Speed test

[Erik Lindahl]

I don’t include any kind of compression in my renders. That wouldn’t give very accurate figures as the encoding to H264 might double the export time. Also it’s not a valid workflow in 90% of the cases.

[Claude Lyneis]

I only compress as the final step, if the destination is the web or some other format. If I understand correctly that is a necessary step, but maybe I am missing something.

[Bret Williams]

Maybe I’m missing something. So when Eric renders something there’s no compression involved . He’s shooting uncompressed and rendering uncompressed? Anyway, I have to render stuff all the time. Yes RT is good in X, but a couple layers of texts and effects and it’s unplayable of course. At the end of the day I export an h264 for the client. Usually I just share directly to the Dropbox folder and walk away. Then I can send a link from my phone once it uploads.

[Erik Lindahl]

Well I think you want to break it down to:

A) Rendering a timeline
B) Exporting a rendered timeline
C) Exporting a non-rendered timeline

All of the above are to an intermediate media, be that ProRes or Uncompressed.

D) Export and encode a rendered timeline
E) Export and encode a non-rendered timeline

All of the above makes if some of an undertaking but the we might see where the potential speed wins or bottlenecks lay. For me, encoding with Compressor has traditionally been crap compared to a proper encoder like Telestreme Episode. But I do understand why one would export and encode to for example Dropbox directly from FCPX even if it means a hit in quality.

[Bret Williams]

I have done tests with episode for DVDs in the past and any gain wasn’t worth it. And compressor (or X – it’s the same thing) looks pretty good even at hardware accelerated single pass. 99% of exports are for client approvals any way.

[Erik Lindahl]

We primarily do H264 or WMV which either rules Comprssor out or in the past it’s had chockingly worse quality and features sadly.

[Bret Williams]

Huh. Ive gotten great results with flip4 mac and compressor. One client always wants high end wmvs for their master. Haven’t done it in awhile though.