OK...thanks for the response. I was just looking for a reality check. I've never used 3-D before so all of my previous render times have been less than a couple of hours.

I've seen people mention on this board that you should always use GOOD rendering quality rather than BEST. Do you know if this still holds true for 6.0c or was this just the case for earlier versions?

thx,
Jason

Actually it's never been true that you should always use Good. If that were the case then Best wouldn't exist as a choice. There are definite times when Best is ... well ... the best choice. Best will always produce a smoother result when the rendered frame size is different from the source frame size. Of course, smoother may not be what you want, and you may not be willing to spend the extra time to get it. The difference may also be slight enough that it's not worth the extra time.

I don't recall using Best much in earlier 6.0 releases, but i do use it from time to time in 6.0c and the added rendering time isn't huge, so if it was a problem in earlier releases it's probably been fixed now.

Gotcha....thanks for the clarification.

In the SD world, best is mostly for rendering stills and other high-res media. Not much -- if any -- improvement when rendering video, so sticking with Good when rendering video-only is the usual rule.

I haven't yet stepped up to HD, but I've read in this forum that best can make a big difference rendering HD. If you are down-converting to SD, this would be consistent with what I described in the last paragraph. However, it apparently is true when rendering to HD output.

There was a trick to speed up rendering with 3D in it here recently. When you apply 3D to a track, it bogs down rendering of the whole track even if you have keyframed only a small bit of 3D. IOW, If I have a title track with about ten seconds of 3D effects on a two-hour movie, the 3D clucks up the whole render. The solution is to make a new project with only the 3D effect, then bring that veg file into your master timeline.

Steve