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Compressor 4.1 Slow Export - Unique Issue

[Using a MacBook Pro, 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7 (4 cores) - 16GB memory]


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Hey guys!


I'm on a job now, ripping dozens of archival 4:3 DVDs and up-rezzing them to 1080/25.


The footage is arriving in Compressor as 640x480 h.264 MP4s at 25fps - they need to be delivered as 1920x1080 ProRes 422 MOVs. Here are my video settings:


Video Properties

Frame size: 1920 - 1080

Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square

Frame rate: Automatic

Field Order: Progressive

[X] Add clean aperture information

Quicktime settings: Apple ProRes 422


Cropping & Padding

Cropping: 0-0-0-0

Padding: Preserve Source Aspect Ratio -- Top: 0 - Bottom: 0 - Left: 240 - Right: 240


Quality

Resize Filter: Better

Retiming Quality: Fast

[_] Adaptive Details

Anti-aliasing level: 0

Details level: 0


Here's where it becomes a problem that I can't find a solution for...


A video that was 38 mins long took 1 hour and 15 minutes to finish. Acceptable.

A video that was 1:49 (109 mins) long took 9 hours and 17 minutes to finish.


Same type of video, same export settings, but for some reason, the export time multiplies drastically when the video is longer. I'm on a deadline, and if I kept exporting back-to-back at this rate, I'd be finishing up my footage over a month from now.


I understand the up-rezzing is going to eat up time, but what accounts for such a dramatic slowdown when the file is over an hour long?


Is there a way I can get the longer videos to export at the rate of the first video I referenced (about 0.5x - rather than 0.19x)?


Any help (advice/link to a thread I missed with this same question) is MUCH appreciated! Starting to worry about this now :/

Compressor, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Mar 9, 2014 4:28 PM

Reply
10 replies

Mar 10, 2014 7:07 AM in response to Trent Babb

I'm guessing that you're using Handbrake to rip the DVD's. If the DVDs are not protected a better way would be to use MPEG Streamclip. You could then extract the files as Pro Res snd then resize in Compressor (or even in Streamclip). should be faster and the quality shouldn't take as much of a hit i going from MPEG2 to H.264..


Note that you would need to download the MPEG2 Playback Component fro $19. The site says its not needed for recent OS versions, by Streamclip needs it; there are instructions on the Squared 5 site for installation.


Otherwise, the only things I can suggest is to check Preferences>Advanced to see that you have the maximum number of Compressor instances checked; also, if there is not a lot of motion in the ripped content, try single pass encoding and check whether the quality is acceptable.


Good luck.


Russ

Mar 11, 2014 2:09 AM in response to Russ H

Hey man,


I appreciate your response - it motivated me to finally look all the way into MPEG Streamclip, and what a great program that is.


Unfortunately, ripping the DVDs in ProRes with it inexplicably made Compressor take longer to encode than the Handbrake .m4v files. Since my deadline is getting closer, I don't have time for any more trial-and-error with the settings, so I'm doing a poor man's process - splitting the longer clips in half so they won't take 9+ hours to transcode.


It's not ideal, but it's working like a charm. I'm still so curious why there's that HUGE disparity between the processing time of 30-60 minute clips and 90+ minute clips...

Mar 11, 2014 12:59 PM in response to Trent Babb

Trent Babb wrote:


Hey man,

I'm still so curious why there's that HUGE disparity between the processing time of 30-60 minute clips and 90+ minute clips...

The only thing I can think that would cause that is if Compressor (and whatever other processes were open) gobbled up all the Mac's available memory. Having run into this myself, I now routinely reboot and close down non-essential processes before especially long processing jobs. You can check this in Activity Monitor.


Russ

Mar 11, 2014 6:49 PM in response to Trent Babb

Did a test... Original video; 720x352, 23.976 fps.


38 minute segment transcoded to ProRes no upres... 11 minutes

__________________________________________________________


Using your settings:

38 minutes segment transcoded to ProRes upres to 1920x1080... Compressor (4.1) 29 minutes (31 minutes using MPEG-Streamclip).


Using your settings:

1 hour 49 minutes segment transcoded to ProRes upres to 1920x1080... Compressor (4.1) 1 hour 27 minutes.


Make sure you have 'Optimize for network use' unchecked...

User uploaded file

don't use 'Allow job segmenting'/'Enable additional Compressor instances'.


User uploaded file

These settings can add half to double the time to the encoding. And aren't needed for ProRes encoding.


(Going to try something else to see if I can speed up the encoding... it's called chaining/linking in Compressor.)

Mar 11, 2014 11:20 PM in response to David M Brewer

Chaining took way too long.


User uploaded file


First encoding... transcode to ProRes.

Second encoding... take's the first encoding (automatically) and upresed it to ProRes 1920x1080.


There are times when chaining is faster. For example: You want to upres the video and use h.264 2 pass for the final export. First encoding... Upres the video using ProRes (with frame control). Second encoding... transcode to h.264


If you went to h.264 2 pass at the get-go. H.264 2 pass will have to read the frame control settings twice (and any other (edited) settings/filters), adding time to the encoding.


__________________________________


Nexted I tried 'Allow job segmenting/Enable additional Compressor instances'.

The encoding time for the 1 hour 49 minutes video only took 57 minutes. But, jointing 4 video instances and 1 audio back together took 48 minutes to do. 31 some odd minutes longer compaired to the video I encoded in my fist post.

Mar 12, 2014 8:58 AM in response to David M Brewer

Wow! I really appreciate you taking the time out to experiment with these settings. Thank you.


I already had 'Allow Job Segmenting' turned off, but when this batch finishes, I will uncheck 'Enable additional instances' - I guess since this computer is 4 cores/16GB, I only have the option for 1 Instance, but I will uncheck it anyhow and see how it goes.


Thanks again!

Mar 13, 2014 4:41 AM in response to David M Brewer

Ok, here's a down and dirty way to do this... If you have Motion try this...


Open a new project...


User uploaded file

Set the size (1920x1080), fps (25) and the duration...


Import the video into the project...


User uploaded file

Set the scale for the imported video...


User uploaded file

User uploaded file


Export...


User uploaded file

User uploaded file


A 2 hour video took to about 50 minutes to export.


Not the best way to do this, but it's faster than Compressor or MPEG-Streamclip. Try one video and see if the quality is ok for you. I'm sure you could do the same in FCP X (or 7).

Compressor 4.1 Slow Export - Unique Issue

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