How to change your mind in the middle of a long render
Tell Vizard Agent the moment you know, and say the old version is dead. A long render writes its files as it goes, so a job left running underneath a new instruction keeps replacing shots with the old settings — which is how a video comes back half in one format and half in the other.
What is the short version?
You asked for one thing, a twenty-minute render started, and then you changed your mind. The danger is not the wasted time. It is that both versions end up in the same output, because the first job never stopped. Vizard Agent stops it first.
- Say the change to Vizard Agent as soon as you have it.
- Let it confirm the old job is no longer writing.
- Re-render from the parts that are still good.
What do you need before you start?
Nothing you do not already have. What matters is timing — the earlier you say it, the less of the render is wasted. If you are ten minutes into a twenty-minute pass and you already know the format is wrong, that is the moment to speak, not when the file arrives and confirms what you suspected.
Be specific about what changed. "Make it vertical instead" is actionable; "it does not feel right" starts a conversation while a render burns through the rest of its runtime. Vizard Agent can act on a precise change immediately, and a precise change is usually what you actually have in mind anyway when you interrupt.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Say the new brief and say that the current one is cancelled. Both halves matter, because "also make a vertical one" and "make it vertical instead" are different instructions and only one of them means the running job should stop.
Stop the landscape render — I want this in native vertical instead, not cropped.
In the session behind this article, a full-length local sports interview was already rendering to landscape when the brief became native portrait. Vizard Agent switched, and the first portrait pass still came back with some shots in the wrong orientation, because the earlier job was still finishing its own list of files.
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
It treats a running render as something that has to be stopped rather than something that will simply be superseded. A long job writes each shot as it completes, so for as long as it is alive it keeps putting old-format files into the same place the new pass is writing to, and whichever finishes last wins each individual shot.
The recovery in that session ran like this:
- Measured the exact length of every rendered shot, which is how the mismatch surfaced at all.
- Re-rendered the shots that had been cut off partway.
- Re-rendered the shots that had come back in the wrong orientation.
- Confirmed no stale render jobs were still running before starting anything else.
- Re-rendered the full set in native portrait as one clean pass, about twenty minutes.
That fourth step is the one that makes the fifth work. Without it, Vizard Agent would have produced the same mixture a second time and spent another twenty minutes doing it.
What does the result look like?
One consistent render, all of it in the format you asked for last. Vizard Agent measures the shots afterwards rather than assuming they came out right, so a shot that is the wrong length or the wrong shape shows up as a number rather than as something you notice on the fourth viewing.
You also keep the work that was not format-dependent. In that session the transcript, the cut list, the cleaned dialogue audio, the graphics and the caption timings all survived the change — only the shot renders had to be redone. That is usually the split: the decisions carry over, the pixels do not.
When does this not work well?
When the change arrives after everything downstream has already been built on the old version. Captions mapped onto a landscape timeline do not transfer to a portrait one for free, and the later a format change lands, the more of that mapping work gets repeated. Vizard Agent will do it, but the cost is real and it grows.
It also does not help if the change is not a change. "Actually make it vertical" said to a job that was already vertical costs a full re-render for nothing. Vizard Agent will tell you when an instruction matches what is already running, which is worth reading before it starts.
And a change made while a render has genuinely finished is a different situation. There is no job to stop, nothing to collide with, and the work is a straightforward rebuild — say so plainly and skip the interruption language entirely.
How do you fix a result that came back wrong?
If the output is mixed, say so directly — "some shots are landscape and some are portrait" is diagnostic on its own. Vizard Agent measures each shot rather than spot-checking, finds which ones carry the old settings, and re-renders only those. In that session the mixed batch was resolved by identifying the specific shots rather than by starting over.
If shots are cut off rather than wrong-format, that is an interrupted job rather than a competing one, and the fix is the same measurement pass. A shot that is three seconds long where the cut list says eleven is a file that was still being written when something stopped it.
If a re-render produces the same mixture, the old job was not actually stopped. Ask Vizard Agent to check for running jobs explicitly before the next attempt rather than starting a third pass and hoping.
How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?
In a desktop editor you would simply cancel the export, and the failure mode above does not really exist — one export writes one file, and cancelling it leaves a partial file you delete. The cost is that the whole export restarts from the beginning every time, including the parts that did not change.
Shot-by-shot rendering is the trade. Vizard Agent rebuilds only the affected shots and reuses the rest, which on a full-length interview is the difference between twenty minutes and an hour of re-renders. The price is that jobs can overlap, so the stopping step has to be deliberate rather than automatic.
Common questions
Will I be charged for the cancelled render? For the part that ran, yes. Stopping early is why saying it sooner is worth doing.
Can I change my mind twice? Yes. Vizard Agent stops the current job each time, though each change restarts the affected renders.
How do I know the old job actually stopped? Ask. Vizard Agent checks for running jobs and will tell you what it finds rather than assuming.
Does the transcript have to be redone? No. A format change does not affect the transcript, and Vizard Agent reuses it.
What about the graphics? Graphics sized for one frame shape need rebuilding for another. Vizard Agent regenerates them at the new dimensions.
Can I keep both versions? Yes, if you say so. Then Vizard Agent lets the first job finish instead of stopping it.
Why did only some shots change? Because each shot is its own file. The ones the old job reached after the switch kept the old settings.
Does this apply to audio too? Rarely. Audio passes are fast enough that the overlap window is small, so Vizard Agent usually finishes them before a change lands.
How long should I wait before asking? Do not wait. Vizard Agent handles the interruption, and every minute of waiting is render time spent on the version you no longer want.
What if the render is nearly done? Say so and ask. Vizard Agent can tell you how far along it is, and sometimes letting it finish is genuinely cheaper.
Can I change the length instead of the format? Yes, and it is cheaper. A length change reuses the shot renders; Vizard Agent only rebuilds the join.
Does a stopped job leave broken files behind? It can. Vizard Agent measures the shots afterwards, which is how a truncated file gets caught.
Will the captions still line up? They are re-mapped onto the new timeline. Vizard Agent does that after the joins, not before.
Is there a way to avoid this entirely? Test on a short slice first. Vizard Agent can render thirty seconds in both formats before committing to the full pass.