"conforming HDV"??
 

What on earth does that mean? I have been editing this HDV project for months, rendering only filters and dissolves. Now when I render, it acts as if it is rendering everything, and tells me it is "conforming HDV". Why is it suddenly wasting my time by constantly "conforming"? I've used HDV for years without having this problem.

Are you trying to print to tape?

No, I thought I just need to render on an as needed basis. But, when I go to render a selected dissolve I get a "conforming HDV" bar that renders the entire clip. It should be a couple seconds here and there to render. But instead (when I try to render) it's constantly rendering ("conforming") all clips unnecessarily, and it's wasting a lot of time. This is in an HDV sequence I have been working on for a long time, I see no reason to "conform" to it's native format.

I asked because I've only ever seen that when I tried to print to tape with HDV, in which case it would make sense...I agree you shouldn't need it for rendering most effects on your HDV timeline. I would double-check all your settings; I can't really venture a guess without knowing more about your variables.

three things Aric

1) if you are using FCP 6 then do yourself a big favor and switch your Squence Settngs > Render Control tab >> Render settings to ProRes 422 (this will mean the render files will balloon in size but actual render times will decrease significantly)

2) re the issue: check that you have not inadvertently enabled unneeded/unwanted render options in the Sequence menu > Render submenu's (ie if you don't want realtime full res playback items to be rendered then make sure that Full is not selected etc)

3) if all your settings are correct but FCP is still acting up / performing strangely, then it may be high time to trash your preferences or revert to a good set (back them up first as is, then trash them ... if the problem is solved then reset your specific user prefs as needed and carry on, if the problem isn't solved then you can just revert your prefs and continue troubleshooting the issue)