First off, if you want to know the logic behind what your sequence settings should be and when to render and not render, see these two posts, Sequence Settings Part 1 and Part2.
This post is intended to be a look at the differences in what will require rendering and re-rendering in FCP vs. Premiere Pro.
As you’ll see from watching the video, Premiere’s renderer is a lot smarter than FCP7’s ever was. It retains previous render states, which in the end will save you a LOT of time. Of course, it isn’t perfect. With every program, we have features that we know it needs or we know it can do better. For it to truly shine, Adobe needs to add a ton of new features. As I mentioned in my Sequence Settings Part2:
1. Background rendering as found in FCPX. FCPX has it, Avid has publicly stated they wanted it in MC6 but ran out of time, so by the time the next version of Premiere comes out, it stands to reason that both Apple and Avid will have this feature. Say what you will about FCPX, but I don’t really have any complaints for a program being smart enough to not annoy me with rendering or waste my time.
2. Partial rendering, if I have a 30 second render in Premiere and stop my render with 5 frames left, that render is lost. That is unacceptable.
3. Batch rendering. In FCP7, I can select 6 sequences in my project panel, hit Opt-R and walk away knowing that all 6 will be rendered. Premiere Pro needs this feature.
If you agree with these four ideas, you can voice your opinions to Adobe by filing a feature request.
UPDATE: Number 3, Batch Rendering has been added in Premiere Pro 7.1 update. Still holding out on 1 and 2.
Credits: Thanks to John Gumaer for doing the intro sound design.