Avoiding Final Cut’s Rendering

Posted on by Jeff Riegel, Producer/Editor

October 5, 2010

Posted by Michael Murie, http://notesonvideo.blogspot.com/

Officially, Final Cut Pro doesn’t support the media files produced by DLSRs like the Canon 7D or Nikon D90. That’s not entirely true; you can import those files into a Final Cut project without doing conversion, and add them to a Timeline quite happily. The annoying part is that no matter how you set up the Project, Final Cut will want you to Render the Timeline before it will play it back in real time in the preview window. If you simply play it back in the preview window, you get a blue screen with a “Needs to be Rendered” message.

But there are ways to work around this.

  1. You can force Final Cut to playback footage that needs rendering by using the Option-P [play all] command instead of the regular play command.
  2. or you can open the QuickViewer and view the project there (the QuickViewer is under the Tools menu.)

Neither will play your project at actual speed, but they will play! It’s a great way to see what a simple change does without having to wait for Final Cut to render the sequence.

Adjusting the RT options in the sequence can also help whether Final Cut will play footage without rendering (see the article: Unlimited RT vs. Safe RT.)

A final note for those using Final Cut to edit DSLR footage. If I’m doing a quick assemble edit, I generally just drag the native files into the Project and live with the fact that Final Cut wants to Render things. But if I’m going to do extensive editing, I either use the Canon plug-in for Final Cut, or MPEG Streamclip to transcode to ProRes LT and then edit with those files.

One thought on “Avoiding Final Cut’s Rendering”

  1. I kid you not but last week I cut an entire sequence using native files from DSLRs on my MacbookPro using FCP6 and it didn’t require rendering. It was jumpy from time to time but didn’t impair my ability to cut right there and then.

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For two decades, Jeff Riegel was a senior level Producer/Editor for the Department of Defense and various government contractors in Northern Virginia. Outside of the workplace, Jeff keeps himself busy with the creation of festival worthy documentaries "Tori Nelson: Fighting for Her Future" and the once nominated and two-time Emmy award winning "A Journey of Education and Remembrance." His short film "The Great Realisation" captured the eyes at 18 international film festivals with various winning honors; a poem that takes on heavy themes such as fevered capitalism, man-made ecological issues, digital addiction during the global Covid blight. Jeff is looking for funding investors and co-producing "The Lost Clipper," a two+ decades project about the first hijacking in U.S. history and the search for those 15 lost souls abducted in 1938, the true first act of war with Japan. Filming takes him to Micronesia, Guam, Hawaii, Canada, and locations across the U.S. (see www.LostClipper.com) He enjoys creating media-marketing social networking campaign for personalities such as 13-time world boxing champion Tori Nelson, Netflix's "Narcos" personalities Steve Murphy and Javier Pena, and renowned landscape photographer Frank Lee Ruggles. Jeff is eager to attack any project head-on. Jeff's Motto: think beyond convention...and consider it done!