What is "pre-rendering"

vb. (present participle of pre-render English)

Pre-rendering is the process in which video footage is not rendered in real-time by the hardware that is outputting or playing back the video. Instead, the video is a recording of footage that was previously rendered on different equipment (typically one that is more powerful than the hardware used for playback). Pre-rendered assets (typically movies) may also be outsourced by the developer to an outside production company. Such assets usually have a level of complexity that is too great for the target platform to render in real-time.

The term pre-rendered refers to anything that is not rendered in real-time. This includes content that could have been run in real-time with more effort on the part of the developer (e.g. video that covers a large number of a game's environments without pausing to load, or video of a game in an early state of development that is rendered in slow-motion and then played back at regular speed). The term is generally not used to refer to video captures of real-time rendered graphics despite the fact that video is technically pre-rendered by its nature. The term is also not used to refer to hand drawn assets or photographed assets (these assets not being computer rendered in the first place).