[Christopher Bradley]

Hi Eric, many thanks for your advice. I did as you had suggested and I now have a completed DVD in my hand! After I changed the Render Control settings to Apple ProRes 422, the whole timeline took 12 hours to re-render. I then changed the compressor settings within the sequence to Apple ProRes 422 also and exported the timeline as a self-contained QT movie which took about 30 minutes. Once I was in Compressor, the MPEG-2 export took 3 hours to complete…overall a significant saving on the initial 54 hours!

Whilst trawling the forums as a way in which to understand why my initial process was taking so long, two things became clear; 1. Do not use the Send to Compressor feature within FCP as it is wholly inefficient and time consuming. 2. Either transcode your XDCAM footage into Apple ProRes before you edit or edit natively and then render out as Apple ProRes before going into Compressor. 3. If you’re working with a new format (I normally work with DVCPRO HD and had never worked with XDCAM before) try to understand the workflow beforehand as it will save you a lot of time and a lot of stress!

Once again Eric, many thanks for all your help.