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Optimaizing render time during export.
Greeting fellow FCP users,
I work at Israel Broadcasting Authority and we have a FCP station that I work on quite a lot.
The render and export times are sometime very critical because this is news time is a major factor.
When I export (command+E) my timeline to our HD broadcast format to the Omneon server. (XDCAM HD422 1080i50 CBR)
It takes a lot of time to render. but when I look at the activity monitor I don’t see the CPU’s working hard at all.
it is as if FCP is not harnessing the true Power of the 8 Core Mac pro.
How can I make it harness the full power the Mac Pro has?
I tried sending to compressor – but I didn’t see much emprovment – and also the CPU usage during conversion was very low..I remember editing on Premiere Pro – when exporting & rendering – it really maximized the CPUs usage.
How can I make it do the same in FCP?
The tech specs are:
2010 Intel Mac Pro 9 Gig RAMthanks!
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3 Replies
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You have a few things working against you.
FCP is a 32 bit app, and the XDCAM codec really isn’t the best as multicore usage. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but it could be better.
I would hope that your timeline matches a majority of your clips, so you do not have to render everything. Thatw ill help out.
You could use the virtual cluster in Compressor, although that is not 100% reliable.
https://www.devia.be/news/article/setting-up-a-virtual-cluster-to-speed-up-compressor/
and
https://www.digitalrebellion.com/blog/posts/using_compressor_with_multiple_cores.htmlGoogle ‘Virtual Cluster Compressor’; tons of links.
I am also a fan of Telestream’s encoding product line, especially Episode. That really lights up the cores, so you could feed it a QT Ref from FCP and let it encode away.
~Michael
.: michael kammes mpse
.: senior applications editor . post workflow consultant
.: audio specialist . act fcp . acsr
.: michaelkammes.com
.: twitter: @michaelkammes
.: facebook: /mkammesHear me pontificate: Speaking Schedule .
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To clarify a little better…
FCP is NOT multi-processor or multi-thread capable program. Its such a shame that its not. That’s a HUGE error on Apple’s part.
To help you when working in XDCAM HD, do not set your render prefs to render to ProRes422. This will add lots of time to your exports. You need to work entirely in XDCAM HD. Now, still images, Photoshop files and other video pieces that are not XDCAM HD will have to be rendered into the XDCAM codec inside of FCP, but when you export, it will have to rewrite these files again and it adds to the export time.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com -
Why do you have to render?
Using Filters/FX on the XDCAM HD footage?XDCAM is long gop codec.
If you use a lots of effects and filters with this footage.
Go ProRes from start. It wil save you a LOT of time.Next to the fact that current FCP is NOT 64 bit ofcourse.
But i heard the next version is gonna be awesome:P
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