“best”/fastest client preview movies

[David Roth weiss]

Recompress all frames isn’t necessary, that may cut some time.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[J. Tad newberry]

that makes sense. trying different things.

what about making the QT in a different codec? would it save some render time going to a codec that is quicker to render?

also, i’ve now opened Compressor, and am converting two new single QT’s to mp-4, AND from within FCP i’m exporting two new timelines to two new single QT’s. will that double my render time on both processes? or worse? or make no difference? (i would assume it will double the render time…but we’ll see)

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

howdy,

thanks for the “schoolin'” (i can use all i can get!), but i did know that about reference files…and you are only referring to step 1 in my process. either way, i send to the client neither the reference nor the self-contained movie…they are just the step before creating an mpeg-4 to email to them. just trying to find the fastest way to get both steps done.

thanks for the input, though!

thanks again!

mh

[Jeremy Garchow]

Sorenson3 goes much faster than mp4, albeit at a loss of quality. If it’s a rough cut, who cares? Sorensen3 will be the better bet.

If you have an 8 core, you can setup a virtual cluster and crank out an mp4 pretty quick, as long as you don’t turn deinterlace on.

Jeremy

[Andy Mees]

hi Mort
if you’re working with mixed XDCAM HD / HDV timelines then you need to take into consideration the native Long GOP structure of those codecs.A few things to note:
– rendering to these codecs is extremely processor intensive, so if this is not your target codec then there is no reason* to export a self-contained qt with “current settings” as a first step .
– reference files don’t work effectively with these codecs (only the first clip instance will be referenced, the rest of the timeline will be rendered, so the resulting file will be almost as large as a fully self-contained file plus will take all but a few minutes less to encode)
– export > using compressor… used to tie up FCP whilst Compressor works its mojo, and whats more Compresor tended to be slower when launched from FCP … thats why people would export a self-contained qt of their timeline first, so that they could load that into Compressor separately from FCP.

so, things to try :
– export your timeline “using Compressor” directly to your target codec, do not export a self-contained qt first
– export “using Quicktime Conversion” to an interim codec that is not XDCAM HD/HDV first (suck it and see what works) then feed that file to Compressor, do not reload it into FCP first

* if you do need to create a native master of your timeline anyway, then there is no escaping the initial long conform time so why not export back to disc and then send just the client the MP4 proxy of the edit that will be created by the XDCAM device ?

hope it helps
Andy

[Peter Sassi]

For what it’s worth. I just put a trailer 4 min. on blip.tv for “free” I exported a reference and then used Adobe Flash Exporter, but could have used Sorrensen or whatever. File size was small relatively and folks had access to it even if they were QT naive. Dont know how it works with the long GOP structure though.

I believe you can password protect it as well.

Peter Sassi

[J. Tad newberry]

hey andy,

great stuff to try there. thanks a bunch. funny that i get some guys advising to create a single QT before going to mpeg-4, others say go to mpeg-4 right from the timeline. i realize HDV had some GOP issues and seems to be a bit confusing for some computers to deal with, but didn’t know XDCam was similar in that regard.

i’ll try a few more options along the lines of what you said, and agree that Compressor when launched from FCP seems to be a slightly different animal.

thanks again for the tips!

thanks again!

mh

[Visionstudios]

I post client preview movies every week.
What i like to do is export a refrence movie, then let compressor do the work. This allows me to keep working in Final Cut.
I create droplets of my favorite settings in compressor.
Then I drop my refrence movies on the droplets and let compressor work.
I usually use a 1min test file and time the results before I render longer movies.
My timeline in Final Cut is Avid DNX 36 codec 24FPS
I am using H.264 960×540 1000kbps as my setting in compressor.
I sometimes crank it up higher to 2500kbps for shorter movies better quality.

Here is another good setting and is much faster
H.264 480 x 270, 644.34 kbits/s

H.264 has slow render times but great looking quality.
For quicker renders I use sorenson squeeze set at 480×360.
More people are able to watch sorenson movies without playback problems on slower computers. Also the quality is pretty good if you get your settings right.

To really speed up your renders in compressor, cluster a few computers together with Qmaster. Now you can kick out your H.264 files super fast. The trick here is to have storrage that is central to all of the machines.
Qmaster can be a little bit tricky to set up too.
I am using 3 Mac Pro computers on Xsan.
My renders are almost 3 times faster.

I have tested 5 computers cluster on xsan and was able to encode 1 min of DVCPRO HD 1920×1080 29.97 footage to H.264 @ 800kbps in 45 seconds. (Better than realtime.)

I have also used compressor to batch transcode all of my HDV footage to DVCPRO HD before I start editing in Final Cut. I like DVCPRO CODEC WAY BETTER.
The inital transcode takes a long time, but i set it up to convert over night. Final Cut Pro is much faster working with DVCPRO over MPG2 codecs. Export times are much faster as well.
Mind you the files are a bit larger.

I Hope this helps you.

Curtis Robinson.

[Visionstudios]

Name: Curtis Robinson
Date: Nov 17, 2007 at 1:19:42 am
Subject:Re: Encoding Tips

I post client preview movies every week.
What i like to do is export a refrence movie, then let compressor do the work. This allows me to keep working in Final Cut.
I create droplets of my favorite settings in compressor.
Then I drop my refrence movies on the droplets and let compressor work.
I usually use a 1min test file and time the results before I render longer movies.
My timeline in Final Cut is Avid DNX 36 codec 24FPS
I am using H.264 960×540 1000kbps as my setting in compressor.
I sometimes crank it up higher to 2500kbps for shorter movies better quality.

Here is another good setting and is much faster
H.264 480 x 270, 644.34 kbits/s

H.264 has slow render times but great looking quality.
For quicker renders I use sorenson squeeze set at 480×360.
More people are able to watch sorenson movies without playback problems on slower computers. Also the quality is pretty good if you get your settings right.

To really speed up your renders in compressor, cluster a few computers together with Qmaster. Now you can kick out your H.264 files super fast. The trick here is to have storrage that is central to all of the machines.
Qmaster can be a little bit tricky to set up too.
I am using 3 Mac Pro computers on Xsan.
My renders are almost 3 times faster.

I have tested 5 computers cluster on xsan and was able to encode 1 min of DVCPRO HD 1920×1080 29.97 footage to H.264 @ 800kbps in 45 seconds. (Better than realtime.)

I have also used compressor to batch transcode all of my HDV footage to DVCPRO HD before I start editing in Final Cut. I like DVCPRO CODEC WAY BETTER.
The inital transcode takes a long time, but i set it up to convert over night. Final Cut Pro is much faster working with DVCPRO over MPG2 codecs. Export times are much faster as well.
Mind you the files are a bit larger.

I Hope this helps you.

Curtis Robinson.

[Sean Oneil]

I second everything Curtis. Actually I “third” it since he double posted :).