Apple Final Cut Pro 5 - Manual (Page 1326)

Chapter 24 Rendering 539
III
The Rendering Process
When you render effects in a sequence, they’re rendered in the following order:
 The top-layer video track (the highest-numbered track) is rendered first and then
composited onto the track below.
 Within each track, effects are rendered as follows: speed, filters, motion, motion blur,
opacity, and transitions.
You can change the order of rendering by using nested sequences. For more
information, see Volume II, Chapter 23, “Sequence to Sequence Editing.”
The amount of time it takes items in the Timeline to render depends on the type and
number of effects that are applied. When you render, a status window appears and
provides you with the following information:
 Percent: The percentage of rendering that has been completed, based on the
number of frames left to render.
 Estimated Time: The estimated time remaining to render. This value appears above
the progress bar and appears in seconds, minutes, hours, and so on.
Final Cut Pro bases its estimate on how long the last frame took to render, and how
many frames remain to be rendered. Because different sections of your sequence may
have different effects applied, this estimate may change over time, as it’s constantly
updated to reflect the clip currently being rendered.
Rendering Effects in Sequences
Render files for a sequence are generated cumulatively, with subsequent render files
added to those that have already been created. Because of this, you can choose to
render a sequence in its entirety, or only the parts of your sequence that are
immediately necessary. Then, as you need to render other parts of the same sequence,
you can simply widen the scope of what’s rendered, selectively rendering additional
clips without needing to rerender what’s already been done.