Don’t be a “Render-holic”

So you’ve added a fancy transition to an edit point and want to see how it plays. Is it over the top? Is it smooth enough? Have you added a superimposed lower third or graphic treatment or perhaps a heavy duty filter and want a quick reality check? Well, if this is the case, please don’t be tempted to select the incoming and outgoing clips and transition, hit a “render selection” (CMD R) review it, tweak and repeat. You’re wasting time if you do (and anyone who edits HDV footage as I do really feels the pain here). Instead, why not use the handy “Quick View” Tool to quickly evaluate and sample the segment?

When you hit OPT 8 to invoke the Quick View, a new window pops up over your Viewer that starts to play a short segment of timeline around your Playhead (or Viewer content, if you like–it’s intuitive based on which window has focus, but there’s also a pop-up for you to choose). It will play slowly at first, then come up to full speed so you can see what the rendered content will truly look like without resolution loss (though that too is customizable from within the window).

It plays from a point before your playhead position to a point after which is perfect if you park on the edit point using the up and down arrows. You can adjust the range played from 2 seconds to 10 seconds (I keep it at about 3 seconds, which balances what I want to see with the time it takes to come up to speed).

Rendering is one of the most painful things we endure as editors (and God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change), so any tricks you can use to avoid it are well worth adopting. The first step to recognizing that you have an excessive rendering problem is to admit it. The next step is to seek treatment. OPT 8 is good medicine.