Quicktime Export abnormally slow??

Question

Quicktime Export abnormally slow??

My source footage is XDCAM HD 1080i 35MB/s. My sequence settings are the same. The edit is about 82 minutes in length. All effects and transitions are fully rendered. I'm exporting a Quicktime reference movie, (not contained) and its taking over two hours?? At my job, I work in the same format, but my edits are 30 minutes, and when they are fully rendered, it takes less than a minute to export a Quicktime reference file. any suggestions??

Mac Pro Quad Core, Mac OS X (10.6.6), 8GB RAM

Posted on Jan 9, 2011 8:46 PM

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Answer 1

joey848

Level 2

405 points

Jan 10, 2011 4:18 AM in response to macambassador

The only thing i can think of would be to go into Sequence Settings and change the Render Control to ProRes. Then trash your render files using the Render Manager.
Now export. It should go faster.
It's your choice whether to then render the timeline for realtime playback, but that will take additional time.
Also, these days the common wisdom is to always render a self-contained movie.
It's all too easy to lose the render files associated with a reference movie, and storage is cheap these days.

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Answer 2

Jan 11, 2011 5:56 AM in response to joey848

I'm gonna try your suggestion and see how it goes. I let the render go as it was. It was done in the morning and all seemed fine. Stupid me, I didn't check the file for playback, and it turns out, somehow in that very slow export process, the audio got out of sync with the video. And I didn't discover it until after I had already burned 3 bluray discs. Lesson learned.

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Answer 3

Jan 11, 2011 7:34 AM in response to joey848

after changing the render control to Prores, it does seem to be going faster. it cut the time to about half. its going to take about an hour to export. That is still way longer than what I'm used to seeing. A 30 minute program, fully rendered, would export in about a minute. Something isn't right..

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Answer 4

joey848

Level 2

405 points

Jan 11, 2011 7:37 AM in response to macambassador

When you changed the render setting, everything had to be re-rendered, right?
Did you render before exporting?
If not, it's rendering everything as it exports.

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Answer 5

Jan 11, 2011 8:09 AM in response to joey848

yes, when I changed the Render Control, it had to be re-rendered, and I rendered it before export. It just finished, and the audio is still out of sync with the video??? I make blurays on a weekly basis at work with this same workflow, and never had a problem. What could be throwing it off??

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Answer 6

joey848

Level 2

405 points

Jan 11, 2011 9:12 AM in response to macambassador

Maybe your computer and/or drives at work are faster?

Is the audio out of sync on the rendered Quicktime file, the timeline, or both?

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Answer 7

Jan 11, 2011 9:33 AM in response to joey848

the computer at work (12 core) is faster, but the drives are the same kind of drives.

The audio is not out of sync in the Timeline. When I export the Quicktime movie, thats when it gets out of sync. And obviously, the mpeg2 rendered files were also out of sync as a result.

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Answer 8

Jan 11, 2011 10:23 AM in response to macambassador

I'm having the same problem. Just last week, I exported a reference movie and it took about 3 minutes. This week (new project), it took 3 hours! Both projects were rendered, about the same length, and I was exporting with the same settings.

I did update my OS to add the App store onto my computer - and someone mentioned that the update could be causing the issue - because it also updated Quicktime Player?

How do I fix that? How can I get it to go back to using the older version of Quicktime that was installed prior to the update?

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Answer 9

Jan 12, 2011 5:05 AM in response to chermeier

I never find much satisfaction in solving a problem when you don't really know what solved it. I came full circle- ended up where I started and now it seems to have worked. I say "seems" because I won't know til I view the final bluray disc to be sure. The Quicktime movie is playing perfectly now.

In comparison the projects at work, I did recall one difference- that was that my work projects were actually filmed with XDCAM HD 25mb/s not 35. FCP actually interprets the 25mb/s codec has HDV. Weird, I know, so I changed my sequence settings to HDV, and rendered and exported. The resulting Quicktime file's audio was finally in sync, only the picture looked horrible. The digital blocking was so bad, it looked like I put a mosaic filter on it or something. So, in desperation, I reverted back to my original XDCAM 35mb/s codec settings. I did use Render manager this time to trash all my render files (maybe that was some secret fix?) and then I just exported a Quicktime file without pre-rendering the timeline. And this morning, the resulting Quicktime movie looks great and the audio is in sync. go figure.

I wish I could say I know what fixed it, but I have no idea.

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Answer 10

joey848

Level 2

405 points

Jan 12, 2011 7:05 AM in response to macambassador

Sometimes render files get corrupted. Probably the case here.

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