What exactly is rendering?

[jjvb]

What exactly is rendering? When the program says it is rendering, what is it doing? I assume it is not making lard. Thanks.

[Forum Troll]

Rendering, in most cases, is another way of saying "encoding". This is when the program converts one file type to another, .avi to MPEG-2, for example.

[daamon]

Hi jjvb,

I use Premiere 6.0 to edit my home shot video. This involves adding effects, fades, transitions, pictures (jpg's) etc. to make the whole end-to-end "home movie" look and sound as I want it too.

Before exporting it, the project has to be "rendered". This is the process of the software producing the components for the finished article from all the clips and effects I've established.

e.g. I want the last three seconds of clip A to fade out whilst the first 3 seconds of clip B fades in (cross fade). Before rendering, they are two separate clips with an instruction and settings to do a cross fade.

Rendering produces a single AVI that is that cross fade. Rendering will take a .jpg picture and turn that into an AVI for as long as I want the picture to display. Rendering will create any audio effects I've detailed etc.

So, when exporting (saving the finished project in a format of my choice), Premiere 6.0 takes all the "bits" (parts of original clips and newly created clips just for the effects etc.) and combines it all into one file, as per your choice.

It's not neccessarily "encoding" during the export (I capture DV AVI and export to DV AVI), but can be done if you've the right codecs.

I hope that is a bit clearer than mud...

[jjvb]

Thanks for the replies. I looked for rendering in the definition page but it wasn't there.