One new featured welcomed by the editing community that Final Cut Pro X has is background rendering. No longer do you need to wait for Final Cut to render clips, instead it all happens in the background. In this Final Cut BasiX tutorial, I am going to go over basic information about rendering in the background.
Background Tasks Window in FCPX.
Almost any kind of transcoding, rendering, and management happens in the background for FCPX. No longer do you need to stare blankly at a progress bar sluggishly moving. Instead, Final Cut 10 lets you do what you want while everything happens behind the screen.
If at any time you want to see your tasks, including rendering, just click on the progress indicator to the left of the timecode or go to Window ->Background Tasks (command+9).
Background Rendering
The most apparent part of Background Tasks is rendering in the background. When you apply an effect to a clip, Final Cut Pro X will display an orange line indicator above the clip, meaning that it needs to render. In legacy Final Cut, depending on the type of render, you may not have been able to play the clip. But, thanks to BG Tasks, we can play the clip almost seamlessly to review the applied effect.
By default, background rendering is disabled, and acts like legacy FCP. However, you can easily turn it on by going to Final Cut Pro menu -> Preferences ->Playback
Select Background Rendering in the Playback Preferences pane.
Just press the check-box next to “Background render”. Now, background rendering isn’t really rendering-while-you-edit. It’s more like render-when-you-aren’t-playing-a-clip. So, if you’re watching a clip or selecting in and out points, FCPX won’t render. You can tell Final Cut how long to wait after you become “inactive” by adjusting the amount of seconds next to “Start after”. It’s set to 5 seconds by default.
Selective Rendering
Say you have a timeline that is an hour in length and everything needs to be rendered, but you only want to review one clip. If you were to render the whole timeline, that would take a lot of time to process it. However, as Premium Beat points out, you can easily select just the area you want to be rendered. Previously, I showed you how to activate background rendering. For selective rendering, you need to disable rendering in the background. Once you do that, select the clip(s) you’d like to render. Now, on the keyboard, press control+R or go to Modify -> Render Selection. This will render out just the selected area.
Conclusion
Rendering is much better in FCPX compared to “Classic” Final Cut Pro. You don’t have to wait any more to view an affected clip. Instead just press play. Then, when you become inactive, Final Cut will begin rendering anything with an orange bar above it.
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