suspiciously long render time

I just rendered a two-hour sequence that included some color correction and gamma filtering, and in only took a few minutes. But when I nested it in order to add a window burn, the render came up 5 hours. What's worse, after canceling and saving at 4% into the render, when I resumed, the estimated time jumped to 11 hours! I'm wondering what caused this, and if there's something I can do to speed things up. This is, after all, a rather straightforward enhancement (visible time code), and no other projects or sequences are open.

Well, did the first render get EVERYTHING? No hint of green? Because there is one green that is very faint, but still requires FINAL rendering. And regular rendering doesn't get that, unless you tell FCP to get it.


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I'm very glad you mentioned this, because there's a lot of faint green in my original sequence -- in fact, every one of my tape-captured clips (I've mixed log-and-captured SD with log-and transferred HD footage; hope that's okay).

Should I go back and render the original sequence before nesting and window-burning? Or will what's rendering now take care of it? I'm in favor of whichever method takes less time!

"whichever method takes less time"

render all in the timeline,
export a reference move
re-import and add the TC filter,
export


nick

the reason this is the fastest method is that when you nest and add the TC filter,
you have to re-render everything,
all complex effects etc PLUS the TC filter.
exporting and re-importing means you are only doing the fairly simple TC filter.

also look into QTSync,
that's an app that can add a TC window to an existing QT file


nick

I knew there had to be some sort of strange redundancy at work here. Just amazed that TC burn-ins work like a filter in FCP -- so not the case in AMC! Thanks so much for an elegant solution.

One of my more recent jobs was on a game show where we had 65 episodes with about three or four cuts going out to network every day. All of them needed to have vis timecode. Instead of doing the nesting method, I took the time to create 40 minute ProRes 4444 file of the window burn with an alpha channel. That export from Motion took quite a while, but we were able to just add that window burn to the top video layer like in Media Composer. It was a much simpler render everything with the TC Reader filter.

If you're just doing a one-off, then it might be more of a pain in the butt to create this file, but if you're going to have to send out cuts with vis TC, making this file will be a huge time saver. If you want, I'll see if I can find the Motion project and e-mail it to you so you can export it yourself.

That we be fantastic, and thanks for the offer. What a huge asset this would be for future projects, because this one's been a nightmare, given the render time. This morning, I was greeted by a "General Error" message after hoping the whole thing would have finished up overnight. No such luck. Had to cancel and pick up where I left off: about halfway through.

@ Nick - Rendering the original time line and exporting to a QT didn't turn out to be much of a time saver because I was looking at about 6-8 hours to clean up my green bars. Definitely should have used this method from the start, but like swimming halfway across an ocean, decided I'd just keep going with what appeared to be well on its way to completion.

If anyone else wants those motion projects, PM me and I'll e-mail them to you. They're really easy to make yourself, but I can save you the trouble.

an approach to a TC overlay that is often recommended here is that you put a layer of the simple text generator with no text over your entire timeline, and apply the TC filter to that.

that's basically the TC filter sitting in an empty "alpha-holder"

i haven't tried your method, but given it's using ProRes4444, i wonder which would be the fastest to render?

i might do a test.


nick

I wonder if your "movie overlay" method would work faster with the way you're doing it (alpha channel with numbers on top), or if you just exported a movie that was actually very small -- just the numbers and a square around them? That way it's just a small clip on top of another one, rather than an alpha channel (or just a small area of alpha around the numbers). There's also no reason the number overlay needs to be HD?


www.derekmok.com

I'd like to try this. Does the continuous layer atop the time line take the place of having to nest my entire sequence?

> Does the continuous layer atop the time line take the place of having to nest my entire
> sequence?

It can, it doesn't have to. If you put this on top of your editing timeline, however, then you're ditching all render files of all non-timecode-burn-related effects you have underneath. Whenever I do a burn, I always still nest the timeline, or I use an exported movie file.


www.derekmok.com

Well, given that it took over 8 hours to render the time line, I'd better nest. Which brings up another question re the topic of long renders: is there anyway to down-convert BPAV files taken off an HD CAM SxS card to SD before I start cutting them into my project? Right now, I'm mixing DV and high-def clips into a two-hour time line, and the light green bar that has appeared above the former has resulted in some monster renders (I assume because they're being up-rezzed to match the HD).

Just realized maybe I should have been using a different codec when ingesting... If so, which one is recommended?

> I'm mixing DV and high-def clips into a two-hour time line, and the light green bar that
> has appeared above the former has resulted in some monster renders (I assume because
> they're being up-rezzed to match the HD).

Well, of course you'll have lots of renders, then.

Your workflow doesn't make sense to me. Is the DV footage already at online quality? What is the final deliverable -- HD, SD, tape, tapeless, web, DVD, film out? What is the ratio of DV footage to HD footage? Did the DV footage originate in HD?

If the final deliverable is HD, why are you using DV clips to edit with, and on an HD timeline, to boot? It'll look absolutely awful.

And if you're trying to do an offline edit before narrowing down your selects for an online, why are you editing in an HD timeline, necessitating that all your DV clips would have to be rendered? If this is an offline, you are also rendering an entire two-hour show in HD. That's a lot more rendering than if you were doing an SD offline. If your DV clips were indeed already at maximum quality, the choices that make sense to me would have been something like:

1. Edit the HDCam clips in a DV timeline. The DV clips would look as they should, and the HD clips will look fine. A DV timeline will be fast to render, and DV clip files will be very small. What you lose in quality, you gain in mobility, portability and very light system, bandwidth and storage requirements.

2. Make offline DV versions of your HD clips to edit with. That means no rendering at all anywhere. You conform after the edits are done and go back to the HD clips for the online, if there is an online.

3. Conform everything to ProRes before editing. ProRes will be a better SD codec to represent the HD footage, and the DV clips should look fine.

I could be wrong, but it doesn't appear to me a lot of thought was put into your settings.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks for taking the time for providing some excellent resolution to an unfamilar problem. This was a 3-camera shoot intended for a final deliverable on DVD. The producer just went on the assumption that because this was not an HD project, it was perfectly okay to mix and match formats with the equipment he had (why he didn't just change camera setting to DV is another issue. Not a good start, I know).

I once tried making offline DV versions of HD clips using Apple Pro Res for another project and was unhappy with how they looked, thus tried to retain the native format on this one. But I think I've unknowingly been working in an HD time lime, as you pointed out. Editing in a DV time line should make a world of difference. Thanks again.

> (why he didn't just change camera setting to DV is another issue. Not a good start, I know)

If he's mixing cameras, I wouldn't see that as a bad thing, necessarily. Why diminish the capability of the camera? Shooting HD allows him to do zooms and other effects on that angle. The bigger issue is whether he needs all the cameras to match in terms of lighting and motion. Motion, frame rates etc. are especially hard to cut corners on.

> But I think I've unknowingly been working in an HD time lime, as you pointed out. Editing
> in a DV time line should make a world of difference. Thanks again.

It's not quite that simple. If you have two cameras in SD DV and one camera in HDCam, did he shoot 29.97fps on all of them? If not, you still have to figure out whether you can edit in 24p (that's only if the DV cameras were able to shoot 24p or 24pA), or whether everything will need that 29.97fps, interlaced "video" look. Did you talk to the producer about whether he wanted the 24p progressive look or the interlaced video look? That's not a conversation you should be having after you already did all the editing. That was a question for before you started working.


www.derekmok.com

As it's not a "film" project but video documentation of an event, it was understood by all to go for the interlaced video look, and each camera was shooting in 29.97 fps.

Nick Meyers Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> an approach to a TC overlay that is often
> recommended here is that you put a layer of the
> simple text generator with no text over your
> entire timeline, and apply the TC filter to that.
>
> that's basically the TC filter sitting in an empty
> "alpha-holder"
>
> i haven't tried your method, but given it's using
> ProRes4444, i wonder which would be the fastest to
> render?
>
> i might do a test.
>
>
> nick



derekmok Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wonder if your "movie overlay" method would work
> faster with the way you're doing it (alpha channel
> with numbers on top), or if you just exported a
> movie that was actually very small -- just the
> numbers and a square around them? That way it's
> just a small clip on top of another one, rather
> than an alpha channel (or just a small area of
> alpha around the numbers). There's also no reason
> the number overlay needs to be HD?


Those are both awesome suggestions and definitely something I'll try out next time I'm cutting something. Now that I've moved over into the Post Coordinating/Supervising side of things, I don't get on an edit system much these days. My Final Cut work for the last few months has been limited to using it to watch back cuts for clearance issues, and when I do get into an edit bay, it's usually Avid.

Thanks for the good updates to that method though. I'll have to try it out.

Would like to use this method, too, but having trouble producing a text generator clip longer than 2 minutes. Is there a setting for this?

Text Generator objects don't have a limit on running time. Open it from the timeline, go to the top-left Duration window and enter a longer time -- say two hours (2...). Now you can drag that clip in the timeline to up to two hours long.

However, I don't recommend having one two-hour overlay clip on the whole timeline. All you have to do is nudge it the wrong way and the whole timeline will have to be re-rendered. And you'll probably have very long "Preparing video" computations. I suggest chunks of five to 10 minutes apiece.

Also, with this method, you don't have to use Timecode Reader. Timecode Generator can work as long as the numbers on top match the numbers in your timeline all the way through. If you do use Timecode Reader, you may need to use Timecode Generator and Modify - Timecode on the text objects to manipulate the numbers.


www.derekmok.com

well for a TC overlay, one long generator would be the way to go.

" All you have to do is nudge it the wrong way and the whole timeline will have to be re-rendered"
then you hit undo

>> " All you have to do is nudge it the wrong way and the whole timeline will have to be
>> re-rendered"
> then you hit undo

It's still better to use a nest or, since he had everything rendered already, a movie file. Simplifies things immensely. You can Undo the wrong operation, but the "Preparing video" messages can't be skipped and they drive me crazy. Since I always have to check multiple points on the timeline for timecode accuracy anyway, I chop up the timecode overlays and render by sections.


www.derekmok.com

Be aware if using TCG on a nest that all material in the nest must be a clip. If you have open gaps in your show-- this could be a rough cut, after all-- the TCG will not work-- the numbers will drop out over those sections.

Fill with empty text or slug should do the trick.

- Loren

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Not to complicate things, but wouldn't the continuous empty generator layer Nick suggests eliminate such a problem, since the filter is being applied to it, and not the nested sequence?

> Be aware if using TCG on a nest that all material in the nest must be a clip. If you have
> open gaps in your show-- this could be a rough cut, after all-- the TCG will not work--
> the numbers will drop out over those sections.

Interesting. I never noticed that about the Timecode Generator and Reader. (I never leave gaps except by accident) Turns out the numbers drop out, but are still counting, so after the gap, the numbers are still accurate. But burn-ins are supposed to be constant.

Having blank spaces in the timeline is a bad practice in general. You'd want to use a black colour matte or a slug, in order to control how long the black lasts, and to ensure that accidents during editing don't cause the gap to lengthen or shorten.


www.derekmok.com

[But burn-ins are supposed to be constant. ]

Agreed. They would be if nests had the same substance as clips, but they're just containers, they only act under orders ;-)

Maybe this will change next month, with other things.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
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with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
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