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Why is my render time still huge after I reconnected the smaller versions of my files?
Hi there,
I’m working on a 2-hour documentary for a client that is due to him in two days. I shot in 1080p and altogether have about 50gb of raw footage. In a moment of stupidity, I went right ahead and edited the entire thing with those very large files referenced. As you can imagine, when it came time to render, it said would take 2 weeks. Haha…. no.
So I went back to my files and sent them through Handbrake to convert them into mp4’s, using the .H264 codec so FCP would still read them. Now all the footage a much more managable 4gb total.
I threw my raw footage on another disk so it’d go offline in my project, then I reconnected the files to my smaller mp4’s.. which have the same name so it was fine. They’re all connected now but when I go to render, the render time still 2 weeks. Shouldn’t it be much smaller now since I’m referencing smaller files? Where in the system is it still referencing my giant raw files? If I’m approaching this all wrong and need to create a new project using the mp4’s, is there a way to match all the cuts and edits I made in the current project so I don’t have to manually re-edit the whole thing?
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
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2 Replies
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Jonathon,
Though it may seem logical that smaller files equal faster renders, h.264 is an extremely processor intensive codec. Pro Res 422, though much larger renders many times faster.
David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.comSales | Integration | Support
David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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H264 is not an editing format but “DVD” format, gop and long gop etc – everything you do with it, apart from viewing it, is slow. You would be wise to reconvert to ProRes – you possibly don’t have time to go for the highest quality version HQ but the mid version is lovely.
philip
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