curious about quicktime and rendering

Does anyone know if, when you make a self-contained movie, your timeline automatically gets all rendered before the export? I rendered myself, to be safe, but I was thinking perhaps it does, and then I could have saved myself another trip to the edit room...

Thanks,


Marla-finally a springy day in this wintery town! Too bad it'll be just another day in a darkened room!

I could be mistaken, but I believe if the timeline doesn't play out before you export it, it won't after it's exported as a self-contained movie.

I say this only because I have always felt it was my job to make sure the movie was complete before exporting it, but have never tried it.

""Too bad it'll be just another day in a darkened room!""

Get out to lunch! :-)

I've been bouncing back and forth between a submaster timeline for an animation and my full video program.

I have been making small changes in the animation, NOT rendering, merely stepping through the frames I'm tweaking to check, exporting out as a self contained QT and importing it back in, dropping it in it's place on the big timeline and other than needing to render the transitions at either end, I'm happy with the workflow.

It depends on your workflow. It works for me & does save a step! I prefer to see my animation in situ for this particular project. For another type of project, I may prefer to render before I export...not this time.

It's supposed to, but in my experience it doesn't. The exporting process *definitely* doesn't take care of the need for an Audio Mixdown. And there's something else: Not rendering a timeline before export drastically increases the amount of time necessary for the export, but the "rendering" done during the export doesn't get retained. So if you have to do another movie file for some reason, you have to render yet again. So I always Render All and Mixdown Audio (OPTION-R, OPTION-APPLE-R) as I proceed with a session, and I always do both before exporting a movie file.

So far, I've not experienced any of that.

I did a test, and the render/export does not take significantly less time than the export-only option for me today. Perhaps by a minute or so...and that's only if you trust FCP's math. It could go either way a minute or so. It's not noticeably different to me currently.

However, I'm dealing with a :48 second animation and the audio is not part of the equation. Audio is already in the master timeline.

Perhaps a longer piece would exhibit those signs.

Just sharing my experience for the past couple days.

Interesting reports: thanks! Deb, I'm curious as to why you are bouncing your QT file back in to your timeline, is it a background or something and you are doing other layers of your animation in a non FCP-environment?

Alas, no out to lunch today - totally slammed, hit upside the head with yet another projec tthat I have not got even a minute for. I'm rolling along on major sleep deprivation - a weird wavelength to be sure, but for some strange reason not altogether unpleasant today...

Marla

It was a layered photoshop document on a customized Digital Juice background that rang like crazy in my DV timeline.

They wanted this illustration that has the product and arrow layers to have the arrows actually move to show airflow. It was originally an Illustrator eps file they used for a print piece. It wasn't designed for video, so I had that hurdle to overcome.

It felt like a field dominance issue, so I edited that section in an progressive timeline. Exporting it out as a self-contained FCP QT solved the ringing. It was a pokey, tweaky thing to get the arrows to feel right, so the double whammy of render then export was really messing with my workflow. I switched to export-only, and was able to be more productive on this one.

But I am usually a render-first, check first kind of gal. This time it just didn't work for me and I took the chance that a different approach would be better, and lo and behold, it really did work!

Once it's actually signed off on, and I do the FINAL render, I will render the submastered section and export it out the other way, although I have not noticed ANY issues doing it the way I have been.



Post Edited (03-07-06 13:30)

Cool, thanks for the details.

Marl

yes, renders will get done as part of an export.

the time of the export will increase, of course.
deb's renders must have all easy ones and would have only taken a moinute to do anyway.

you have to think twice about this.

in some situations, like building a bg or element it can be a great timesaver.
but for other situations, like exporting a cut, it's more sensible top DO the renders.
then you've got them for when you realise that while the long complicated motion blur looks great, you forgot to dot the i on the last credit or whatever, and need to export again.

as derek points out, the AUDIO MIXDOWN in not done automatically,
so if you must export without rendering, at least do that
(select all in timeline, Option Apple R)

cheers,
nick

[I could be mistaken, but I believe if the timeline doesn't play out before you export it, it won't after it's exported as a self-contained movie.]

Absolutely it renders video and audio upon export, at the quality you specify, in all my experiences. Great way to save time doing renders if you have to export anyway for review and approval. Just export, self-contaned, to crunch it like a giant render.

Now, what I haven't tried is export of an unrendered timeline as a reference movie! Logic suggests this won't work because there is no "precompute" render file to reference for those sections requiring it. Never had inclination to test it. Has anyone tried?

- Loren
Today's FCP 4.5 keytip:
Toggle Link Enable with Shift-L!

The FCP HD KeyGuide?: your power placemat.
Now available at discount at the LAFCPUG Store!