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How can a 90-minute movie take 500 HOURS to compress?

Hi - I am trying to make a Blu-Ray of a feature film I've cut with a 5.1 surround mix. I still use FCP7 and Compressor 3.5.3. I've successfully created a 5.1 ac3 track but am now trying to create an MPEG-2 file to match. I've been following the workflow described by Danny Daneau at this blog -- http://www.theatticdoormovie.com/blog/2009/mac-bluray/ -- and it successfully worked on another project. But this time the QT movie I've brought into Compressor (ProRes 422 HQ, 1920x1080) is taking an extraordinarily long time to convert. One pass I tried brought up the remaining time to 1200 hours! I'm pretty sure the settings I'm using in the screen shot below match the ones in the blog post, and as I say, I successfully used this method two weeks ago. (I have a 2009 MBP running Snow Leopard, and Activity Monitor shows that the 8GB of RAM are not being unusually taxed.) Any thoughts at ALL? Many thanks.

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Posted on Apr 10, 2014 5:22 AM

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6 replies

Apr 10, 2014 6:20 AM in response to Memo2Self

The projected time is just an estimate and it could take 1000 hrs. (just kidding, it's usually less than the estimate)


Unfortunately Compressor can only address one core and I think something like 2 gigs of Ram UNLESS you enable Qmaster to distribute the processing among the cores. Here's instructions on settings this up.


http://www.digitalrebellion.com/blog/posts/using_compressor_with_multiple_cores. html



You might also try doing a short test by setting an in and out in the preview window in compressor.

Apr 10, 2014 7:21 AM in response to Michael Grenadier

Thanks, Michael - I will try that. I can say that the last time I attempted this, I ran it overnight, and ten hours later it still said nearly 500 hours to go (you can see that in the times on the screenshot). This wouldn't baffle me so much if I hadn't successfully created a surround BD using this same workflow before (and that movie was 15 minutes LONGER). It did take a long time, of course, but this extraordinary projection of completion is new on this one. Thanks for responding so quickly.

Apr 10, 2014 7:29 PM in response to Meg The Dog

Yes, Meg - it's a 181 GB self-contained QuickTime movie, ProRes 422 HQ. I exported it from FCP7 without audio, as I already had successfully exported a six-track ac3 file of the 5.1 surround mix. (FCP is completely out of the picture at this time.) Using the workflow that I followed above, I would be bringing the MPEG-2 compression of the movie along with the ac3 file into MPEG Streamclip, turning it into a Video TS file that Toast 11 will be able to read and turn into a 5.1 Blu-Ray. As I mentioned, this absolutely worked before on another feature I edited, with the same ProRes file. The difference this time is that Compressor is taking a ridiculously long time to create that m2v file, and the estimated time is increasing rather than reducing. Thanks for responding!

How can a 90-minute movie take 500 HOURS to compress?

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