Smart Rendering in Premiere Pro CS6

Adobe by Kevin Monahan

Smart rendering in Premiere Pro has been available for DV and DVCPro formats for years. In Premiere Pro CS6 (6.0.1, and later), smart rendering capability has been added for Long GOP MPEG2 OP1a exports, where the original material is a matching long GOP MPEG2 OP1a or XDCAM EX file. The intention is that smart rendering creates better quality output by avoiding recompression when possible.

Update Premiere Pro CS6 to get the full benefit of this feature.

Premiere Pro engineer, Wil Renczes, explains how smart rendering works in Premiere Pro CS6 (6.0.1, and later):

What is it? (probably obvious, but I’ll start at the beginning):
The feature is specifically for accelerating MXF render times for long GOP MPEG2 essences, while avoiding recompression.

Which new formats are now accelerated?
Source media that is either XDCAM HD in an MXF wrapper (ie 4:2:0 XDCAM HD @ 18/25/35 mbits/second, or 4:2:2 XDCAM HD @ 50 mbits/sec.), or XDCAM EX (.mp4 wrapper within a BPAV folder structure, 18/35 mbits/second).

What do I have to do for it to work?
Nothing for DV or DVCPro formats, smart rendering automatically engages. For XDCAM formats, check the checkbox for smart rendering in the XDCAM exporter plug-in. If you have these types of clips in your timeline in a sequence with matching settings, are exporting out to MXF OP1a with a matching preset, and the checkbox is checked in the XDCAM exporter plug-in, it’ll engage. It’ll also figure out if there’s any effects applied and fall back to regular rendering if needed. read more...