Cineform and PPro rendering time
 

For every 1 minute of Cineform timeline, it takes 10 minutes to render out for me. Are there any plans to improve rendering speed? What are other people experiencing?

In CS4 i get about 8 minutes.

However, in CS5 its close to realtime on the same computer with NeoHD 4.2! :) *hurray*

I have heard lot of people that get realtime in CS4 as well with the Intel i7 processor. (I currently have 2 x Intel E5450, ie not from the Nehalem family and that may explain the render times for me in CS4.)

Render the timeline or export to....

My interpretation of Ben's question is: CFHD > CFHD

My example is CFHD > CFHD as well, ie CFHD media on a Timeline that i render out to a CFHD file.

Try not rendering. Premiere Pro doesn't really know whether the video needs to be rendered or not. I ignore the yellow and red color bars, and everything just works. I open a project in Encore and import the Premiere timelines directly. Transcoding doesn't happen until Adobe Media Encoder opens during DVD and Bluray authoring, which is much faster than realtime for my Core i7-920 12 GB Windows 7-64 machine.

I'm exporting a 20 mins clip to CFHD file and Adobe Media Encoder is only using 30% of my CPU? How come its not maxed out?

I'm using Windows 7 64-bit with 12 GB of RAM. When I transcode for authoring, I experience 85% utilization on 8 cores. What is your configuration?

Windows 7 Pro 64bit
AMD quadcore 2.1
8GB of RAM

That sounds pretty good. My hard drive configuration is 750 GB 7200 rpm boot drive and 1 GB 7200 rpm video drive, both eSATA. All Adobe applications configured to use the video drive. I'm editing Sony HDV and authoring both DVD and Bluray using Encore.

HDD Setup is

OS 74GB 10k RPM SATA
MEDIA 2*400GB RAID0 7200RPM
SCRATCH 750GB 7200RPM

I just tried the same export, and I got between 30 and 40% utilization, so your result seems to be typical.

Hmm not sure if this is causing it but I reinstalled Windows 7 after using the RC for a while, the PC probably needed a reinstall anyways! After reinstalling CS4 and I created a pre-set for Cineform, Desktop editing, 1920*1080, square pixels and for fields I picked progressive.

That would be fine but my footage is interlaced.

I've have edited this 20 mins DVD and export took ages (5 hours to create a CFHD master file) So I used dynamic link to export it to encore and create a DVD but the footage looks all strange with wavey lines of panning.

Now I'm creating a new project with upper fields and rendering the footage again to hopefully fix my DVD issue.

Would creating a progressive project and interlaced footage cause the slow time on the exports?

My experience has been to keep the original file settings, whenever possible, which is 1440 x 1080 x 60i for me. Changing the video resolution just slows things down with no appreciable improvement in output quality. My timelines match the input format above. I use dynamic link to import the timelines into Encore, so I don't do any transcoding until the final burn, where I just let Encore control the transcoding and burn.

Yeah the fields was a error. It should of been called my YouTube Preset.

I have 2 cameras the Sony Z1 and Sony CX105. They are both 1080i but Z1 as you know 1440*1080 PAR 1.33 and CX105 is 1920*1080 PAR 1 so I use HDlnik to resize Z1 footage to 1920 so its easier on the editing.

I'll be testing the export again about an hour after this project renders in PP.

OK,
10 min timeline takes 8.41 minutes in CS4,
in CS5 it takes 6.21 minutes to encode on my machine (i7/940/12 gig/raid0) in direct export. Just NeoScene no NeoHD.

Yes my initial question was in reference to exporting CFHD from the timeline to a CFHD file using adobe media encoder. My setup is a little old; Dual dualcore AMD Opteron 270's and 4GB of RAM, but 10 minutes for 1 minute of footage seems awfully slow to me.

Roger, when you say realtime, do you mean that 1 minute of timeline footage takes 1 minute to render out to a CFHD file?

I did not mean render previews on the Timeline, i mean File > Export > Media to render out the Timeline to a master file.

Thats great! :)

Yes, thats what i mean.

I'm going to install Win7 x64 and see if that improves anything. I feel like my render times are wayy too slow. I certainly wasn't getting this kind of performance on CS3.

Its probably just CS4. I am using Windows 7 x64 and AME says it will take 7 hours to export a 20 min CFHD file.

Bring CS5 NOW!

Yea--I went back to CS3 and render times dropped to about 3 minutes for 1 minute of footage, on my laptop. Avoiding CS4 like swine flu. What a waste of money.

Oh my god, maybe its because I've never had any training on CS4 but ticking "Use Preview files" and ticked "max render" its dropped my export time for 6-8 hours to 30 mins (est)

Should I have always ticked Use Preview Files?

No harm using Preview files if CineForm is your preview codec, designed for multigeneration.

Sorry for the stupid sounding question but how do I know if CineForm is my preview codec?

David.... go to Sequence Settings. Under the General tab at the bottom, you should find Video Previews, and a pull down window offers Format and Codec selections.

Thanks Marty,

In there I have ii-frame Only which is selected

or Microsoft AVI.

I've got NeoHD installed and using CS4.

David... I'm with ProspectHD, and in a Cineform based project, my Video Preview format is Cineform AVI, with the Codec selected and greyed out as Cineform HD Codec.

Is your project a Cineform based one, or are you attempted to utilize Cineform as your preview format within a project of a differing format?

That was within a already started project. So I started a new poject and I still only have the 2 options.

Here is the guide I followed to setup CS4 http://techblog.cineform.com/?p=1230

Am I meant to have any CineForm presets for CS4? And are they meant to be in NeoHD product? Am I missing something?

David,

It wasn't until well into CS4's lifetime that Prospect offered Cineform Presets. I am not familiar with how Neo dealt with CS4 integration.

Just to be clear, when you start a project, you have no Cineform presets available to you?

I don't know how energetic you want to pursue this, but you could try a trial install of ProspectHD. You would then have those Cineform preset options and could see how your exports are affected by the presence of Cineform preview encoding.

Part of the parameters of an Editing Mode Preset is the apparently the Preview format. I never gave it much thought. My options for Previews included MPEG so I just went with that, never anticipating the actual use of those Preview files for inclusion in an output.

It's curious that when you opt to include the preview files in your export, it seems to have a positive impact even though those preview files are not a Cineform based file?

Correct - I've created my own.

I have free time so downloading now and will see what the difference is.

Without ticking that box my exports; no word of a lie were 6-8 hours! Ticking use preview files dropped it to 30-35mins. Although it seems its using MPEG files rather than CineForms codec.

I will be upgrading to NeoHD V5 as soon as its released.

I wonder if your export times would continue to be improved if you deleted your preview files prior to export, but keep the "use preview files" option ticked. I can't imagine how a Cineform encoded export would benefit from preview files that weren't also Cineform encoded.

I'm curious as to what you find out... please keep us posted.

Installed PHD,

Opened my project and tried to change it to Cineform AVI. Didn't have that option so closed that project and opened a new one, now using the Cineform presets that I didn't have before.

Then I imported my custom sequence into this new CineForm project and cut/pasted into the default CineForm sequence 01. Confirmed it was using CineForm Codec. Tried to render and it crashed CS4.

Opened again clicked through and noticed this black line

http://www.northern-loop.tv/Pictures...%20project.JPG

I removed the 10% crop and then added again and it went, very odd.

Because this is a new project I am going to need remove this crop to fix this black line issue and render the entire project again to do the export test.

ETA 2 hours.

**EDIT**

Wasnt the crop it was the logo, disabled and enabled it and the line went - Rendering the clip now and will do the export asap.

http://www.northern-loop.tv/Pictures...20sequence.JPG

Does your Preview Files mode now show Cineform AVI as the format?

Yes and to double check I looked at the output rendered file and check the file properties.

I only has Microsoft AVI and MPEG before I installed PHD.

Perfect.... it's all starting to make sense, except for how your export speed improved so drastically even though your preview files were not Cineform encoded to match your output. Weird.

Curious to see how your export times compare to your previous Neo setup.

Dunno but we'll find out in 1hr 43mins - Rubbish PC!

I'm hoping for a quciker export but not sure.

Project is 21mins long with lots of effects and colours. To go from 6-8 hours without preview files ticked and then 30mins with ticked but using the MPEG created files.

One would of thought it would be even quicker using CFHD to CFHD?

Rather than CFHD - MPEG - CFHD?


Time will tell!

Well it seem to take ages to render but I left it overnight. Woke up this morning and it had finished so the big test.

CFHD with PHD to CFHD using preview files = 30/35mins the same as NeoHD using MPEG preview files rendering out to CFHD.

I can't see any big differences between the two files.