
quality. A simpler effect will playback at full frame-rate and higher quality.
