Rendering Advice for Final cut HD
by Jenny Murphy
on
Aug 24, 2009 at 2:45:23 pm
Hey everyone,
I have been an editor for quite a while now and still can’t seem to get it into my head that it takes so long to render and export. I believe that it is the computer I am using, but I can’t buy a higher quality model any time soon because of cost constraints.
Do you have any suggestions I should do ?
Should it be taking 8 hours to export a graphics intense video that is around an hour long ?
Even a video project that is just of photos of a wedding takes an hour to render and it is only a 2 min video.
Here are the specs of my computer:
LAPTOP
Mac OS X
Version 10.5.6
Processor 4 GB MHz DDR2 SDRam
Macintosh HD
( Using external Lacie drives for holding footage)
Re: Rendering Advice for Final cut HD by Shane Ross on Aug 24, 2009 at 6:15:42 pm
What type of footage you are working with? HDV? Then heck yeah, it will take a LONG time, especially on a laptop. the GOP format is VERY processor intensive, and makes for long render times.
Re: Rendering Advice for Final cut HD by Jenny Murphy on Aug 24, 2009 at 7:07:06 pm
Hey ,
My Processor Speed is 2.4 GHz. The picture wedding video I was talking about is 4:3 720 by 480 square and lower the compression is Animation.
The other video was something along the same lines although I do also HDV Stuff. The overlay files for the heavy graphics project where sent to me alpha from after effects. This is the video that took 8 hours to export.
Re: Rendering Advice for Final cut HD by David Roth Weiss on Aug 24, 2009 at 7:14:33 pm
[Jenny Murphy]" The picture wedding video I was talking about is 4:3 720 by 480 square and lower the compression is Animation.
"
Why were you editing using the animation codec Jenny? That's the biggest issue I see that's causing the problem for you. The animation codec creates unnecessarily huge files and it is not handled natively by FCP.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW's Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
Re: Rendering Advice for Final cut HD by David Roth Weiss on Aug 24, 2009 at 7:45:36 pm
[Jenny Murphy]"I can use H.264 and I think it takes just as long.."
.H264 is also a very processor intensive codec, so yes, it too isn't fast when rendering a long file.
If you can find a friend who has a copy of the now end-of-lifed VisualHub app, somehow those folks were able to build an .H264 rendering engine into their software that runs circles around Apple.
And BTW, if you fully render your timeline, ensuring that "full" is checked in Render All dropdown menu, then export a self contained QT at current settings, then use that file in Compressor to compress to .h264, that will give you the fastest possible encoding on your machine.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW's Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
Re: Rendering Advice for Final cut HD by Sverker Hahn on Aug 24, 2009 at 7:06:50 pm
Rendering takes its time, but if you export to a different codec it could take much longer. On my not so powerful iMac, an export to H.264 takes around 30 times longer than real time (I use USB harddrives).
If I need to do that export on a larger scale, there is the Matrox CompressHD (there is an ad on this very page), which is 30 times faster than my iMac (have to buy a Mac Pro as well ...)
Sverker Hahn, Stockholm
Slower is better!
Sony EX1
Final Cut Studio 2
iMac Intel
MacBook Pro 15"
Re: Rendering Advice for Final cut HD by Jenny Murphy on Aug 24, 2009 at 7:12:00 pm
Alright I will check that out, and keep working on this. I have some really heavy green screening coming up and I really want my computer to be working great with my deadlines. I feel like I am limiting my editing because of the time it takes to render graphics. It's nice to know there are other editors our their!
thanks for your help! Ill give you an update soon.
