good point, however to play it from the PC, u still need to be able to output a full frame rate full resolution file, to get this, 99% of the time, to get this flawless playback, youll need to render.
Not to mention the 3 second lag from audio to video through firewire...
even using an RTx type card or a Storm, these only output full frame full audio using analogue outputs only and that defeats the purpose of what were tryin to do, not to mention that these standalone disc recrders have about a60% compatibility rate with other players (due to IFO and Disc structure routines)

Thanks for all of the feedback. Until I can afford more hardware I'll stick to using Premiere or After Effects to render out the clips that need the filters I like to use. I use them sparingly, so it's not like I'll be juggling programs all the time. For the rest of the time, however, I'll keep using Edius. It's been my personal experience that Edius and Premiere balance out together. One is much faster as general editing, while the other can use the best filters and plug-ins available.

As a note, I believe I found something wrong it what Rick and I both said: Premiere doesn't use the rendered timeline for anything else, or something to that effect. Well, I tried an experiment. I had a non-rendered timeline of 60 seconds with a soft focus filter applied. When I exported the timeline to a Microsoft DV AVI file it took about 4 minutes to export the video. Then I rendered the timeline and exported the same everything... and it took about 20 seconds that time. So the magical secret to quick rendering from Premiere is to export DV AVI files... after waiting through the painful render time.

-Michael

But then what will you do with that AVI file. It will still need to be encoded and compressed *again* to make it DVD compliant. Best thing is to go from the timeline directly to the final desired rendered output.

So nope, In the MPEG/DVD world, I stand by what I said. Premiere's preview files are useless for anything other than playback.

Rick, I'm not challenging what was said, and I didn't say it was useful to you or anyone else but me... I said it was used for other things, which is true in my case. It's been my experience that if I use Encore DVD or even DVD Architect they can transcode the AVIs to MP2s faster than Premiere can make anything *but* AVIs. It makes sense in my setup to spend 10 minutes making a DV AVI and transcoding it to MP2 (in another program), as opposed to spending 40 minutes making the MP2 right from Premiere. I don't know the reasons for it working that way; it just works.

I agree.. as these "prerender" files build up over time, your playback may retain its framerate (on the timeline running these filters) however you are degrading image quality through multiple generation processing. If yoru doing massive CC's and colour grading, i would strongly recommend NOT to prerender
This is where Edius (when u dont use the "render and replace"function)and the HW cards come into play, as the HW doesnt require prerendering unless ur stretching the bugger.
On the flipside, this is where SW NLEs come into play also, BUT rendering WILL take considerably longer.. were talkng hours vs minutes here...

An extension to this, i would say , if u want to use Procoder or mainconcept or DVDArchitect or whatever..
DOnt prerender..
or, DELETE your prerender files PRIOR to final output rendering.
Once u have the one big movie file, then u can go nuts with transcodes..
At least this way, ur DV AVI wont have generation gaps

I only wanted to point out Michael that you're adding another unnecessary level (generation) of compression in order to get the final render. DV AVI is not a lossless codec.