VISUALLY ENCODING NODES REPRESENTING STAGES IN A MULTI-STAGE VIDEO COMPOSITING OPERATION

Some embodiments of the invention provide a user interface of editing video through a multi-stage editing process. The user interface selects a particular stage in the editing process. A particular editing operation is performed on a set of video images during the particular stage. After the selection of the particular stage, the user interface uses a background rendering process to render the result of the particular editing operation on the particular set of video images. The background rendering process is a process that the user interface performs separately from the multi-stage video editing process, so that a user may continue editing the video sequence while the rendering occurs. Some embodiments provide a preview of the rendering process in a preview window. Some of these embodiments update the preview in real time. In some embodiments, the rendering occurs to a temporary location and then stores to a persistent storage. In some of these embodiments, an entry for the stored render's location is logged in a list of entries that allows the stored render to be catalogued and retrieved from the persistent storage. The temporary location and the persistent storage can be part of a non-volatile memory such as a hard drive.