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FCP Uncompressed HD render times
Hello,
We are currently thinking about switching over to FCP and are curious about a few things. We are primarily editing HDCAM 1080/24p material. I know that render times really depend on the system setup, so if we were to have a dual G5 2.7 with 4gig of RAM what can we expect in terms of how long it will take to render out say a 2 hour show with basic dissolves and color correction, pan and zoom moves,(not too effects intensive and rarely more then 2 or 3 streams) etc. in uncompressed 1080p. Will it take hours, days or weeks? Sorry if this is not specific enough and I know that it really depends on all types of things, but if you kind folks of the COW could give any insight in to what we can expect for render times of uncompressed HD footage, it would be greatly appreciated. TIA
Jeremy Newmark
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2 Replies
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Hours.
If you use the 3-way color corrector then that will not require rendering. That is a real-time effect, no matter how whacky you go with it….unless you start stacking the 3-ways…then it will start to want to render.
It is when you start to add blur filters, film grain, scratches, glows that render times begin to bog down.
I am pretty new to this and thus far only rendered a 23 min chunk, with basic stuff (8-bit uncompressed HD) and it only took 2 hours. But I’m sure Walter can give you a better estimate.
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[Shane Ross] “I am pretty new to this and thus far only rendered a 23 min chunk, with basic stuff (8-bit uncompressed HD) and it only took 2 hours. But I’m sure Walter can give you a better estimate.”
walter is working in 720p,
but let me offer a couple of Uncompressed HD speed tips (and they work for SD also)– Always Render (or encode to mpeg) all media to a different array than your original content is stored on.
– This is a must for 1080 10bit and 4:4:4 video streams this can reduce render time by as much as 50% (mpeg encodes are at least 2x as fast doing this)
– Pre-render files that need heavy rendering and export as a new QT file. – then you are not re-rendering the same content over and over again. I build my projects in 7-12minute sequences – then render those Seq’s to a new QT file and use that video file for as part of my final output for tape.
– Turn everything off – anything that is not being directly used for that project. No open apps, no unused disks or media drives, no itunes, no ichat. turn off your internet connection.This is HD and it is not forgiving when it comes to systems resources.
Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA
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