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Extremely Long Exports… advice on how to speed-up
Hopefully someone out there can help me ’cause I’m very frustrated. First I’ll give you my machine specs up front and then explain the problem(s).
MacPro mid-2010, 2×2.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
64GB 1066 MHz DDR3 EEC RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 4000 2048MB graphics card
OS 10.7.5
Maxtrox MX02 LE MAX
both NVIDIA and Matrox cards are running the latest and greatest drivers
Adobe CS6 Production Premium version 6.02I have 4 external drives, each connected via eSATA.
1 drive is connected via an eSATA cable that is direct to the motherboard
3 drives connected via eSATA to a G-Tech high performance PCIe 4x RAID ControllerThe main edit drives are both CalDigit 8TB VR2 set to RAID 0, one is attached via the direct eSATA cable and the other is on the G-Tech Raid card.
My backup drives are both OWC QX2 set to RAID 5 and are simply for backup, not for feeding media to Premiere. Both attached to the G-Tech card.
Here is the situation:
I am cutting a 4 screen long-form presentation for a client. Three of the screens are set to 4096×2304 30fps Progressive and the 4th screen is set to 1920×1080 30fps Progressive. The reason for the 30fps is because that is what the projection company requested. The reason for the 4K timelines is because 2 of the screens final pixel dimensions will be 4200×1050 and the main screen’s final pixel dimension will be 2358×1920. The 1080 screen’s final pixel dimension will be 1400×1050. All timelines will need to go to color correct and the colorist is working with Resolve. Based on a couple of tests, we decided that it would be best if I exported ProRes files of each timeline. Now since the final pixel dimensions do not utilize all the space top and bottom for the very wide screens, I have a bit of black space in some instances, particularly when I’ve got the same image playing side by side 3 across. In some cases I have actual 4K imagery that can fill the screen. Most of my footage is ProRes 1080i 29.97, some is RED R3D files shot 29.97 or 23.976 either in 2K or 4K. I have a couple of H264 files from 5D and 7D cameras. I have no fancy effects, simple dissolves, mostly just straight cuts.
Here’s the problem:
I’m using Media Encoder to export the Sequences via File Add Premiere Pro Sequence. I’ve got a preset I created that is 4096×2304 30fps ProRes (so frame rate and pixel dimensions match the sequence). Each of these sequences range from 25 minutes to 35 minutes in length. When I hit export and leave for the evening / weekend I get some of the following issues: exports that take almost 4 hours, or exports that hang and say they’ve been running for 48 hours and have another 30 to go, or exports that just fail after nearly 4 hours. Luckily on the failed exports I can still open the Quicktime files and use them for my next step. Is there anyway to speed up this export? I’m tempted to export an XML and try and export via FCP X to see if I get any improvement.Second problem:
Once I’ve exported the files as listed above, I bring them into After Effects to create a multi-screen composition both for reference and final export to the projection company. I have comps set up to be the correct pixel dimensions of my final screens (4200×1050 x2, 2358×1920, 1400×1050). I drop my ProRes Quicktimes into these comps that have matching frame rates. I then have a master comp that shows all screens together (10798×2970) that has a gray background for the space where the screens don’t exist. In order to create a Quicktime for reference both for the mixer and for client approval, I take the master comp and drop it into a 1920×1080 30fps comp with a text layer that generates timecode for reference. I then add that comp to Media Encoder via File Add After Effects Composition. I select a Matrox MAX Other Workflow 1920x1080p @30fps preset and click export. This is giving me a 9 hour export for a 25 minute comp. What am I doing wrong, how can I improve this?Right now I’m at the client stage of reviewing the equivalent of a rough cut. Eventually I’ll need to export a total of 2 1/2 hours x 4 screens. There has got to be a faster way. Any advice, recommendations would be much appreciated.
Thank you,
Jamie Pickell -
6 Replies
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I’m curious what export times you are expecting? You do realize that you are export (1) Mixed resolutions, (2) Mixed frame rates, and (3) mixed codecs (ProRes, R3D, h264). So you’re asking AME to resize the media, add/remove pulldown, and transcode….that’s a lot in my book.
Given your hardware setup those times don’t strike me as ridiculous. Painful? Yes. Ridiculous? No (not given what you are asking of it). A 12 core machine would probably help a bit (but that’s probably not worth the $4K investment), but I’m not sure there’s much help to offer.
As for it hanging, you may better results exporting directly from the app itself – PPro or AE – instead of going through AME. You can still use your presets inside of those programs. Problem is in PPro you can’t que up several things to run. It’s a one at a time deal. Though AE does allow you to que up multiple comps in the render queue.
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
Agree with Ryan thats a tall order and expected for that resolution.
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Ryan,
Thanks for the reply. To be honest I wasn’t quite sure what to expect on the render times for the Premiere timeline exports so I guess the 4 hour mark shouldn’t be surprising. As for the AE to AME Matrox export, I was expecting a lot faster given the Matrox built in H264 encoding.
Regarding the AME adding of AE and Premiere Comps / Sequences, it sounds like you recommend not going that route, but rather exporting direct from the host apps. I’ll try an export direct out of Premiere to see if that helps on the timing and not hanging.
Cheers,
Jamie -
[Jamie Pickell] “As for the AE to AME Matrox export, I was expecting a lot faster given the Matrox built in H264 encoding.”
I would agree with you here. You may need to contact Matrox and verify that it is setup and running correctly. I would expect that a h264 encode using Matrox would run faster than realtime given the hardware in there.
[Jamie Pickell] “it sounds like you recommend not going that route, but rather exporting direct from the host apps”
It probably won’t change your export times much, but I’ve found on some projects that PPro can export the file fine while AME will hang at some point. Seemingly no rhyme or reason why PPro works….my only guess is whatever engine runs in the background to enable the handoff of the sequence from PPro to AME gets gnarled up. Once it does it’s game over for the export in AME. That same handoff doesn’t seem to be taking place if the sequence is exported from within PPro. If any Adobe guys are reading I’d love to know more about that backend between PPro and AME (maybe an Adobe blog post?).
Keep us posted Jamie on how it works out. That sounds like a cool project!
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes -
So the short answer – when AME is rendering either a Premiere Pro sequence or an AE composition, it is sending frame requests across a process boundary, getting that frame copied into its process space after being rendered in a ‘headless’ version of Premiere Pro (PProHeadless), or a similar ‘healdess’ version of AE for its composition. By its very nature this is going to be slower (not by much, but non-zero) than rendering directly in the process that is doing the rendering. When a frame request fails, as you’ve seen, AME closes the file from the export as best it can (why you have usable renders of quicktime movies when a failure happens), and that’s that.
When you render your Premiere Pro sequence ‘inline’ you get both the full access to whatever GPU rendering you have as well as Rocket support, you also are not crossing the process boundary (unless you have AE comps embedded, in which case the same out of process rendering happens for PPro as it does for AME).
The project sounds quite interesting!
-EricS
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Use Previews (Smart Render) ONLY works with DVCPROHD, and some flavors of XDCAM.
It won’t use the preview files from a ProRes or H.264 sequence.
Submit a feature request here: https://www.adobe.com/go/wish
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