DV Filmmaking

Rendering Your Work

Whenever you create a composite sequence, as you did earlier in this chapter, or whenever you add a transition or execute an effect, you generally need to render the sequence before you can play it back. Rendering a sequence creates a new series of video clips that contain your source footage and any composites, transitions, or effects you’ve added. As explained in Chapter 10, your computer’s rendering speed depends on the processor and available RAM, as well as the nature of the sequence itself (the more effects, the more time it will take to render, and some effects take longer than others). Depending on your computer, you may be able to preview some effects without rendering, but even the most muscular computer system requires render time before you can view intricate composite effects. Longer and more complicated sequences or compositions take more time to render, and if you have any other applications running on your computer (for example, if you like to listen to iTunes while you work), they’ll divert power from your processor so rendering will take even longer. (To avoid problems, it’s a good idea not to do anything else with your computer while you render.)

Rendering a longer project, such as an effects-intensive feature film, can easily take more than 24 hours. Rendering the short sequences you created in this chapter will probably take a few minutes or less.

Because rendering creates new video files, it’s important to make sure you have enough hard drive ...