In this video I’m basically covering the stuff I forgot to mention in my Render Cache walkthrough, and it’s the kind of small details that actually fixes choppy playback in real projects. First up is Node Caching on the Color page. Node caching is linked to render cache, but it works per-node, so if one heavy node (noise reduction, motion blur, OFX, etc.) is killing playback, I can cache just that node instead of rendering the entire node tree. The best part: if I cache a node and then tweak nodes after it, I don’t need to re-render that cached node. But if I change the cached node itself (or anything before it), then I do need to re-render. Then I go into the render cache output options and when to use them. If my clip has both Fusion effects and color grading, I need to enable both Render Cache Fusion Output and Render Cache Color Output—otherwise only one side gets rendered and I’ll still see lag. I also explain a common slow-motion issue: if I’m using processor-intensive motion estimation like Enhanced Better or Speed Warp, Fusion Output cache won’t fully help because it doesn’t render the motion estimation data the way Color Output does. So for heavy retimes, Color Output is the one that actually smooths playback.