-
Big render times….really confused???
Hi guys,
Ok, I am getting render times from final cut pro 6.0.6 that are +10x realtime ie. 1min of full res HDV footage is taking 10mins to render.
I know very little about computers but am very confused considering the specs of my machine. Here they are:Powermac G5 quad 2.5GHz (power pc)
10GB DDR2 SDRAM
OSX 10.4.11
Drives:
230gb on board drive (apps only)
2x 1TB WD Studio II dual drive enclosures (Media only – esata)
+ 3 other drives that are not media drives they are just there for backups. One is on board, the others are external. All WD.All drives have at least 100GB free so none are really loaded up and I’ve been experiencing this for ages. I’ve never been able to get realtime playback of HD footage in Final cut pro once dumping an effect on like a color balance. Certain effects don’t seem to require a render but others do.
My example of 1min of HDV, which took 10 mins to render, had 3 or 4 effects on it and I was rendering a full quality/full rate playback.
I’ve had friends mention that this can’t be normal but I can’t find the bottle neck?? I’m pretty green so open to any suggestions!
Really appreciate it.
Joel
-
13 Replies
-
Hi Joel,
Unless you have to print back to HDV tape you have no reason to render to HDV. Very slow.
Try changing your sequence codec to Prores.
rafael -
Hi Raf,
I always thought you had to set your sequence settings up to match the footage you are working with? Not true?
Can I assume that rendering in HDV is a lot slower than a prores render can I? I know HDV is a heavy codec, thus why ‘smoothcam’ struggles with it I suppose but I thought it could do better than this.
I am outputting to DVD eventually so what would you recommend is a good sequence setting for this workflow? Prores?
I should maybe point out also that compressor is taking 17.5hrs to encode a 50min HDV sequence from Final Cut for DVD. Is that normal? Even off 1 core that seems slow to me.
So HDV is slow, but regardless, should FCP be able to give me faster render times than this? Or is this normal for HDV in FCP? I was concerned because it just didn’t seem normal to me and I work with XDCAM EX footage as well and haven’t noticed that it is much faster (if at all).
Thanks for your response.
Joel
-
Also depends on what filters you apply. Some require quite a bit of render time.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Hi joel,
All the GOPs based formats makes things slower. Think that to process any frame, you need to deal with 12 (PAL) or 15 frames (NTSC) instead of with just one, as its happens with Intraframe codecs.There is an option in FC (only for HDV and XDCAM footage) to keep the original codec and make the renders to Prores. This speed up the rendering, but I do not recommend this way.
The easiest workflow for HDV and XDCAM is to conform the sequence to the footage and change the sequence codec to Prores.
Set “Render in High Precision”.[Joel Colthorpe] “I am outputting to DVD eventually so what would you recommend is a good sequence setting for this workflow? Prores? “
Esport a Prores movie and bring it to Compressor. Set the “Frame Control: ON”, and “Best or Better Downscaling”
Anyway, if you think that your Mac performs too slow, I recommend you a bit of maintenance: Repair permissions and rebuild your HDs directories (Diskwarrior, TechTools,..).
rafael -
Thanks Raf,
Thanks for the help so far.
Can I just ask how to do that what your saying point for point?
I’m not quite sure what you mean by conforming the sequence to the footage, if I then change the sequence codec to prores? Doesn’t that then unconform the sequence settings from the footage?What steps do I take to do exactly what you are saying?
* Just ran a test sequence off using HDV in a prores sequence and it still took 8 mins for 1 min of footage.
-
[Joel Colthorpe] “Can I just ask how to do that what your saying point for point?
I’m not quite sure what you mean by conforming the sequence to the footage, if I then change the sequence codec to prores? Doesn’t that then unconform the sequence settings from the footage?
What steps do I take to do exactly what you are saying?”just drop a clip and say YES when FC asks you to conform the sequence to the footage.
Then change the sequence codec to Prores.
With Prores as your sequence codec you will still have RT performance.
Before exporting your Prores movie, set “render all YUV material in High Precision”.
rafael -
Ok great. So basically all I do is open the sequence settings on a sequence that is set up for HDV, and change just the ‘compressor’ setting to Prores422?
Just tried that, it is faster by about 30-40% but I still can’t get realtime playback at full quality.
I set the timeline to unlimited RT and I can only get smooth playback if I reduce the quality down to medium.Should I expect full quality playback with this workflow considering the machine I’m running on or am I kidding myself? And is it normal for compressor to take 17.5hrs on a 50min HDV sequence to DVD encode?
Just trying to work out if there is something wrong with my computer..
Thanks for your help, that has already sped up my workflow either way!Cheers!
-
[Joel Colthorpe] “Ok great. So basically all I do is open the sequence settings on a sequence that is set up for HDV, and change just the ‘compressor’ setting to Prores422? “
Right.Download the “Aja System Test” (Included with the drivers of any AJA video card) to check the speed of your HDs and do a bit of system maintenance.
rafael -
Thanks Heaps Rafael,
I did that and my WD studio II with 200gb free is reading and writing at around 80 MB/s. The other one with 100GB free is clocking 65MB/s ??
Not sure if that’s just due to the drive being more loaded..
My on board drive with only 50GB free however is getting about 65MB/s which is the same as my esata connected WD studio which is set in a RAID 0 configuration with more available space. The 2 disks in the enclosure are 500GB too, as apose to the onboard drive which is one big 640GB Hmm..
Thanks heaps, that software will be great as I play around and try to get this baby pumping!
Cheers!
-
And I hate to say it but a six year old G5 was always slow with HDV.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up