Ways to reduce render times

[Mark Maness]

Well, Anthony….

You’ll have to render no matter what.

But why did you create a ProRes422 sequence and drop your XDCAM HD footage into it?

That’s completely unnecessary to do this. You just need to set your sequence to XDCAM HD (whatever size and frame rate) and set your renders to ProRes422.

[anthony Faulkner] “the footage has nothing but color smoother, chroma keyer and 8pt garbage matte.”

These filters are going to make you render anyway. At this point, I say, just go ahead and render it anyway.

[anthony Faulkner] “Im not sure by what you mean by capture as prores422. I use sony’s XDcam transfer tool and it doesnt seem to have any options for changing codecs. “

You’re right. There’s no way to transcode your footage to ProRes422 using the Sony Software Transfer program. In order to capture to ProRes422, you’ll need a capture card for this.

By the way, how are you monitoring your output? Do you have a capture card?

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Anthony Faulkner]

No, i have not bought any particular capture card. What kind of time reductions and advantages might i get by getting one. On my long list of things to I’d like to buy it just hasn’t seemed necessary until now.

I am aware I am going to have to render, but until I am at a polishing stage are there any way to reduce the times involved? So I don’t have to loiter at the coffee machine for 3 hours of every day…. 🙂

thanks for your advice and input i really appreciate it.

[Mark Maness]

Well… First of all, how do you monitor your work without some sort of capture/output card? Without one of these, how do you color correct?

XDCAM HD is a wonderful acquistion format but not a good editing format within FCP. Personally speaking, we choose to capture (or recapture) all of our footage into DVCProHD 1080i60. But that’s our workflow. You may wish to capture into ProRes422. That’s fine, too, but we find ProRes422 to be too slow for our needs.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Anthony Faulkner]

My graphics card is a radeon HD 2600XT.

I color correct using magic bullet looks. But only at the very end, and then i leave the computer to crunch while i go home.

would a different graphics card speed up my rendering and give me more options in work flow?
if you ahve any links im interested top see whats out there.

Im sure you can tell Im self trained, and there are big holes in my knowledge (fortunately not my creativity!) so any help I get I am very grateful for!

[Mark Maness]

Bud… That’s a graphics card, not an output card. A graphics will only help FX enabled filters. I’m talking about something like an AJA Kona, Blackmagic Decklink or the Matrox MXO2 cards.

You haven’t answered my question.

How are you monitoring your output (you know, what you see in the canvas window)?

There’s no way you can properly monitor your sequences using your computer monitor only, especially if your color correcting.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Anthony Faulkner]

In that case Im not monitoring my output. well, not to any recognised industry standard.

I have no output card.

So the Kona for instance will allow me to inport as a pro res 422 sequence and help in the processing of those files. I wonder what kind of time reduction i would get on my renders.

[Rafael Amador]

[anthony Faulkner] ” I made a copy of the timeline and placed it in an XD cam sequence of the same siz”
What for?
This the same than if you edit in an XDCAM sequence.
Are you delivering in XDCAM?
If not, forget about rendering to that codec.
If you are delivering in XDCAM, make your master in Prores and convert it once is finished.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Mark Maness]

This was the point I was trying to make, Rafael.

But it seems that Anthony does not have a capture/output card on his system.

I’m still confused by looking at his workflow. The easiest thing for him would be to import the media, edit in XDCAM HD and output to XDCAM HD disc or whatever they need AFTER the edit.

Some folks here try to over-complicate the process and it ends up confusing everyone when problems arise. Don’t make this harder than it has to be. Before starting ANY project, you have to ask yourself a series of questions.

What is the format of the tapes or discs that I will be capturing (importing)? How long will this project need to be? How much drive space will I need? Will I need graphics and how complex do they need to be? Should I edit in the captured codec or edit in another codec? What’s the timeframe for completion on this project?

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Anthony Faulkner]

I have the same schedule month by month. in terms of delivery and content.

Its 90% composite work, 30 minutes of edited material a month. That i write, shoot and edit. Its immediately released for web delivery. But i have chosen to make full resolution edits for future use even though I compress the finished edit to a 720p H.264 file for immediate delivery. The full resolution copies are archived.

At the moment I am editing in XDCAM if I am going to save substantial time by buying a capture card then I am all for it. I have had 1 hr playback renders on some 5 minute videos. How much time is importing and editing in pro res via a capture card really going to get me?

I really just want to speed up my workflow and to be precise my downtime. As I have said my knowledge about codecs and lots of other technical aspects is somewhat lacking, so any suggestions I am more than happy to receive.

Thanks to both of you guys for taking the time to offer good advice.

[Mark Maness]

Well, Anthony…

The ONLY ways you can reduce render times is to have the fastest computer on the market with the fastest graphics card you can buy and lots of memory. The only thing a capture card will give you is the ability to capture your footage into ANY codec so that you can edit more efficiently.

You say that 90% of your work is composite work, what kind of composite work are you talking about? Do you create images or are you doing video composite work, if so what programs are you using and how are you outputting this composite work?

I ask this because using XDCAM HD with composite work is fine BUT you will have render times. As with ANY composite work, you’ll have render times. The ONLY way you can reduce the amount of times is to have ALL of you footage in the same codec, at the same sizes, and at the same frame rate.

So I would suggest that you get a capture card, capture all of your XDCAM footage ProRes422 720p59.94 and edit that way. Or if you need you can capture 720p23.98.

How are you compressing your H.264 output?

I ask because it sounds like you could use that Matrox MXO2 Max box for this. Its a capture/output box with H.264 hardware encoding for workflows such as yours. It would be a perfect addition to your workflow.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com