-
24 Hours Of Compressor
Good morning, everyone… I’m having all kinds of problems while trying to get a 100-minute timeline from FCP7 to a DVD. My normal process is exporting the movie (1920×1080, XDCAM EX 24p codec) to a full-sized Quicktime movie and having Compressor deal with that, but I’m suddenly getting “codec error” during export (see the FCP forum for that issue). So I’m reluctantly trying “Send to Compressor” — “reluctantly” because I’ve been getting a lot of Failures after six or seven hours of processing. But I’m trying again. I’m using the “DVD – Best Quality / 120 minutes” setting, and the audio has successfully been created already, but it’s now saying that the process is going to take over 24 hours. Can that possibly be correct? Especially if, based on experience, it might fail at any moment? I need to hand over a DVD of my movie to distributors tomorrow afternoon, and that’s cutting it pretty closely. Any thoughts that can prevent a stroke on my part would be extremely helpful and appreciated. Thanks!
-
7 Replies
-
Okay, slightly less panic — it’s now down to around ten hours, and speeding up. But I am still very nervous about it working another few hours and then failing with no explanation. This has been happening consistently, and I don’t know if it’s just Compressor or the communication between Compressor and FCP. This is why I usually export a QT movie and compress that, but now even that isn’t working.
Hey, does software take holiday weekends off?
Thanks for any suggestions to avoid failure messages.
-
[David Dean] “My normal process is exporting the movie (1920×1080, XDCAM EX 24p codec) to a full-sized Quicktime movie “
What is a “full sized Quicktime movie?
Quicktime movies contain codecs which can determine the size but I know of none that are ever referred to as “full size.”Exporting in EX .mov, ProRes of some flavor (which one) or 8 or 10 bit Uncompressed or something else?
If FCP is having an issue with a codec then Compressor, using the same codec, is likely to have a problem as well.
Without knowing what you’re exporting we can only make blind suggestions as workarounds and that doesn’t solve the issue that you have some serious issue if you’re getting a “codec error.”
What codec are exporting in?
What none EX shots, graphics, stills do you have in the timeline?At the top of this forum there’s a sticky post about getting the Fastest help. Providing that information could mean you’d have already had an answer. Please read that post and provide all the information as well as anything else you can think of.
-
[David Dean] “it’s now down to around ten hours,”
This is the problem with editing XDCAM EX on a MacMini or MacBook (not Pro).
-
Thank you for your response, Craig. When I say “full-size,” I’m referring to the fact that it exports as the same 1920×1080 as the source footage. I don’t use “Quicktime Conversion,” but “QT Movie.” Exporting it as “Current Settings,” based on the XDCAM EX 1080p/24 codec from the timeline, has allowed me to create 1080p .mov files for the past six months. I created one last week and made a DVD from it. It’s only this last one that has given me the codec error, and the non-EX shots in the timeline are the same ones as in the successful exports.
Here is the data about my system and software versions:
Macbook Pro 2009 model with 8GB of RAM
Snow Leopard version 10.6.8
Final Cut Pro version 7.0.3
The codec of the sequence to export is XDCAM EX 1080p24 (35 Mb/s VBR)I’m afraid I don’t know a lot about codecs, but looking at the Get Info pane of the 1920×1080 Quicktime movies I’ve successfully exported, the codec reads “MPEG-2 video, linear PCM, timecode.” As I say, I’ve never specified the software to make it that way, but just hitting “current settings” has created movies with those properties.
I hope this helps in your diagnosis, and I truly appreciate your time on this holiday Monday.
-
Thanks. That’s exactly the details we’d need.
Were there any non EX files in the timeline? Graphics, photos, etc?Did you update to 10.6.8 using Software Update?
In my experience OS updates through Software Update is often the cause of odd problems. -
Hi, Craig. Between this thread and the one on FCP, and a very helpful Larry Jordan video on YouTube, I was able to export a 1920×1080 Quicktime movie successfully without any “Codec Error” messages. What I did: my project is almost 200 MB, which Larry says is way too big and causes memory problems. I will go back and delete unneeded segments, but I thought if I just created a new project and copied the timeline into it, the project would be significantly smaller and might avoid some of my issues. And it did! The export to Quicktime took the expected three hours, using the current settings, with no error messages whatsoever…
but the 100-minute Quicktime movie gradually drifts out of sync. By the end it is two or three seconds off. I was so close, and I’m now back to zero, with no idea how to deal with this freakish issue. Thank you for your suggestions.
-
Hmm, I’d bet this doesn’t happen in FCPX which is 64bit so it can take advantage of all the memory you can throw at.
As to the sync drift, you don’t mention what codec you exported with. Try a flavor of ProRes.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up