How to use pre-rendering

[jonnyD]

I have your book The Muvipix.com Guide to Sony Movie Studio Platinum 13. I get the idea of making a pre-render of a particularly work-intensive segment of the timeline to ease the workload of SMS and have a smoother playback. I made a loop region pre-render. I don't understand what I do after the pre-render process is finished. Where is the pre-render file? My timeline looks the same. How doe SMS swap the pre-render file for all the work on the timeline?

[Steve Grisetti]

The program will automatically use the pre-rendered file in place of the actual file when you play the timeline.

In the book I show you how the presence of a pre-rendered segment is indicated above the timeline. The timeline itself won't look any different.

Once you make a change to this segment of your timeline, however, the pre-render is automatically deleted.

[vkmast]

In addition to what Steve says, you can see the default Prerendered files folder in Project / Properties / Folders > C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Sony\Movie Studio Platinum\13.0\. Windows hides the AppData folder by default.
Options / Preferences / General has an option to Save active prerenders on project close.
MSP 13 online Help (F1) has chapters on how to Selectively prerender video, Clean up prerendered video, Save active prerenders.
Quote: "These temporary preview files are used when you play back that section of the project.
When you perform a selective prerender, a separate preview file is created for each section of your project that needs to be prerendered."