Render file question prior to Masterfile

Karsten Schlüter wrote: ...
a 4:30min project needs 150 sec more or less, one way exported or another …
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The 4:30 project was chosen to facilitate rapid testing. I have much longer real-world timelines which might have 1+ hr export times. But running the many tests I posted above would have taken several days.

To show how it can make a significant real-world difference, assume instead of 4:30 the timeline is 25 min. The export is 1080p H.264 "Better Quality", and takes 1 hr 30 min without pre-rendering and our delivery deadline is looming. Each so-called "final" version must be uploaded and reviewed by several people. At the end stage we can't do a low-res version or disable the effects -- each export is potentially the final one and if approved would be published.

Pre-rendering one time at this phase might cost 60 min, but then every subsequent export might be reduced from 1hr 30 min to 15 min, or 1/6th the time. If you end up doing that "final" export 10 times, you saved 12 hours. That's the difference between missing a deadline and making it.

As stated above, this benefit varies widely based on export codec, timeline complexity, machine type, etc. It appears for ProRes 422 export there is no real benefit -- at least for the timeline and machine I tested. If you just export one time, there is likewise generally no benefit.

Rendering is mostly a waste of time in FCPX. I only ever do it if I need smooth playback of a section that is complicated (effects and stuff). Unfortunately that happens way more often than it should with my supposedly powerful Mac Pro Late 2013 (I select quality not performance). In FCP7 I'd just render short sections as I completed them while checking e-mail or some such thing and then when it came time to export it was very fast. But FCPX will often forget what's been rendered and lose the render files so why bother trying to keep everything rendered? I just export to my own present (I'm amazed that some of y'all actually use the built-in presets) and do something else while it does its thing. I feel it's still probably faster than exporting from Premiere (which Premiere calls "rendering").