Apple Final Cut Pro 5 - Manual (Page 1330)

Chapter 24 Rendering 543
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Render Only Submenu
The commands in the Render Only submenu operate either on a selected region of the
Timeline, or on the entire sequence if no selection is made. Render commands
corresponding to each Timeline playback state appear in this submenu. In addition to
the Timeline playback states that appear in the Render Selection and Render All
submenus, another command appears here, Mixdown.
Choosing a command renders all items in the selected region of the Timeline that
appear with that Timeline playback state. For example, you can render only the real-
time preview clips appearing in your sequence, leaving all the other clips in that
sequence alone.
More About Audio Render Options
Two of the audio rendering operations create render files in very specific ways.
 Item Level rendering options: Renders the audio items that need to be resampled to
match the sample rate of the sequence, as well as audio items with filters applied
to them, as item level render files. Audio mixing is still done in real time, and
mixing performance improves since audio resampling and audio effects no longer
consume real-time processing resources.
 Mixdown: Renders all the audio in a sequence to a single group of render files, one
for each audio output assigned to the selected sequence. This can improve
playback performance by eliminating the need for Final Cut Pro to do any real-time
mixing or audio effects playback. The Mixdown command is a nondestructive
operation and doesn’t change any of the audio clips in the sequence.
When using either the Item Level option in the Render Selection and Render All
submenus, or the Mixdown command in the Render Only submenu, audio is
rendered at the highest quality regardless of the setting chosen in the Audio
Playback Quality pop-up menu in the General tab of the User Preferences window.