AME render previews – should this be “instant”

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Joel,

Regardless of what format you are exporting to – avi, MPEG-2, H.264, etc. – it is still going to take some amount of time even on a fast workstation, as the video must be transcoded to the specified codec, and the new file written to disk.

If you have rendered the timeline, you will shorten the export time in AME if you check the “Use Previews” box at the bottom – without checking this, all segments that had needed rendering will be re-rendered again!

Some advise against using “Use Previews”, which depends on what codec you are using for rendered previews. You may get a higher quality by skipping the intermediate render, and encoding direct from the original footage on the timeline.

What format is the source footage, and what are the export settings?

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Joel Smith]

Thanks for the input.
Some specifics:
6 minute timeline, previewed using cineform codec, source footage Sony EX1 MP4 files, export in AME “using sequence settings & preview files”.

2hr render.

[Jeff Pulera]

Sorry not following you – what format are you exporting to?

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re doing.

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Sorry not following you – what format are you exporting to?

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re doing.

Jeff

[Joel Smith]

Ideally I’d like to export to H264.
I’m currently exporting back to a cineform codec, per the sequence settings.

[Jeff Pulera]

Let’s get back to basics. To start with, a 6-minute timeline should never take two hours to export. Ever.

What processor do you have? Which version of Premiere Pro?

What is the intended delivery format – DVD, Blu-ray, Web? You said H.264, so online perhaps?

When you say you are exporting to match sequence settings…are you sure it’s not rendering back to XDCAM? That might take a while.

Jeff

[Joel Smith]

I’m running an intel i7@ 2.67Ghz, Adobe CS5, intended delivery is online (for the moment), render is an avi. I’d planned to transcode to h264 sepreately to fine tune my quality settings to taste/forum.

[Alex Udell]

Hi Joel…

I’ll Jump in here….

It sounds to me like you want to create rendered intermediates during editing to use during editing?

So what your asking is, why, if you’ve already done the timeline renders, and then you use the AME does it require a render again?

So I’ll ask, what the intent of using the renders, is there a speed advantage during editing that you seeking or is the idea that you want to use these “exports” in another edit or an entirely different software?

But I think you and Jeff keep missing each other…

Alex

[Joel Smith]

The rendered intermediates are in place of dynamically linked after effects animations. Cineform play back better than QT animation on our computers.

Yes, I am wondering why AME is re-rendering my HQ Cineform files, if I’ve told it use those already rendered files. (per the use previews function/ same as sequence settings.)

The hope of all this is to save render time through multiple re-edits, by only re-rendering those sections of the timeline having seen revision then spitting out the HQ preview files for delivery.

[Steve Brame]

I think what you’re expecting is that when you select ‘Use Previews’ and your Preview File Format is the same as your desired export format, AME will just use the already created preview files as the exported file, which would actually be fairly ‘instant’.

However, this isn’t the way it works – it merely uses the previews to transcode from, rather than the raw timeline data. So there probably isn’t any time savings in selecting ‘Use Previews’, and in some cases, it may actually hurt you time-wise.

Sounds like you are wanting to do a rapid export of your timeline for use in another encoder perhaps? If I’m right, you would benefit from checking in on the development of the Advanced Frameserver project…

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/727162?start=0&tstart=0

The AFS lets you instantaneously create an reference AVI of your timeline data. No actual video file is created, it just wraps your timeline into a very small AVI, ready for use in any other program you like.

Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions