James Thayer
Active member
I have a very brief question. What exactly helps decrease export and compression time the most? Is it RAM? Adding more cores? Video card?
Thank you,
James
Thank you,
James
Decreasing Export Time
- Thread starter James Thayer
- Start date
Shane Ross
Veteran
Processors mainly.
In general when exporting directly from FCP7 you are using the quicktime engine, and this engine is often only 2 core (and in small cases, 4 core) aware. Due to this limitation, nothing short of an unrealistic jump in ghz cpu speed in going to make a huge difference.
Other apps, such as compressor, Premiere Pro CS5.5 (and other I am probably not aware of) get around this by creating multiple iterations of the QT engine and run them in parallel. In compressor, specifically, this is called creating a cluster. However, FCP does not employ this trick, and therefore it is usually slower.
Since Apple compressor can be configured to use multiple cores (ie. run multiple QT engine instances) one popular workflow is to export a quicktime reference out of FCP7 (which often requires very little rendering) and open that with Compressor, converting to whatever format you want. Note: if you use the "send to compressor" from within FCP7 the multi-core rendering option will not work either, as it will not allow you to choose the render cluster).
Other tweaks: When exporting H264, just 1 pass rendering and do not optimize for streaming. These options often increase the render time significantly.
Other apps, such as compressor, Premiere Pro CS5.5 (and other I am probably not aware of) get around this by creating multiple iterations of the QT engine and run them in parallel. In compressor, specifically, this is called creating a cluster. However, FCP does not employ this trick, and therefore it is usually slower.
Since Apple compressor can be configured to use multiple cores (ie. run multiple QT engine instances) one popular workflow is to export a quicktime reference out of FCP7 (which often requires very little rendering) and open that with Compressor, converting to whatever format you want. Note: if you use the "send to compressor" from within FCP7 the multi-core rendering option will not work either, as it will not allow you to choose the render cluster).
Other tweaks: When exporting H264, just 1 pass rendering and do not optimize for streaming. These options often increase the render time significantly.
James Thayer
Active member
Thanks guys, this really helps. Any word on when Apple is going to come out with a better Mac Pro? Like, when is the next generation coming out. I feel like they stopped with the prosumer and focused on all their consumer products too much. Are there any hopes for a new Final Cut Pro, or do you think they will stick to the Final Cut X line?
