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Share/Export Times in FCPX 10.0.6
Hey guys,
I just downloaded the 10.0.6 trial to play around with. I took some video with my iPhone 4S just to use as test material. No transcoding to optimized media – I wanted to test editing with the native h.264 files, and I heard the background transcoding can slow performance in the foreground.
Alas, I cobbled together a 6-minute video, nothing major. When I go to Share, whether selecting a “master file” of a full 1080p ProRes QuickTime or an h.264 version for YouTube, I’m getting insanely long export times. It’s been almost an hour, and I’m only 60% done exporting a YouTube h.264 video. Is this normal?
I’m using a 2010 8-core Mac Pro, 14GB ram, and an internal 7200-rpm drive for my media.
Any tips would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Joe
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7 Replies
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Which GPU- that’d be the bottleneck.
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I’m sorry – I’m using the ATI Radeon 5870, 1GB
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The export to YouTube includes upload time to YouTube so wouldn’t be the best test for render speeds. In general your mileage may vary- some folks are having this experience.
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FCP X renders very quick to Prores. I notice this with XDCAM, H.264, other flavors of Prores, …
If you are rendering immediately to H.264 I think you are doing a very difficult compression job for the computer, going from H.254 to another H.264.The problem is that FCP X recompresses anyhow. It doesn’t have a smart render, like FCP 7 had, where if you just did a cut-cut edit (like on XDCAM), it would just copy the original media for the export, resulting in very fast exports in FCP7 (if no effects were applied of course).
I’ve asked Apple a couple of times to add this in, because we really would need it for some fast-deadline work we do on congresses.I would suggest you to just export to Prores 422… See how long that takes. If that takes a LOT shorter, then afterwards take that Prores file, and compress it trough FCP X or Compressor 4 to a new H.264.
I would not be very surprised IF you would get a shorter complete export time going first to Prores and from Prores to H.264 than from H.264 to H.264.
Good luck! Let us know how it goes! -
Thanks for some of the tips…
I just tried sharing/exporting to ProRes instead, and it’s taking just as long. Is it that FCPX uses the GPU to export? I’m using the trial version and haven’t downloaded Compressor 4 – I’m guessing it’s always better to send timelines to Compressor instead of doing it from FCP?
This is very confusing, as FCP7 would have this done very quickly. If this is a transcoding issue because I haven’t optimized the original media, I suppose next time I’ll make sure to transcode to ProRes ahead of time/in the background.
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Yes, starting from 10.0.1 (I think), FCP X started using it’s GPU too for the exports.
So I would guess the trial to do the same.I think FCP X is pretty okay in exporting a Master Prores File in comparison with Compressor 4, I think maybe even faster…
Well, I think you know that editing H.264 isn’t the best codec to work with. And that what you are essentially doing is moving all the transcoding work to the end of the job, at the export, instead of doing it in the beginning. This can be the best for your particular workflow, I’m not going to decide.
Still, maybe there are ways to speed it up, though. FCP X rendered out a 1 minute XDCAM clip to Prores in about real-time. (1 minute), on a 13″ Macbook Pro. XDCAM works better than H.264 though, but you are getting more then 10x real time exports.
I don’t know where your problem is though, did you do a lot of effects? Or just exporting a cut-cut? -
Sounds like something is up with your system maybe.
I’ve often enough have had to edit H.264 direct and export that to ProRes.
Export time is roughly real time depending on what I did in the edit.
I’m using 2008 MacPro 8 Core with 8GB RAM and ATI 5770.
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