Render times?
 

so i shot and cut a theatrical reading for a friend xdcam ex 1080/30p, and the trt is 2 hours. Ten scenes total in the event... i used 3-way color corrector on every scene... dissolves between scenes and minimal titles. the fcp edit timeline is 1080p/30 xdcam ex... with render as prores selected. ultimately this product will end up sd dvd.

when i rendered the sequence, my mac pro 3.0ghz dual quad core tower, with 8gigs of ram and two internal software raid drives estimates more than 2 hours to render. my drives are not full by any means and i am using fcs7 with leopard. and No... i'm not putting any media on the boot drive.

does this seem normal to anyone? what am i doing wrong?

thanks

greg

Actually that render time sounds right. XDCam is an GOP MPEG varient and takes longer to render than other frame-based codecs.

It will speed up a bit if you change the render settings to ProRes but you'll have to make sure you have at least 120gb of hard drive space free and assigned to take render files.

Even at ProRes render (which I'm surprised William missed in the OP... UNLESS that is what the OP added in his edit), this isn't a surprise. As William mentions, the Long GOP needs to be opened and a 3 Way CC isn't a minimal effect.

I don't think I missed it but the edit time says otherwise, hmmm. Perhaps my brain needs some updating.

Anyway, rendering to ProRes eliminates the need for the computer to recompute the GOP back into an MPEG file and that saves time (and image quality). There will be render times that require some patience. Even with my relatively new MacPro, quality PAL to NTSC SD transcodes take time.

thanks guys... you set my mind at ease. transcoding takes awhile.

Greg

p.s. started the dvd process at 11pm and was awakened by the computer asking for a disk like six hours later.

What I do to make my render faster is I put my Real Time preview into low and set the sequence settings render control to Prores 422. It makes the render faster compared when viewing it in dynamic or high on your RT.