How to resume an interrupted render without starting over
Ask Vizard Agent for a status report and tell it explicitly not to restart. A long job leaves finished pieces behind as it goes, and the difference between resuming and rebuilding is whether anyone looks at those pieces first — so the instruction is to inspect, verify, then continue.
What is the short version?
A long render stalled, or your connection dropped mid-job. The instinct is to ask whether it is stuck, and the natural response to that question is to try again — which discards the parts that had already completed. Vizard Agent can pick up instead.
- Ask Vizard Agent which step it is on, and say not to restart.
- Have it verify what already finished before continuing.
- If storage is the problem, keep the source and the master.
What do you need before you start?
Nothing but patience and a precisely worded question. The real hazard here is your own follow-up message: an impatient "is this actually working?" reads to Vizard Agent as permission to start over, and on a job that is already twenty minutes in that permission is expensive to give.
It helps to know roughly how long the work should take. A render that has been going for six minutes on a five-minute job is working; the same render at forty minutes is not, and those need different questions.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Separate the question from the instruction and put both in the same message. Ask Vizard Agent for the status first, then explicitly forbid the action you do not want it to take, because otherwise the helpful reading of your question is to try the whole thing again.
Quick status check only. Are you still processing, or are you stuck? Do not restart or change anything — tell me what step you are on and what remains.
Then, when the workspace is back:
Reconnect to the existing project and resume from the interrupted state. Do not rebuild anything. First verify the cut that already exists.
Both messages do the same thing: they make inspection the first action rather than production.
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
It looks at what is on disk before it does anything else. A long job leaves a trail — a finished picture cut, completed caption renders, part-built audio — and those are either reusable or they are not, which is a question you answer by checking rather than by assuming.
In that session the resume ran:
- Checked the interrupted render's existing intermediates to see what could be continued from.
- Reconnected to the project workspace and inspected it rather than re-initialising it.
- Verified the existing forty-six-second cut and the caption renders that had completed.
- Confirmed the saved cut and the intermediates without rebuilding any part of the edit.
Earlier in the same job, storage had run out, and the handling was the same in spirit: the redundant intermediates were cleared while the source footage and the completed master were kept, then the remaining large files were listed so only what delivery needed stayed.
What does the result look like?
The job continues from roughly where it stopped, and the pieces that had already finished get reused rather than regenerated from scratch. On a long render that is usually the difference between a few minutes of work and most of an hour of it.
You also get a straight answer about state. "Which step are you on and what remains" is answerable, and an answer to it is worth more than another attempt — particularly when the thing that failed was the connection rather than the render.
When does this not work well?
When the intermediate is the thing that broke. A half-written file is not a resumable state, and a partial render that was interrupted mid-frame usually has to be redone — Vizard Agent will tell you which pieces are complete and which are truncated rather than trusting the file names.
A change of brief also ends the resume. If you want the cut different now, the existing intermediates were built for the old version, and reusing them is how you end up with a mixture of two edits.
And nothing survives a workspace that is genuinely gone. Resuming depends on the files still being there, so if the environment was reset rather than disconnected, the answer is an honest rebuild.
How do you fix a result that came back wrong?
If Vizard Agent restarted anyway, say so and ask what was kept from the earlier attempt before you accept the new one. Often the original intermediates are still sitting on disk untouched, and the restart can simply be abandoned in favour of them.
If the resumed render mixes two versions, that is the brief-change problem. Ask Vizard Agent which pieces came from which pass, and rebuild the ones that belong to the old version rather than the whole job.
If it runs out of space again, ask for the file list rather than a cleanup. Knowing what is consuming the workspace lets you decide what is safe to lose, and the source and the current master are the two things that are not.
How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?
In a desktop editor a lost export is simply re-exported, because the project file is intact and the render is disposable. That is not the situation here — the work in flight includes generated pieces that cost something to make, so discarding them is a real loss rather than a few minutes of CPU.
The useful habit is treating "what state is this in?" as a question with an answer. Checking the intermediates costs seconds, and it decides whether the next twenty minutes are a continuation or a repeat.
Common questions
Will asking for status interrupt the render? Not if you say status only. Vizard Agent reports without touching the job.
How do I know it is stuck rather than slow? Ask Vizard Agent which step it is on. A stalled job cannot name a current step.
Can it always resume? No. Vizard Agent says which intermediates are complete and which are truncated.
What if I changed my mind meanwhile? Then the intermediates are for the old version. Say so and Vizard Agent rebuilds the affected parts.
Does a dropped connection lose the work? Usually not. The files stay in the workspace, so Vizard Agent can reconnect to them.
What gets kept when storage runs out? The source and the completed master. Vizard Agent clears redundant intermediates only.
Can I see what is using the space? Yes. Ask Vizard Agent for the list rather than for a cleanup.
Should I re-upload the source? Not before Vizard Agent checks. It is usually still in the workspace.
Will a resumed render match a fresh one? Yes, if the intermediates were complete. Vizard Agent verifies them first.
How long should I wait before asking? Longer than the job's expected time. Vizard Agent will tell you the expected length if you ask up front.
Can it split the job so this hurts less? Yes. Ask Vizard Agent to build in chapters, so an interruption costs one chapter.
What if the same step fails repeatedly? Then it is the step, not the connection. Vizard Agent reads the error rather than retrying blindly.
Does resuming cost extra? Only for the parts Vizard Agent still has to make.
Can I get the finished pieces even if the job dies? Yes. Ask Vizard Agent for whatever completed, as files.