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Level 1

2 points

Will Upgrading My Graphics Card Speed up Export Time?

Hello:

I am new to FCPX and I shot my first movie yeasterday and loved editing in FCPX. Here s my computer specs before I ask my question

Mac Pro 2009 Quad Core 2.93 GHZ

24GB Ram

Graphic Card - NVIIDA GT120 512mb

I use this computer for my recoridng studio and it works perfectly but now when working with video there are two things I noticed while working with my first project. I shot a 1920 X 1080 60P on my HD camcorder and the moive was 32 minutes. Here are the issues

1. Im FCPX the play head in the time line sometimes seems a little choppy and the background render is pretty slow at times as well.

2. When I went to export, the movie was going to me almost 10GB, so I purchased Compressor and in FCP went under FILE, SEND TO COMPRESSOR. I choose a 720P setting and started to process the batch. It took almost 8 hours to compress that footage which brought the file down to 1.5GB which was really great and the quality looks stunning, so I am happy aobut that.

In doing some reseach, I found that upgrading my stock graphics card may be the solution to some of the speed issues in FCPX. I nver gave that a tohught as I am new to the video editing world. I was looking at a

Sapphire HD 7950 3GB MAC Eddition

This seems like to would be a mjor upgrade to my graphic card. So my question is, by upgrading my graphic card woudl this help my issues I described aobuve? I got to image that it could not hurt for sure.

Thnaks for your time in advance.

Posted on Apr 14, 2014 2:31 AM

34 replies

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Apr 23, 2014 5:35 AM in response to vignola

Thanks for posting those comparative times, which should be helpful to anyone who is considering upgading their card. Not sure why the export should even be 3X real time, but it's certainly tolerable vs 16X.

Russ

Apr 23, 2014 6:03 AM in response to vignola

That's good news.

I just edited a 7 minute short that was shot on a Canon 7D in 1080p. It took about 25 minutes to export it out with the Apple Devices 720p preset on my 2008 Mac Pro with a Radeon 5770 and 24 gigs of RAM.

The SSD will greatly increase the responsiveness of the timeline as you edit. The thumbs on the clips and the audio waveforms will pop up very quickly. You'll be able to move around quickly without the color spinning wheel popping up. It will not, however, increase the export time. That relies on the GPU, mostly, and the CPU too. Also, managing the Events and Libraries will be much more responsive too.

I can't oversell this. 🙂 $500 for a 480 gig SSD PCI card is well worth it.

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Apr 23, 2014 6:22 AM in response to Scot Walker

Hey Scot. Just to say that I realize you meant to type "It will not, however, decrease the export time". 😉