Video exporting takes forever in Premiere

[Ryan Holmes]

So let me get this straight – you’re wondering why your 3 year old laptop with a underpowered video card, only 2 cores, and 8GB of Ram is taking so long to export?! 😉 I’m somewhat surprised it’s only taking you 30 minutes to export.

Some things to consider:
(1) Premiere like many cores and powerful graphics cards (both of which you don’t really find on laptops…even the newest ones).
(2) Where are you pulling the data from (external hard drive? How is it attached – USB, Firewire, eSata?)? Each of the different connections have different speeds. In general working an attached hard disk via USB/Firewire will be slower than eSata.
(3) Where are you exporting the finished product to? Your internal drive (bad idea)? Back to the attached Firewire drive? To another disk somewhere? It takes time for PP to go get the data, crunch, and build the file somewhere. All of these things should be considered when discussing “how long will this render take?”
(4) What is your source footage? If you’re shooting HDV then it’ll always take a long time – it’s the nature of the codec. Or if you’re editing raw h.264 files – those take a long time to encode out to your finished product…it’s just the nature of those codecs (the way they compress data is very efficient, but extremely processor intensive).
(5) What codec are you exporting to? ProRes? Uncompressed? HDV? h.264?

30 minutes may not be a bad considering all the variables your probably wrestling with.

My $0.02

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.com
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Will,

Assuming you are editing HD video, and perhaps an H.264 source, H.264 export, or both, then your computer hardware is on the weak side and the times are probably normal. Also helps to have an Nvidia GPU with Premiere, which MacBook does not have.

A Core i7 is a good system for HD editing. Systems that are 3-4 years old are really going to struggle.

If you can tell us the source video, sequence settings and export settings, maybe there are workflow tips that would help you

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Ryan, you beat me by :08 !!

For a point of reference, my 1-year old PC with Core i7-2600, 8GB ram and GTX 470 card running CS5.5 will export from a 1080i timeline to most H.264 formats at about realtime, just a bit longer for Blu-ray.

Jeff

[Will Burchfield]

I’m not too well versed in the tech side, didn’t think my machine had became old so fast. Appreciate the help!

[David Ghast]

until you are able to answer ryans questions with accuracy there’s not much anyone can do for you. I suggest reading each question then asking google a corresponding question to further understand what’s involved in media production.

[Todd Kopriva]

Here’s some general information about hardware for Premiere Pro that might help to understand the other folks’ answers: https://adobe.ly/pRYOuk

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
product manager, professional video software
After Effects team blog
Premiere Pro team blog
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