-
Render times – Production times – slow as all hell, WHY?
Some specs on my machine:
2×2.8Ghz Quad core Xeon
RAM: 12 gigs
ATI Radeon HD2600
Hard drive: (total) 5tb’s – scratch drive 1TBSoftware: FCS 3 (currently; I’m hoping the Santa-Mac brings me the latest and greatest)
F4M HD 2.3.XOS: 10.6.2
I think this might be enough to start with. Now, my client demands WMV and all of their material is screenshot ‘stuff’.
I convert their windows AVI to high quality H.264 and bring them into FCP.
Editing time is fast enough – I can live with it.
Rendering time – via either a)F4M or b)save as QuickTime and take through to Compressor (if I need that 10 day vacation!)So why is it taking seemingly longer than a geological age (4 – 11 hours) to render a 45-60min piece?
Am I being overly optimistic that NONE of the processors show they are maxed out – looks as though only 4 or 5 may be above 20% at one time?
Are my specs insufficient?I’m simply trying to get my head around this seemingly puzzling issue.
Please bear with me, too and I ask your patience as my work is virtually ALL screenshot material for software companies and NOT live video – I’m willing to try anything except admit defeat or dress up as that bloody clown for my kids party again. 🙂
Lawrence
-
3 Replies
-
FCP is not made to edit h.264 quicktimes is the short answer. I would use Compressor to convert them to standard quicktimes using the Advanced Format Conversions bin to whatever they need to be (depending on what they are as .AVIs).
If it’s screen captures, I would go either Animation or Pro-Res. Both codecs allow you to keep the image fidelity of the original and you can do pretty good zooms on the material without loosing alot of quality.
FWIW, when we need to do Windows captures, we actually do it on a Mac running Parallels and use iShowUHD to do the screen captures, which captures natively to ProRes or Animation codec. Not sure if that’s really an option for you, but thought I’d toss it out!
-
[Lawrence Eaton] “I convert their windows AVI to high quality H.264 and bring them into FCP. “
HDV is not an editing codec. FCP can deal with it, but it is far from ideal. Take a look at the EASY SETUP list for a list of codecs that FCP uses. CHoose one of those, like ProRes, and you will have much easier render times.
FCP is designed for professional BROADCAST formats. It isn’t designed to be an editor of web footage. If you are getting screen shot footage and other formats, and need to deliver WMV files, I’d suggest looking at other NLEs to see if they can do what you need better than FCP.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
As a test convert an avi to a one-minute ProRes clip using Compressor (which can use multiple cores). Then convert that to wmv (again with Compressor). Time that and you’ll have an idea how long the process will take for your entire program. Check your settings when making wmvs. Using tep-pass encoding will result in a better end result, but using one-pass CBR will encode faster and may be fine quality-wise.
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 2 (FCP 6.0.5, Comp 3.0.5, DVDSP 4.2.1, Color 1.0.3)Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up