FCP7 Share takes WAY too long to export RED camera footage.

I've used the new Share feature on FCP7 a few times and while it has exported normally once or twice, it's been taking hours and hours just to export a ten- or twenty-minute sequence to H.264. I've noticed that this happens with RED camera footage and not so much with captured MiniDV footage. Is this a bug with the new feature, or is it the converted RED footage?

The footage comes to me in MPG form which I convert to .mov in Compressor. I then import it into FCP, where it must be rendered even after being converted to .mov. The rendering takes an extraordinarily long time, but it eventually gets done. Then, when the sequence is done, I choose Share to turn the whole thing into a Quicktime H.264 movie and leave it on overnight. Four or five hours later, it's still exporting, which seems like an awful long time for such a short sequence.

Something similar happens when I try to send the sequence to Compressor. I leave it on overnight and it's still only a quarter of the way done. The only way I've been able to get it done within a reasonable amount of time is by exporting it as a Quicktime movie and sending that to Compressor to be exported to the various formats I need (including 3 wmv's).

I have an early 2008 MBP, 4GB of RAM, 2.4 Ghz dual core processor and 120GB of hard drive space and I'm running Snow Leopard. Anyone got a possible solution? Thanks in advance!

'MPG form'- um that's not RED footage at least not in it's proper format. Also with respect, you have a relatively slow machine for heavy duty exports, not to mention Share is kinda slow to begin with and that's on my quad core Mac Pro with 8 GB RAM. And everything RED related requires major firepower. In short, my solution is get a faster machine.

Noah

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Ah, the camera man who's been sending me the footage got it wrong. It's some kind of hard drive camcorder. He's going to send me the specs later. From what I understand, the files from these kinds of cameras aren't in an easily-editable format. Could this be the problem?

Good grief. How did your cameraman confuse a camera that shoots to MPEG with RED?

RED is a camera that shoots to a hard drive. But it's one of the most distinctive formats out there, with its own software family. It should have been impossible not to know that he wasn't shooting on RED.

> the files from these kinds of cameras aren't in an easily-editable format

Not necessarily. Depends on what kind.

But let's back up two steps here:

> The footage comes to me in MPG form which I convert to .mov in Compressor. I then import it
> into FCP, where it must be rendered even after being converted to .mov
> it's been taking hours and hours just to export a ten- or twenty-minute sequence to H.264.

What is the editing format you're choosing? If you're exporting to H.264 at the end of the pipeline, I assume you want only web-ready movie files. But what are you converting to for editing purposes? You only mentioned .mov, which is like saying "I'm converting the MPEG files to video files". It tells us nothing.


www.derekmok.com

LOL, you gotta hear this...

My boss, the webmaster of the site I'm editing for, has been the intermediary between me and the camera men. He told me that he got a "little red hard disk" video camera to shoot the latest batch of episodes, which I took to mean a RED One camera, which seemed like overkill for an adult website. I've only ever edited episodes shot on MiniDV tapes so I didn't really know what to expect and I figured I was in over my head.

It turns out that he got a red COLORED Sony hard disk camcorder, which made me laugh when he sent me the specs. From what I read, it seems that there are issues if you try editing these files on anything but the included proprietary software, even on Sony Vegas. They also require a special codec. Obviously it's not impossible to get them into FCP, but it's really been a pain in the ass.

Sorry I wasn't specific enough, but what I've been doing with the mpg files is converting them to Quicktime H.264 mov files in in Compressor in order to import them into FCP since I'm used to editing those. Even after being converted, they need to be rendered in the timeline and it takes hours for just fifteen minutes or so of footage. I've had an hour of captured miniDV footage take less time to render and export. While my MBP isn't the fastest available, it's never taken an extraordinarily long time to render and export files to multiple formats.

So I guess that clears a few things up, but if anyone has any ideas as to how to deal with these files more efficiently, I'd really appreciate it!

> but what I've been doing with the mpg files is converting them to Quicktime H.264 mov files in
> in Compressor in order to import them into FCP since I'm used to editing those.

Tough love time.
You laughed at your boss, but this above would also be considered a wrong workflow.

H.264 is a heaviliy compressed, processor-intensive codec intended for final delivery, mainly the internet. It is not an editing-friendly format. If you're importing hours of H.264 footage into FCP for editing, of course you'd have renders up the kazoo.

So, I'd say that whatever workflow you're used to is also whacked. You need to talk to somebody and re-evaluate what you're doing. You are losing a huge, huge amount of quality with the process described above.


www.derekmok.com

I wasn't so much laughing AT him so much as WITH him, since I totally mistook his meaning too.

At any rate, I'm not normally editing hours of footage and I just figured Quicktime H.264 was what the original MiniDV files were being stored as anyway. But if not, some actual advice would be much appreciated. What formats would you use instead?

Open up a new sequence ProRes 422 8 bit. No need to go 10 bit or ProRes HQ for this footage as the original is 8 bit & you're not bringing in fancy graphics. Copy your present sequence into the new 422 sequence. It will need a render, but the Share function should not take very long to do after the render in the ProRes 422 sequence.

Dave

Thanks Dave, I will definitely try that. I realized that captured tape files are usually stored as DVCPro. So I'm also going to try the different DVCPro settings in Compressor as well since I will sometimes have to mix footage types.

As for output, I have the settings down for the WMV versions I need, but is there a particular setting for a Quicktime version you can suggest for a reasonably high-quality download from the web?

> just figured Quicktime H.264 was what the original MiniDV files were being stored as anyway

And that's a problem, too. Who does the capturing from the Mini-DV tapes? Why would you get H.264 at such an early stage?

The point is to avoid H.264 until the absolute final stage. If you captured from tape as H.264, you also would have a much compromised master for your edit.


www.derekmok.com

No, I had originally assumed that they were captured as H.264 since they ended up that way. But after looking at the files more closely, I see they aren't. So that is a big obstacle out of the way.

So now I'm trying out different DVCPro settings for one that best matches the captured tape format. Then I'll convert the mpg's in Compressor, import them into FCP and see if the render and export times are dramatically shorter.

Does that sound like the way to go about it?

okay, figured it out.

Using Compressor, I converted the mpeg file from the digital video camera to DV NTSC Anamorphic, the same format as the MiniDV footage that was part of the same FCP sequence. It didn't take long and there was no rendering necessary in the Timeline. This also allowed me to make multiclips of what was originally mixed media footage.

Then I exported the finished project to H.264 from the new Share option in FCP and it's now exporting at the normal rate.

Thanks for bringing some of these things to my attention. Hope I didn't overcomplicate things!