Why does Premiere Pro take so long to export????

[Ryan Holmes]

There’s several issues you’re running into:
(1) Processing power of a laptop
(2) GPU is likely ATI, Adobe’s Mercury Playback/Encoding Engine is built to fly with Nvidia CUDA technology.
(3) Were you exporting the file to your laptop’s internal drive? If so, that tends to take much longer as it’s being used to run your whole OS and then do double duty as the drive where the new .mov is built. If not and you were using an external hard drive how was it connected – USB, Firewire?
(4) The codec – did you try any other codecs? Apple ProRes? AIC tends to be a pretty non-optimized codec (compared to ProRes or DNxHD). I would dare it’s just about a legacy codec (something from the “good old days). That doesn’t mean people don’t use it. But there are better (compression algorithms and overall file space) options out there IMHO.

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

[Dennis Radeke]

If it’s Quicktime, then FCP will essentially rewrite the file (copy) and render what’s different (title, effects, dissolve, etc.). Premiere Pro will render out the entire file. Some people would call this feature “smart rendering” and Premiere Pro has it for some codecs but not QT.

In addition, all of what Ryan said is true and I would add that 4GB of RAM for editing is not enough for most editing tasks these days.

Your post also did not say which version of Premiere Pro you are using, but a G5 would indicate something CS3 or older. I would encourage you to try a 64-bit application.

Hope this helps,
Dennis – Adobe guy

[Thomas Henry]

Thanks for answering. The laptop has a Nvidia Geforce 320m. I was exporting through usb to a external drive. I will see if the other codecs go faster, but as it is I think I will stick to doing those things on the fcp system!

[Thomas Henry]

Thanks for answering also! I’m using premiere cs5 on a laptop, and FCP on the G5. More ram isn’t going to make Premiere write out movie files faster is it? I haven’t had any problems with editing anything on it, just exporting so far.

[Ryan Holmes]

For a better comparison load FCP onto your laptop and export out the same file. That would show you the difference more accurately. Right now you’re comparing Apples to Bubble Gum. Because you’re running a G5 (PowerPC chip) I don’t think CS5 will install on that platform. So if you put FCP on your laptop it will allow you a side by side comparison.

FWIW-USB is a slow protocol to handle video (and what’s the speed of the drive that is hooked up via USB) as it operates in bursts of data, not a steady stream like Firewire.

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

[Dennis Radeke]

RAM does in fact affect performance. In some cases dramatically. It is somewhat codec dependent. I know that MPEG2 sees a linear performance increase with more memory. You can see some of this on PPBM5.com which is a primarily PC centric site for creating Premiere Pro performance benchmarks.

[Ceren Bettemir]

Hello,

I have the same problem with Premiere Pro CS5.
My video is about 3.5 min but rendering takes more than 4 hours. Also I cant watch my videos while I’m working, it s so slow. So I can’t see my editing process which is a big problem also.
I used split camera / multiple videos in the same frame. ( there are 2 footages in the same frame)
All the footages are HD quality but I scaled them % 40, and made color correction.
Is not premiere suitable for exporting or playing multiple videos in same frame?

It’s my first time using premiere for school project.
Could you please tell me why this is happening and what can I do?

my export settings: quicktime movie / 720X526 / lower quality / DV 25PAL
I have imac – mac os 10.5.8 Intel core 2 duo 4GB

[Ryan Holmes]

Ceren – this an old thread (almost 1 year old). People don’t check old threads much.

Your problem is similar to the original poster. Your hardware is old and underpowered for editing and exporting tasks.

As for choppy playback….it’s also important to note what kind of hard drive your media is stored on (USB, firewire, internal drive, etc.). If your media is stored on the same hard drive that your operating system is (your boot drive), then that’s a big problem. You need dedicated drives to handle video playback.

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

[Thomas Henry]

My problem was that I didn’t know I had to render everything first and check the “use previews” box when exporting. Premiere apparently can’t render and export at the same time as fast as it can render and then export. You probably need to set your project to render overnight. It’s ridiculous to say that your computer isn’t fast enough to edit SD video. Try editing in iMovie and see what happens.

[Ryan Holmes]

[Thomas Henry] “My problem was that I didn’t know I had to render everything first and check the “use previews” box when exporting.”

You aren’t required to render before you export. If you render before you export and use previews then Premiere will use those render files in the final export. It’s completely plausible to export without rendering and let Premiere build the file from scratch.

[Thomas Henry] “It’s ridiculous to say that your computer isn’t fast enough to edit SD video.”

And it’s not at all ridiculous to say that his computer is slow. It’s likely a 2006 or 2007 model iMac with less than ideal RAM and probably an ATI video card. So he’s working on a computer that’s 5-6 years old, with insufficient RAM, a video card that doesn’t take advantage of the CUDA technology (which was in it’s infancy in CS5 which he’s running), and the wildcard is what type of hard drive setup he’s using to edit video from. Plus he’s doing FX work on the timeline – color correction, scaling, etc. This takes processing power. Granted DV video is not terribly demanding, but his gear can easily be creating a bottleneck in the process.

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