What do the red, yellow, and green render bars mean in Adobe Premiere Pro? (2023)

If you've worked withAdobe PremiereProa bit, did you notice that colored bars (red, yellow and green) appear at the bottom of the timeline at the top of thetimeline, on clips in a sequence. These colored bars are often calledrender bars. When you render a project, Premiere Pro is previewing and saving the project behind the scenes. But what do the different color rendering bars mean and what does it mean for your work?

What is rendering a view?

First we have to understand what it meansrender a view.

In the context of computer graphics,reproductionis the creation of an image from a set of inputs. For Premiere Pro, this essentially refers to creating frames in a sequence from the decoded source media to the clips, any transformations orinterpretationsmade to fit the source media into a sequence, and theeffectsapplied to clips.

For clips based on simple source media that match the sequence settings and have only simple effects applied, Premiere Pro can render the frames that make up the sequence in real time. In this case, each frame is rendered immediately before the display frame.CTI (current time display)get. Premiere Pro caches these results so your work isn't unnecessarily redone when you revisit a frame.

With more complex effects sets and more difficult source media, Premiere Pro can't always render sequence frames fast enough for real-time playback. To play back these frames in real-time, they must be pre-rendered and stored so that they can be read and played back, rather than re-computed in real-time. What this means is creating these frames to save them for quick playback.render preview.

By the way, it's common but confusing and misleading jargon to refer to render views.reproductionall by itself Render to show, render to final output, render to preview are all valid uses of the wordreproduction. Don't fall into the trap of using this general term only for the specific case of rendering to create preview files for real-time playback.

Note: Preview rendering is for preview purposes only. Preview files are not used for the final output unless you have enabled the "Use preview" option on output, which shouldnouse except for close-up views. Using preview files for final output results in loss of quality in almost all cases. In some cases it can speed things up, so it can be helpful to get a close-up view in less time.

**Okay, now for the colored render bars... **After that preliminary definition, what do the colored bars mean?

• Verde:A rendered preview file is associated with this segment of the sequence. Playback is done using the rendered preview file. Full quality playback is guaranteed in real time.
• Gelb:There is no rendered preview file associated with this segment of the sequence. Playback is processed by processing each frame before the CTI reaches it. Playback is in full quality.probablybe in real time (but it might not be).
• Putrefaction:There is no rendered preview file associated with this segment of the sequence. Playback is processed by processing each frame before the CTI reaches it. Playback will likely be full qualitynobe in real time (but it could be).
• none:There is no rendered preview file associated with this segment of the stream, but the source media codec is so simple that it can essentially be treated as its own preview file. Playback takes place directly from the original source media file. Full quality playback is guaranteed in real time. This only happens with some codecs (including DV and DVCPRO).

Note the use of the wordprobablyAbove. Colors are not a promise. They are an assumption based on some pretty simple criteria. If you have a fast computer, many things marked in red can be played in realtime. If you have a slow computer, you may need to render some items highlighted in yellow to preview the files before the segment can play in real time.

What do the colored bars mean?

What contributes to a slice getting a specific render bar color? The general answer is that changes that tend to make a thread much slower to process will change it from None to Yellow or from Yellow to Red.

What causes a thread to get renderbars with a specific color?

I've broken the examples below into separate lists for Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration and Mercury Playback Engine Software Only, which are the two possible settings for renderers in the Video Rendering and Playback section of Project Settings. (For details on CUDA acceleration and the Mercury Playback Engine, seethis page for CS5Ythis page for CS5.5.) Because Premiere Pro CS5 can use CUDA to accelerate scaling, deinterlacing, blending, and many effects, many things that cause a red render bar in Software Only (CPU) mode only cause a yellow render bar in video acceleration mode. gpu. CUDA accelerates even further in Premiere Pro CS5.5.

Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration:

• Gelb:The source media codec is computationally intensive (for example, AVCHD). As mentioned above, very few simple codecs don't have a yellow bar; these include DV and DVCPRO.
• Gelb:Clip settings (eg pixel aspect ratio, frame rate, pitch settings) do not match sequence settings.
• Gelb:A CUDA-accelerated video effect or transition has been applied to the clip. (A CUDA-accelerated video transition only generates a yellow bar during the transition.)
• Putrefaction:A non-CUDA accelerated video effect or transition was applied to the clip. (A non-CUDA-accelerated video transition only generates a red bar during the transition.)

Nur Mercury Playback Engine Software:

• Gelb:The source media codec is computationally intensive (for example, AVCHD). As mentioned above, very few simple codecs don't have a yellow bar; these include DV and DVCPRO.
• Putrefaction:Clip settings (eg pixel aspect ratio, frame rate, pitch settings) do not match sequence settings.
• Putrefaction:Any video effects or transitions have been applied to the clip. (A video transition only generates a red bar during the transition.)

I hope you can see from this that a yellow render bar doesn't mean something is wrong. This is perfectly normal for most modern codecs. And even a red render bar is to be expected with certain effects or when using media of different formats in a sequence. If you see a colored bar, don't panic.

How Render Bars Relate to Playback Commands

One of the main purposes of color bars is to provide the ability to render preview files more selectively.

• When you press the spacebar, Premiere Pro plays the raw footage first with additional preview files.
• When you press Enter (or choose Sequence > Render Effects in the workspace), Premiere Pro renders preview files for all segments with red render bars before playing the sequence.
• Unfortunately, there is no default keyboard shortcut for the Render Entire Workspace command. The Render Entire Workspace command renders preview files for all segments with red or yellow bars before the sequence runs. To haveI adjusted my keyboard shortcutsto assign this command to Shift+Enter.

a simple example

Changing the project setting to Mercury Playback Engine GPU acceleration causes the CUDA accelerated effect to get a yellow renderbar instead of the red renderbar it had in software-only mode. However, the non-CUDA accelerated effect is still highlighted in red.

I hit Enter to create a rendered preview file for the segment with the red render bar, then hit Shift+Enter to use my custom keyboard shortcut to render the entire workspace.

Thanks to Steve Hoeg for helping with some of the details in this post.