SeaLyon99 - the quickest answers are that once the bug in PD12 has affected a clip, you cannot repair it. Unlinking the audio and video will let you edit either portion of the clip and do things like trim and add/remove or adjust effects. Unfortunately, they cannot be reintegrated by using the Join Audio and Video function, they just become grouped together.
If you don't change the length or speed of either the audio or video sections of a damaged clip, they will fortunately remain in sync. If you need to trim or change the speed, it's probably easier to delete the damaged clip and replace it rom the library before making those kinds of changes. Many people are eagerly awaiting a fix for this very frustrating problem.
As for rendering/producing speed, the timer is fairly accurate but it is often affected by the amount of work is currently occurring. For example, if your video starts off with no effects but ends with lots of fancy effects or corrections, the timer will show an unrealistically short produce time because it isn't fully aware of the workload ahead.
OTOH, if you start with a whole bunch of effects but most of the video is just what came out of the camera, the estimated time will be much longer than the time it will actually take and you'll see the remaining time drop by many seconds each second as the hard stuff is finished.
The estimated finished size, however, is fairly accurate and you can use that as a rough guide for how long the producing will take. In other words, if you choose one output format and the size is 3GB, trying another format or adjusting the final resolution may show a noticeable change in the output size. Generally speaking, but with plenty of exceptions AND greatly dependent on the input format AND your hardware, a significantly smaller output video size can take quite a bit less time to produce.
Unless you have a strict requirement for a specific format, frame rate and resolution, you may want to at least try a few other options and start the producing process to see how the output size and time remaining numbers compare. You can pause the process and open up the clip in your favorite viewer and look at the output quality
(Note, if you're producing to AVI, it's better to use the "Produce Range" setting from the timeline because partial AVI files are difficult to play).
If the output looks acceptable, just hit Resume as you probably just found an optimal setting
Good luck!
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