How to reduce Render Time

Hello,
My boss wants me to get as much info as I can about possible ways to increase the speed of rendering in FCP.
I assume that the most important aspect is processor speed, and that if the computer works fine it's not worth upgrading the processor just for rendering. But I want to see if anything else can be done to reduce the time it takes to render. We use XDCAM and some kind of pro AVCHD format. Is there a way to offline the HD footage for quicker rendering?

Here are my specs, but other editors have slightly older machines:
2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
8 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
OS X 10.4.11
FCP Version - 6.0.6


Any input is greatly appreciated.

The only way to speed up rendering is to get faster processors. No other option.

You want to speed things up by switching to an offline/online workflow again? Well, there is that option, just know when you online you have to make sure everything is right. This means recapturing and slipping sync...might take a day or two. Just know that. OH, and if you have graphics or moves on stills, might take longer to redo them, if you use Offline RT. ProRes Proxy...that'd be better.


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Get a faster computer and work in a format that renders more quickly, i.e. not any MPEG based format.

Working offline might making rendering quicker, but it slows down the workflow bunches. It's really only necessary I think when you're working with high resolution, high data rate formats.

All the best,

Tom

Excellent, thank you!

>My boss wants me to get as much info as I can about possible ways to increase the speed of
>rendering in FCP

What exactly are you doing that requires so much render time? I see long GOP formats. They're generally quite taxing on the processors. One thing to avoid is to export with QT conversion or export off the FCP timeline. I had a sequence the other day in XDCAM EX, and we were sending out a WMV for preview, and exporting QT conversion off the timeline took something like three quarters of an hour off an 8 minute long timeline. I'm definitely getting Compressor to do the encoding next time.


>You want to speed things up by switching to an offline/online workflow again

There's one other option, and that is to view it as offlines and onlines. For the offline approval, I usually render in RGB and have motion quality set to fastest, and sometimes I even render at quarter res if there are multiple layers.

Since you're talking about long GOP formats, if you're working with XDCAM EX, you can render in to ProRes (under render control in sequence settings). For preview purposes, ProRes renders a lot quicker than XDCAM EX. The other option is to let everything transcode overnight to ProRes and cut in ProRes, if you can afford the space.



www.strypesinpost.com

Something nobody's mentioned yet (including the asker of the question) is disk. For many workflows, the speed of your storage has a huge impact on the total time required to render.

Good points. Thank you! (and, Strypes, I checked out your nice post about using Media Manager to transcode)

Thanks for reading, glad you found it useful.



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