Posted by Reuben Zaback -
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Does Premiere Pro Render the Footage Regardless When Trimming?
Yes, Premiere Has to Render It. But we have 3 tricks to speed export 5x up by skipping re-rendeing
"If I just want to trim the video by Premiere, do I have to render it?"
Last month, I spent around 4 hours trimming a 50-minute long video by Adobe Premiere Pro. After cutting the unwanted part on the timeline, I clicked File >Export. It reminded me that the estimated remaining time was 3 hours and 24minutes.
I understand that Premiere needs to render and encode the source footage if adding some special after effects, or do other complicated editing works, but why a simple trimming task also needs to be rendered? There was no change with codecs, bit rate, and frame rate.
After waiting a long time, 3.5 hours, the footage was finally exported. Then it turned out that the extremely slow export was not the only issue I was facing. Many buzzy and pixel blocks appeared on the output footage. That is to say, the video quality downscaled after rendering. How that happens? Is there any way to trim our video without rendering and quality loss?
Why Adobe Premiere Pro Renders Our Footage?
Premiere imports and decodes the source video as an uncompressed file in the memory. Then it applies our editing decisions such as adding filters, transitions on the uncompressed file for providing us a real-time preview. This process is what we called rendering. And, the source video is not yet modified.
When we export the video, Premiere Pro will add the changes to the uncompressed images first, says re-rendering. Then encoding the images into whatever codec we chose in the export settings. It is the re-rendering process that lags our computer and shrinks the images’ quality.
Though Premiere has to render and encode when doing even the simplest work by Premiere, we do have ways to speed the exporting process up without re-rendering and quality loss.
Read more: Rendering vs encoding
How to Enable Smart Render to Trim Video without Re-rendering and Encoding?
Smart Render is Adobe’s term for directly copying the source file without re-rendering and quality-diminish if the export settings match the source. It enables us to export 4x faster than usual if we do no change to video codecs, formats, bit rate, and size. A big con is that Smart Render supports only a few codecs like XDCAM HD422 in XMF container. When it comes to the most common use codecs like HEVC, H.264, MPEG4, helpless we would be.
To get start, check the codec of the source video to make sure it is on the list of supported formats for the smart rendering of Premiere.
Step 1: Download and Launch Premiere Pro CC 2019 on our PC.
- An Adobe ID and stable internet connection should be available when installing and launching Premiere.
Step 2: Create a new folder to store everything we need for the project.
- It is essential to put everything in the same file to help us find our need at first glance to prevent any potential errors.
- A complete video is made up of moving pictures, static pictures, subtitles, audio, and other files. Any change in one file's position will trigger many errors. Most often, we will be required to manually locate the missing file.
Step 3: Click the yellow folder icon at the bottom left to create bins to hold various kinds of resources for this project.
Step 4: Click File >Import to import the source video clips into the respective bin. You can also drag the video from the PC directly to the bin.
Step 5: Drag file to timeline, and click the Ripple tool.
Step 6: Move the position of Ripple to change the start and end time of the clip.
Step7: Go to File > Export > Media, manage export settings such as format, file name, and file location, then hit Export.
- You can choose to export only audio or video using the checkbox.
- The export codec, size and bite rate should be the same as the source.
Warm note: if the source video is in XMF container, we will need to click Enable Smart Rendering when exporting the file. It takes me 12 seconds to trim a 2-hour XMF film to 30-minute clip.
How to Trim a Video and Export it in A Different Codec without Re-Rendering?
Sometimes, we need to trim the footage and export it in a new codec for satisfying various demands. In other words, this trimming work comes also the changes in codecs, size, or even bite rate. To avoid the annoying re-rendering issues, we can choose the same codec settings for preview and export file. Then, Premiere directly copy the date of the preview file, and export it.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work for all codecs as this is a trick combing Smart Render and Preview. Only applied to codecs listed under "supported formats for Smart Render".
After download and launch Premiere Pro on PC, move to our next steps.
Step 1: Click File >Import to import the source video clips into the respective bin. You can also drag the video from the PC directly to the bin.
Step 2: Drag clip(s) into the timeline, and Click the Ripple Edit Tool.
Step 3: Click Sequence>Sequence Setting to manage the preview file format, codec, size, bit rate, and all other parameters shown on the setting panel. To make all the information the same with target files.
Step 4: Remove the Ripple’s position to change the start and end time of the project.
Step 5: Click File> Export> Media> Export Settings> match sequence settings, then Click Export.
Only seconds are needed to encode this video by using Smart Render. To make the result a good reference, I export it in a normal way and it takes around 4-times longer time than smart render mode.
Premiere Pro can trim videos in some specific codecs without rendering or quality loss being benefits from smart render mode. However, it is too complicated. Despite all the care and attention we trim and manage the sequence, import, and export settings, there are bound to be some shots that are not perfect.
If You Need an Easy Solution to Trim Any Video: 
Read this 3-step guide made for immediate trim.Beginner Friendly Solution:
Trimming should be a quick-on-the-go task, which should not be that hard to get done. If you want to fast trim a video without rendering, errors, or quality loss, you may as well try an easier-to-use yet powerful video trimmer- VideoProc. To begin with, let’s install VideoProc on our PC or Mac computer.
VideoProc - 3 Easy Steps to Trim our Video without Rendering
- A handy video trimmer to cut unwanted parts without rendering.
- The intuitive interface makes video trimming and editing pretty easy.
- A fast video editor processes footages with GPU-accelerated.
- More than 420+ support codecs and wrapped containers.
Step 1: Click the +Video button in the top left corner to import the source video
Step 2: Click Trim on the Toolbox. Move the green knob to fine-tune and start and end time of the selected video
Step 3: Click Done to finish the trimming process, and click Run to export the after trimmed video without rendering.
It took me only seconds to trim this 35 minutes MP4 footage. Besides, there is no visible quality loss found in the output clips.
Final Words:
It may take days to trim, merge our video by using daunting video editing tools like Adobe Premiere Pro. The price of the Adobe series products also keeps many of us at bay. VideoProc comes with powerful editing toolkits，intuitive interface and affordable price that allows us to cut, split, and rotate videos in just a few clicks. Other most common to use editing tools such as adding subtitles, converting formats are also provided.
