Automation & Agents

Export-Free Output From JianYing: Select All, Alt+G, Pre-render, Then Grab the File

JianYing's "pre-render compound clip" is really a full render. Set the draft canvas to your target spec and you can pick up a finished file directly. What matters more than the trick: before you conclude "A determines B," confirm that A actually varied in your samples.

10/10/2026 ｜ 5 min read ｜ About 2 minutes by hand; the automation traps are at the end

The one idea that matters

JianYing’s “pre-render compound clip” is a real render, not a preview-quality cache.

It produces a normal mp4: a standard header, playable in any player, zero decode errors end to end, transitions and effects baked into the picture, with an audio track. And the output spec is set by the draft’s canvas settings, not by the source resolution. Set the canvas to your target when creating the draft (for example 1080×1920 for short video) and the pre-render comes out at that spec, with landscape clips letterboxed top and bottom and centered.

That turns the route from “preview only” into “usable for final output.”

Steps

Step 1　Confirm the draft canvas is the spec you want. The right-hand draft parameters panel shows ratio and resolution. For vertical short video, set 9:16 first. If you generate drafts by script, pass the width and height when you create the project instead of changing it later.

Step 2　Click any clip on the timeline. This just hands keyboard focus to the timeline. Skip it and the next shortcut lands elsewhere.

Step 3　Press Ctrl + A to select all. Subtitle and effect track clips are selected too.

Step 4　Press Alt + G to create a compound clip. Everything merges into “Compound Clip 1,” and a hint appears saying you can double-click the compound clip on the timeline to edit it. That means it worked. Alt + Shift + G ungroups it, which you use to reset before a rerun.

Step 5　Right-click the compound clip and choose “pre-render compound clip.” This step needs the mouse. I checked every bindable shortcut command in JianYing and pre-render isn’t among them: no shortcut, and no way to assign one.

Step 6　Wait for the render, then pick up the file. A 20-second clip takes a few seconds. The location:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\JianyingPro\User Data\Projects\com.lveditor.draft\<your draft name>\Resources\combination\

Paste %LOCALAPPDATA% into the File Explorer address bar and it expands. Two files appear:

• {alphanumeric}_video.mp4: this is your finished video.
• {alphanumeric}_video.mp4.alpha.mp4: a black-and-white transparency mask, not content. Ignore it.

Traps you will hit

Trap 1　Assuming output resolution can’t be controlled, so you must live with the source (the costliest one). I tested two drafts and both outputs equaled the source resolution, so I concluded “it renders at source resolution.” But in both drafts the canvas also happened to equal the source resolution, so the two explanations were indistinguishable in my samples. One control experiment (a 1080×1920 vertical canvas with 1664×936 landscape clips) showed the output follows the canvas. It took three minutes.

The general version of this trap is worth more than the JianYing trick: to check whether “A determines B,” first see whether A ever took a different value in your samples. If it was identical every time, you observed co-occurrence, not causation. If you can’t run a control, write “can’t tell yet” honestly instead of recording a conclusion, because a wrong conclusion becomes the foundation for later decisions.

Trap 2　The source quality is too low, so a bigger canvas doesn’t help. The canvas sets the output’s pixel size; it doesn’t invent detail. If the clip is only 360×640, a 1080×1920 canvas just enlarges it and it stays blurry.

Trap 3 (automation only)　The right-click menu closes the moment you touch it, and I failed six times in a row. The root cause: a Qt menu closes as soon as focus moves, and each new command-line invocation launches a new process that grabs focus, so the menu vanishes on the spot. Fix: do the right-click and the menu click in the same script, back to back, with nothing in between that starts a new process. Another source of interference: if an AI assistant pops up a permission prompt and you click it, the physical mouse gets moved and the menu action is ruined. Set permissions up before a long automated run.

Trap 4 (automation only)　Menu coordinates drift. The position of “pre-render” changes with version, window size and the number of menu items. Don’t copy someone else’s coordinates. Run “right-click, screenshot, Esc” once, measure from the screenshot, then run it for real. Draft-list tiles are sorted by modified time, so a position you noted yesterday may belong to another draft today.

Trap 5　The compound clip is not saved. Create it, save, close and reopen, and the timeline returns to separate clips. Rebuild the compound clip every time you pre-render.

Update: later tests

• I later verified this on both JianYing 5.9 and 8.9, and it works on both.
• After JianYing opens and saves a draft, it rewrites the draft files in an encrypted format, but the mp4 from pre-render is still plain, unencrypted, so it’s unaffected.
• If you generate a draft by script, tweak it by hand in JianYing, then have the script edit it again, your manual changes are dropped. Treat this flow as one-way generation.

When you’re stuck, ask an AI like this

Menu names and paths change with JianYing versions. Paste this into any AI assistant:

I’m a complete beginner using JianYing (version: <check Menu → About, or write “I don’t know”>) on <Windows 11 / macOS>. What I want: get the video file made by pre-render without using Export. I followed the steps up to: <which step, what I clicked>. The result was: <what I actually saw; paste any error text verbatim>. Please tell me step by step what to do next, saying exactly where to click and which key to press. If my information isn’t enough to decide, ask me first instead of guessing.

In one sentence

Pre-render is a real render: set the draft canvas to your target spec, then Ctrl+A, Alt+G, right-click pre-render, and pick up the file. And what matters more than the trick: before concluding “A determines B,” confirm that A really varied in your samples.