Render EX-1 footage before export??

[Shane Ross]

[Mick Haensler] “Do I even need to do this?? Can I simply Export the unrendered timeline as a MOV file before Compressor or will I take a quality hit.”

Nope. You need to render. If you don’t, when you export, FCP will render it, then export it. If you use the EXPORT TO COMPRESSOR, it will render the frame, then compress the frame, and this will take 2 times longer than if you rendered first, then exported.

[Mick Haensler] “My workflow is to work with me EX-1 footage natively and then drop that sequence into an SD sequence before Exporting”

Why do you do that? That is an extra and very unnecessary step. Just export your HD sequence to Compressor, or as a reference movie that you then import into compressor. Compressor works with HD files and makes them SD for SD DVDS.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Mick Haensler]

[Shane Ross] “Why do you do that? That is an extra and very unnecessary step. Just export your HD sequence to Compressor, or as a reference movie that you then import into compressor. Compressor works with HD files and makes them SD for SD DVDS”

After reading quite a bit about the HD to SD debate. I settled on this method as it was recommended highly by several EX-1 owners. I do get great results this way and have been less than impressed with other methods. Are you using the above method specifically with native EX footage Shane??

Mick Haensler
Higher Ground Media

[Alex Elkins]

I second what Shane says about converting in Compressor. As long as your settings are correct it should look a bit better, and will encode a lot faster too if you have a multi-core processor and can get your head around setting up QMaster.

[Mick Haensler]

[Alex Elkins] “get your head around setting up QMaster.”

K?? What is this QMaster you speak of??? I’m all for cutting down render times if I don’t take a quality hit.

Mick Haensler
Higher Ground Media

[Shane Ross]

[Mick Haensler] “Are you using the above method specifically with native EX footage Shane??”

I use that method with DVCRO HD footage. I haven’t used EX1 XDCAM footage yet. Perhaps you need to do this with that format for some reason. Dunno, but I haven’t had to with HDV (ONE show with that) nor DVCPRO HD. Straight DVD compression via Compressor and it looks great.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Alex Elkins]

[Mick Haensler] “What is this QMaster you speak of???”

QMaster allows you to set up various applications to make use of more than one of your processors. Compressor is one application that you can do this with, and it works really well if you can set it up correctly. QMaster also allows you to make use of the multiple processors of multiple machines that you may have networked, so for example you could be using the power of five 8-core macs to render something out of Compressor! Not something I’ve tried though.

Setting it up sounds harder than it actually is. If you open Compressor’s user manual, the front page has a sub-heading ‘Distributed Processing Setup’. Click that, and then go to page 53 and read up on setting up QuickClusters.
The QMaster control panel can be found under System Preferences. Just remember the simple rule that for every two cores you have in your machine, you can set up one ‘instance’ in QMaster. So 8 cores = 4 instances etc. The manual will help you more than my explanation will though.

I’d also recommend downloading the free application, Compressor Repair, which will tell your computer to behave whenever QMaster stops working properly (which unfortunately in my case is fairly often). I’d also recommend searching Google and this forum if you’re still stuck with it. That’s how I learnt.

Good luck!

[Llewelyn Roderick]

Dear Mick

I render the SD time line before going to compressor and the reason why is best explained by Raphael in this thread:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1014150#1014154

The bottom line is FCP handles the conversion from XDCAM to SD better than Compressor as far as I can tell from the various posts I’ve read and from the results I get. NB, you must work in 10-bit uncompressed PAL (SD) to benefit from the 32 floating point processing.

Hope this helps.

Llewelyn

Llewelyn @ Fireworks
HD for indies post production
http://www.fireworksfilms.co.za

[Mick Haensler]

Great stuff everyone. Thanks for the input. Shane, I think the XDCAM footage is handled differently thus the need to drop the HD timeline into an SD sequence. I’m trying it your way right now. i.e. going directly to Compressor without exporting an MOV file. It took my Octocore 2 hours to render out the SD timeline and it looks like it’s going to be another 5-6 hours in Compressor for a 144 minute project. I probably should have tried this with a shorter project. I’ll report back on quality and final render times.

Mick Haensler
Higher Ground Media

[Greg Ball]

Mike I’d be interested in the outcome as well. As you’ll see below I’ve been running through the same issue. ONe person told me he just takes it to compressor from the Ex1 timeline, yet another told me to make an SD timeline.

Can you please share your settings with what becomes your optimum output to DVD? Thanks.

[Mick Haensler]

[Greg Ball] “Can you please share your settings with what becomes your optimum output to DVD? Thanks”

I will. Unfortunately this project is a mind numbing training video of a guy training off of a PP presentation in a darkened room, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to accurately judge the quality. Next week I’ve got a project going to broadcast, I should probably use that one to experiment with. Either way, I’ll report back what I find. I’m going to try it every which way since it’s only a 2.5 minute infomercial.

Mick Haensler
Higher Ground Media