Help..! Fastest way to export unrendered project?

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Onegin0 Author

Level 1

18 points

Help..! Fastest way to export unrendered project?

Hi everyone.

We accidentally left a long HD project overnight with background rendering switched off (as it was being annoying).

Now we need to export it as a Prores file as fast as possible. Heat is on..

So which is quicker?...

1. Hit 'render all' and wait a couple of hours or more for it to render, THEN export the rendered file.

2. Don't render, just hit export...

3. Export using compressor.

Are any of the above "better" by e.g. using GPU acceleration?

Thanks all - Jon

Final Cut Pro X, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Dec 14, 2011 6:33 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,809 points

Dec 14, 2011 6:39 AM in response to Onegin0

2. May be slightly faster.

3. Is certainly much slower.

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Answer 2

andynick

Level 5

4,961 points

Dec 14, 2011 10:51 AM in response to Onegin0

Render is for playback only - there is no need to render before export.

I personally find Compressor very quick but that depends on your processor power.

Andy

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Answer 3

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,809 points

Dec 14, 2011 11:01 AM in response to andynick

Compressor is not slow as such; it's the send to Compressor function that makes it bog slow as Compressor is calling up frames and instructions from FCP. Exporting media and taking that to Compressor is much faster.

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Answer 4

Onegin0 Author

Level 1

18 points

Dec 22, 2011 2:44 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Thank you all. btw for the record, our experience this week was that rendering before export massively increased export speed, so appears it does make a difference.

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Answer 5

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,809 points

Dec 22, 2011 3:03 PM in response to Onegin0

Did you include the time to render in the calculations?

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Answer 6

Onegin0 Author

Level 1

18 points

Dec 22, 2011 3:15 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

No but I wasn't implying that Render+export is faster than exporting unrerenered, just that render files obviously ARE used by fcp when exporting, so saying that it makes no difference whether you render before export (as rendering is just for playback) is wrong.

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Answer 7

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,809 points

Dec 22, 2011 3:34 PM in response to Onegin0

The render files are compiled in the export certainly. I don't know if you sat down and timed an unrendered project and rendered it and then exported it, if it would be any faster than an unrendered project that you exported.

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