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Exporting video from compressor is slow......

Does anyone know what might cause this problem? I have completed several videos larger than 500GB in Mac Motion. I sent these videos to Compressor, trying to export them but found it takes more than one hour to finish each work. Is that normal? What settings can minimize the time of exporting files from compressor? Thanks.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.12

Posted on Jan 4, 2022 5:12 AM

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Posted on Jan 5, 2022 12:41 AM

I wonder if you would have quicker results if you exported directly out of Motion.

If I understand correctly, you are probably exporting a ProRes movie from Motion, and then converting it to H264 in Compressor.

Compressor does offer a lot more customization, but you could try simply exporting an H264 file from Motion.

Unless you want to tweak the settings, say, to achieve a lower bit rate, you don't gain much, if anything by going through Compressor.


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Jan 5, 2022 12:41 AM in response to 得瑋

I wonder if you would have quicker results if you exported directly out of Motion.

If I understand correctly, you are probably exporting a ProRes movie from Motion, and then converting it to H264 in Compressor.

Compressor does offer a lot more customization, but you could try simply exporting an H264 file from Motion.

Unless you want to tweak the settings, say, to achieve a lower bit rate, you don't gain much, if anything by going through Compressor.


Jan 4, 2022 12:22 PM in response to 得瑋

You are not giving us much information to work on.

The time it takes to export depends heavily on several factors, like what mac you are using, what export settings you are using, the duration, frame size, frame rate of your movie...


Your mac may have some hardware encoding support, or not, for things like H264.


So start by telling us about your mac, what exact settings you chose for export - if possible, post a screenshot - and what the duration and frame size of your movie is - e.g. is this 1080p? 4K? Are you exporting to a different frame size than your originals?

Are you exporting a FCP project, or converting a Quicktime movie? Some features like multiple concurrent instances of Compressor work for the latter but not the former.

Jan 4, 2022 6:50 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I use Mac Motion editing videos not Final cut. The original frame size of the video is also 1920x1080 and the duration is approximate 10 mins long. When I choose smaller frame size the size of the video becomes smaller too (about 330MB) and the exporting time is shorter. However, I don't want loss quality of the video so I keep the original frame size.

Jan 5, 2022 8:02 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thank you Luis! I usually avoid exporting video from Motion because the file size will be much bigger than that exported from Compressor. However, this time I decided to give it a try. As what I expected, the estimated size is much large (about 3GB). It took about 40 minutes to complete the work, which is faster than compressor. For some reason the resultant video is only 1.5GB. After that, I compressed the video by Handbrake and the file size dropped to 140MB without any quality loss. I don't know why in this case Handbrake reduces so much size. However, it still took approximate an hour to finish the entire work. Anyway, although I am looking for a faster way to export videos(shorter than 30 mins), your suggestion is very helpful. I will export videos from Motion before I find other convenient solutions.

Jan 5, 2022 10:55 AM in response to 得瑋

I don't think you mentioned what your mac is, exactly.

HandBrake can use all the processor cores, depending on the settings.

In Compressor, it may use the CPU, the GPU or the T2 chip, depending on the mac model and the selected settings.


If it uses hardware encoding, it will be much faster.


You may want to do some testing with a shorter video, to compare the time it takes with different options.



Jan 5, 2022 10:34 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

My Mac is MacOS BIG SUR. version 11.6, is that the information you are asking for?

Exporting videos from Motion is faster than from Compressor, but the file size is much larger so I have to compress it in HandBrake. However, this way is still faster than exporting video from Compressor directly. To some extent, it solves the problem. It seems impossible to export a video just in 10 minutes...




Jan 6, 2022 1:13 AM in response to 得瑋

As I said, there are many parameters involved.

Your OS is Big Sur, but what is your mac model, exactly? For example, a 2013 MacBook Air will be much slower than a 2020 MacBook Pro, say.

If you are in doubt, go to the Apple menu and select About this Mac. Note the model and year.


Also: you did not say what settings you used in Compressor. A screenshot would be nice.


Jan 7, 2022 7:51 AM in response to 得瑋

Here is one little trick that may help, or not, depending on your mac model.

You did just say it is a 2017 MBP, but did not say whether it is a 15" or 13".


There is an option in Compressor's preferences to activate "additional Compressor instances".

This can make use of more cores to split the work and do it faster.

In my 8-core 2019 16" MBP, I can add up to 3 additional instances, and it does make some exports quicker.


Jan 10, 2022 12:56 AM in response to 得瑋

得瑋 wrote:


It seems the option is not available because I cannot click on it .


As I wrote above, that depends on your mac model. Mine is an 8-core 2019, and it allows 3 extra instances.

I would assume that on a 4-core mac there might be 1 extra instance, and none in a 2-core mac. Is your mac a 13" model?

That appears to be the case, as the 15" were at least 4-core machines.

Exporting video from compressor is slow......

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