Burn VFX or color grade permanently into rendered footage — no changes possible post-render. Saves RAM and storage but kills flexibility.
You notice it at the latest when the render farm runs through the night and you realize the next morning: the grading was too warm, the particles are misplaced, the color correction doesn't match the next scene. Then it's too late — baked in means you've burned the effects or the grading directly into the footage and can no longer touch it. No more layers, no more masks, no more adjustments.
In practice, it works like this: Instead of exporting your VFX composition or color space as an open file (e.g., an OpenEXR sequence with an alpha channel), you render to a compressed format — usually H.264 or ProRes — with all effects, tracking data, and color corrections already merged. This saves massive amounts of RAM during playback, reduces file sizes, and significantly speeds up the editing timeline. On large projects with hundreds of VFX shots, this is a real advantage for real-time playback and export speed.
The catch: Once baked in, you're stuck with your decisions. The director wants to reduce particle density? Too late. Your DI colorist sees a color cast you didn't anticipate? You have to re-render everything. This method costs you the flexibility you normally need in the post-workflow — especially during correction rounds or when director's cuts are pending.
That's why you work intelligently: You only bake in when you are sure. As long as the effects can still be changed — which is the case in almost every project — you keep your composition files open, export with separate render passes (Beauty, Mattes, Z-Depth), and manage them in an organized way. Only when the final lock is in place and the timeline needs to be ready for online editing do you burn it in. For offline edits, rough cuts, and temp mixes, baking in is a common method to avoid overloading the hardware.
A good compromise: Store proxy files baked in (fast, small, usable for editing) while securely archiving your original comps and grading sessions. This way, you retain the ability to make corrections later without sacrificing editing performance.