slow export to QT from XDCAM EX timeline in FCP
 

I have a one hour XDCAM EX program that I'm exporting to a self contained QT movie. The dialog box tells me it's going to take 8 hours. In the past this same process normally takes less than an hour. Any ideas what the problem may be?

Dual quad core Mac Pro/10 gigs ram/Video drive is apple raid (is a little full)/ Kona 3 card. FCS-2

Thx for any suggestions...jw

Might be very obvious but is your timeline completely rendered? If not make sure the export dialogue is set to current settings. It doesn't say conforming Mpeg-2 video right?

Your sequence settings are probably the biggest question mark here.

What Video Codec is your sequence settings using? Is everything native, or has everything been rendered already?

If you are in say a Pro-res codec, you can use the open timeline using Dynamic realtime and edit fine, but your timeline will want to re-render to the different codec when it saves a quicktime.

Is the little bar above your timeline blue/grey or is it orange or dark green/light green.

If it's grey, it doesn't need rendering. If it's Blue, it's been rendered, if it is orange, it's dynamic realtime and will need rendering, if it's dark green/light green it will preview realtime even in safe mode but will still need rendering I believe.

XDCAM EX timeline
 

Thanks for your response. the timeline is all rendered and it's the native XDCAM EX format with renders set to Pro Res. I did get a good explanation on another forum homever of what's going on. Basically i should have exported my timeline and selected proRes, rather than just doing a straight export with the same settings since FCP has to rerender all the long gop and proRes settings. since this show has a 3 way CC on nearly every clip plus a custom gradient/matte shape/mask feather on about 18 clips it is a long render either way, but by going to ProRes it cut the time by 2/3rds or so.

This also explained why my edit to tape was requiring a render everytime which took about 20 minutes or so. Now with ProRes timeline it's just a minute or so. I may try my next show starting with the ProRes timeline to see how that goes. I'l llet you know.

thx...jw

Whenever I'm working in FCP with EX footage I export a quicktime movie by going to file->export->quicktime movie.

Doing it this way, it exports in ProRes by default. It's probably best to do it this way, since recompressing and creating a new mpeg2 stream would take a considerable amount of time as well.