Maybe referring to the little blue bar that shows up over the timeline when you pre render? I rarely do it, so , I don't know what happens when you pre render multiple tracks? Do you get a indicator for each track? Seems not, <shrug>

I see the same thing on PTT. Sometimes a 12 second title will be rendered in two segments of 10 seconds and 2 seconds. Other times it will be a single 12 second segment. A 25 second title may be rendered in one segment of 25 seconds or in three segments of 10 seconds, 10 seconds, and 5 seconds. I've never seen any rhyme or reason for the longer than 300 frames segments.

Hey Jet
It's not just on one clip, it could be 4,7,or 9 clips under that 1 30 or 40sec. render bar.
Funny huh.

Paul

jetdv,

Can you please verify the following?

Depending in the monitor resolution used it may be difficult to see the tiny black line separator at the bottom of the green line.

You can use Windows Explorer to browse to the folder where the pre-rendered files are stored and check their files sizes. There shouldn't be any file larger than 40MB. I work with PAL and the maximum size of a pre-rendered file is 43,6MB (4.577.788.994 Bytes)

Try this on the 25 seconds video that you mentioned it is rendered as a single segment. If you place the mouse cursor over the start of the green line isn't the tool tip displaying a different pre-rendered file name from the one displayed at the end of the green line? (Actually there should be three different file names displayed if you visually split the bar to three equal parts)

Also when starting rendering the above segment the pre-render dialog should display that is performing a total of 5 tasks. You will only see the indicator progressing during the second, the third and the fourth where the three files are actually getting created. The first and last tasks are always instantaneous giving no time to the progress indicator to show anything. I don't know what the program does during this but it's the default behavior.

To my experience working with PAL, pre-rendering follows a standard and predictable pattern:
If you overlay a title of less than 10 seconds, 3 tasks will be performed and task number 2 will show the progress while a single pre-rendered file is built.
If you overlay a title of less than 20 seconds, 4 tasks will be performed and tasks number 2 and 3 will show the progress while the two pre-rendered files are built and so on.

When performing any of the above are you experiencing different results?
It may be a NTSC specific issue, I am curious...

"You know when you highlite a section that is, lets say 1 min. long. This whole section has to be rendered"

Not necessarily, if your DV footage content is unchanged it will playback from your original files. Even if you split an event or more events in multiple segments and change their playing order on the timeline, preview will still be able to use the original file(s) for playback. Simple cuts although are defined as transitions, don't affect video frames content.
However if the content of one or more events is changed, new pre-rendered files will be created just for the changed segments, The number of files will vary depending whether the 10 seconds (or about 40MB) limit applies to these segments.

Check my post to jetdv to see about the pre-rendered files green bar issue and whether your experience to what I write there is different.

I was using a different reference point. I wasn't looking at the pre-render bar at the top of the screen. For my reference point I was doing a Print To Tape and notice that some 12 second titles get TWO steps (one 300 frames and one 60 frames) while other 12 second titles only get ONE step (at 360 frames). Same is true with the 25 second title. Some weeks it will get 3 steps (300 frames, 300 frames, 150 frames) while other weeks it will get 1 step (750 frames).

I see. It's very strange indeed that rendering is using various different combinations each time the same clips are processed.
I'll PTT tomorrow to see if the same thing occurs with PAL projects. I suppose it will be the same, quite interesting!
tks for the further info.