Export Reference Movie takes forever!

XDCAM EX project that is only 17 minutes long is taking 3 hrs to export a reference movie. Why? I've rendered everything in the sequence but it still seems like it needs to re-render everything in order to export a simple reference movie and sometimes it crashes during export and I get nothing after waiting for three hrs...

How full is your drive? And what machine are you working on?



www.strypesinpost.com

I am working off two drives on an Octo Core (early 2008) 3.2 Mac Pro. One is an internal 1.5TB RAID that probably has under 100Gb left on it and another is a 4TB RAID external Other World drive. All of the media is on the external drive and the internal is only dealing with Renders, etc. It shouldn't be an issue to house renders on a different drive than my footage, should it?

are you sure everything is rendered?

do you have any of the olive grey "full quality" render bars?

go to sequence menu >render all,
make sure the "full" setting is ticked,
then render ALL (option r)

still 3hrs to export sounds like some other problem.
have you tried exporting self contained?

are you exporting to Quicktime move using "Same Settings"?


nick

Also, what is your timeline set to render to ProRes? That would cause everything that was rendered previously to be re-rendered as XDCAM EX.



www.strypesinpost.com

Render All full setting was not ticked. It is now. Exporting self contained gave me an even longer estimate.

Timeline is set to render in ProRes- I thought that was the way to go...

yeah i thought that too,
till i started working on an XDCAM EX show.

we were rendering all in ProRes, and we didn't have the problems you were having,
but because of OTHER problems we changed over to simple XDCAM EX timelines,
and our exports are no longer than they used to be,
and no longer than reasonable.

we don't have many effects in our timelines.


nick

>Timeline is set to render in ProRes- I thought that was the way to go...

Ah yes. This would be it, aside from not having the "render all" setting checked. When you export a QT movie, it will have to be one consistent codec.

The "render to ProRes" setting is good because it's faster to render to ProRes than XDCAM EX. This is great for offline preview within FCP. But it does sting on export, as all the footage rendered to ProRes will have to be rendered out as XDCAM EX. This is one gotcha of working with a long GOP format.

If this is an offline client preview, you could choose to set render to a quarter resolution. This would speed up render time in FCP. If you want to deliver a full resolution digital "master", you would rather render straight to ProRes (change your sequence codec to ProRes and render).



www.strypesinpost.com

Quote

we were rendering all in ProRes, and we didn't have the problems you were having,
but because of OTHER problems we changed over to simple XDCAM EX timelines...we don't have many effects in our timelines.

I did quite a bit of effects- mostly heavy color correction, some Magic Bullet, and Neat Video on almost every clip- I suppose this added to the workload- but I thought with a beast of a CPU like I have that it could handle it- also apparently there was more to render (which I should've done over night).

Would you still recommend going with XDCAM EX as render coded even if I have effects?

Quote

f you want to deliver a full resolution digital "master", you would rather render straight to ProRes (change your sequence codec to ProRes and render)

Gotcha- this makes sense- I tried doing that at one point but the Re-Render looked to be taking forever...

ah, yes "render to Prores"
we had our sequence set to prores,
so after rendering, exports were fast.

nick

>I tried doing that at one point but the Re-Render looked to be taking forever...

If you want to speed it up, go to render settings, switch to 8 bit YUV. Rendering in float in FCP is great, but it takes quite a while, especially if you have stuff like Neat Vid denoisers and MB plug ins. Either way, the render would take longer. But if this is a graded show, you really don't want to render it out to XDCAM EX, as it is a very lossy format.



www.strypesinpost.com

Isn't the default 8 Bit YUV? Or is that for formats other than ProRes?

Quote

quite a bit of effects- ... on almost every clip

in that case you're going to have to render almost everything anyway.
i'll go along with Stryes,and and say that for quality, working in ProRes sequences would be the best thing,
and rendering as you go, as in over-night, and lunch breaks.
do you have auto-render turned on?

nick

Got it- thank you! I do have auto-render on- I was having a lot of crashing issues that began around the time I initially tried to convert the timeline to ProRes, so I just stuck with the XDCAM EX codec because my CPU seemed to like it a little more- now i know.

what we used to do was to work in the XDCAM EX timeline,
then change the settings to ProRes the day before delivery,
then let it render overnight.

as i said, we didn't have a lot of effects.

>Isn't the default 8 Bit YUV?

It is for 8 bit formats. ProRes, is a 10 bit format, so the default is "render 10 bit formats in high precision YUV". If your sequence is in XDCAM, you should default to 8 bit. You can set it "render all in high precision YUV", but that takes substantially longer, but it's much better quality.



www.strypesinpost.com

Just to follow up on this, I re-rendered everything into ProRes (the project's only 16 minutes) but then in the last three minutes FCP kept hitting a roadblock (in the middle of a scene) and telling me it was "Out of Memory"- this is why I've been afraid of ProRes in the first place because something crazy like this always happens. Whether it's a crash or an error message it seems like ProRes doesn't always play nice.

Beginning to wonder if doing a clean install of FCP will help. I did trash preferences with no change. I have managed to render the last part of the sequence in a separate timeline as well...

it sounds more like you have some corrupt piece of media towards the end of your sequence.
got any weird graphics in there?
any images that are CMYK rather than RGB?


nick

Not really- I've got some pics at the very end that are all RGB and 72dpi. Besides that the break point is mid scene and all the footage at the head of the scene rendered fine...

>One is an internal 1.5TB RAID that probably has under 100Gb left on it and another is a 4TB
>RAID external Other World drive.

>and the internal is only dealing with Renders

You mentioned this... Renders should be set to your media drive, not your internal drive. Check your internal drive to see how much space you have left, if you don't have enough space, set your scratch disk to your external array.

Also, what filters do you have in those clips?



www.strypesinpost.com

When you say Media drive do you mean the same drive as my footage? Because both drives are Media drives- there's just an internal RAID (separate from my system HD) and the external RAID. I did set to my external setup and made that the primary scratch since my internal has "only" a 100gb left. Main filters include Neat Video and Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse. There's some speed changes, but nothing major.

I have been able to piece by piece render most of the elements of the final three minutes in a separate sequence which is very strange...

>I have been able to piece by piece render most of the elements of the final three minutes in a
>separate sequence which is very strange...

I remember something a little similar... Try turning on auto render, and changing it 1 minute. See if it works for you.



www.strypesinpost.com

>I've been afraid of ProRes in the first place because something crazy like this always happens

This is something i never got to terms with. I usually work with either DvcproHD or XDCAM EX. The moment I go on XDCAM EX footage, it goes out as ProRes. I've heard some guys say it's problematic when they first implemented the codec, but I've never actually heard of a specific problem with it, and I've yet to encounter any issues related to that codec in particular.



www.strypesinpost.com

Might be a corrupt audio file.

Either way - check with Digital Rebellion's FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.2 and use its Corrupt Clip Finder...

[www.digitalrebellion.com]

There is a trial version - its well worth the money though - it's helped me locate numerous errors and hardware/software issues that otherwise I would be (relatively) clueless about.



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]