Render is very slow

Hi everyone,

I'm having really slow render times. I'm trying to do my online and want to A/B the footage to an original Quicktime that was output to make sure all the effects & edits are correct and it won't play with unlimited RT. The film was cut in DV (the timeline and original footage is DV) and the overlaid Quicktime is 240 x 320 reduced quality (I can't remember the codec I used to encode it and it's currently writing video now so I don't want to interrupt it). Anyways the clip isn't very long (maybe 10 mins) but it's taking well over an hour to write.

I recently "upgraded" my wonderful dual 1.8 G5 to a used dual 2.3 G5. I'm not sure if the problem is with FCP / my drives or my "new" computer.

Any advice is appreciated

System specs
OS 10.4.3
FCP 5

PowerPC G5, Dual 2.3 GHz
2.5 Gb RAM
2 x 250 GB internal media drive
3 External drives (1 USB2, 1 FW 800, 1 FW 400)

Decklink SP out to Sony PVM 1402 via RGB cables
ATI Radeon 9600 - 128 MB VRAM

Your render will slow if:

1. you have a bunch of filters on your clips.

2. if you are using a plug that renders from your video card like fxfactory. (128mb on a card is really low)

3. if your processors are small. (2.3 is not bad at all. my render on my old dual 1.8 ppc are a little slow but not complainable)

4. if you have mixed formats on the TL sd mixed with hd, .motn, stills, and so on.

5. if you have really huge stills 1600x1600 and up is where i start seeing a major difference.

6. Corrupt plug or media on the TL.

7. to many projects open at the same time.

8. huge project size. 125mb+ (this is something i have never experienced but have read things about it)

9. multiple processes happing simultaneously.

10. no maintenance on the machine or setting.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

10 min with a full runtime overlay, on a dual 2.x g5...
ok, do you have media in this project on all those various drives as well? thats probably your biggest roadblock. content on various external drives.

youd do yourself a HUGE favor by adding a multi port esata card and get you a couple of esata drives to put all your media on.

in my experience, you get more dramatic performance improvement in FCP from significantly faster storage than you will from added ram or a meager 1.8 to 2.3 processor upgrade.

FYI, my caldigit fasta e-sata card cost about $230, and a 500g estata drive can be had for about $150 - some of you best money you'll spend. i promise.

yeah what he said too............. number 11...... lol

i have had esata for a while so everything i use minus aiff (fw) and motion files (internal) are on esata.

and in my opinion completely forget usb for video.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

forget that man, put EVERYTHING on the esata. whats your logic for not doing so?

yeah i am doing that now. i just never had a problem (quad 3.0).

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

i cant think of ANY reason to keep certain types of source media on separate drives from the rest of the project

Thanks guys,

I know I have slow drives, but it took over 1.5 hours to render!!! This is a fresh install of FCP5. The clip is resized from a smaller size and has a color correction filter on it so I can distinguish it from the regular media. It's also cropped midway through the image (strangely now FCP is not allowing me to change the cropping).

J

"fresh install" makes no difference

everything you mention adds time when youre already pushing the ability of your machine, ram, drives...

Quote
Wayne
in my experience, you get more dramatic performance improvement in FCP from significantly faster storage than you will from added ram or a meager 1.8 to 2.3 processor upgrade.

really? but are you talking about renders here, Wayne, or just the "Feel" of working.
i cant see how faster drives would improve render times, which are surely based on CPU/GPU power.


JOHN:
yes that was a ong render,
i'd say the contriubting factors were the low-res codec.

plus you say you have the file CROPPED.
is it sitting on top of the original timeline?
that could have a load of effects on it, which all now to be re-calculated.

a lot quicker may have been to open the low-res file in the viewer,
park both viewer and timeline and the head,
and GANG them (midle menu at top of canvas/viewer)

then you could step thru your timeline, cut by cut, and compare first/last frames.




nick

Quote
but are you talking about renders here

yup. i did that test when i got my macpro (between fw800 and esata). im sure you read it based on your quoting of "feel"

the faster drives made a 30 sec improvement in render time where an 8x ram increase only made a 2 second improvement.

i was pretty surprised.

esata, ram and cores aside, FCP still struggles with non-standard sequence settings/ footage. What do you mean by overlaying 240x320?? Is your sequence DV NTSC but you bring in clips with reduced resolution and blow them up?

If you need to use 240x320 in your project, I would uprez/convert them first to ("fcp native" DV or preferably 8 bit. Conversion speed is around 1:1 with Visualhub, maybe even faster. This way, you only need to render the effects. Still, up-rezing on timeline should not take that long so your web-clips probably have some exotic codec.

.. so.. convert it before you drop it!

all good advice youre getting here john. in this biz it helps to manage all your weak links. try things out, find out what suits your workflow (and your wallet) and make the best of it.

but as we've pointed out, with what youre doing and how youre going about it - your render times dont seem too out of the norm...

>i cant see how faster drives would improve render times, which are surely based on CPU/GPU
>power.

Although I can't reproduce Wayne's tests, I do think it speeds up renders. Faster access to data is probably the reason.



www.strypesinpost.com

THESE NUMBERS ARE NOT EXACT

>i cant see how faster drives would improve render times, which are surely based on CPU/GPU
>power.


render is writing the changes to the video. The data goes to your render folder. if the data is moving at say 80mb per second then in 1 sec you render is writing 80mb.
If you have a data of 150 mb per sec then in one sec render is creating 150mb of data in your render folder.

like a 475hp hemi (150mbps) versus a 250 hp 6 cylinder (80mbps)

Thats how a faster drive helps and yes i have tried the test with 10 .motn file it at least 20secs faster on my machine.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"