Transcode h.264 1080 - need to go to Vimeo (25 - One hour Clips)

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Level 1

15 points

Transcode h.264 1080 - need to go to Vimeo (25 - One hour Clips)

I have 25 hours worth of meetings. I accidentally left Canon Camcorder on MP4 (h.264)1080, not 720p. So, now I need to transcode to something (DVCPRO or ProRes) that can easily be edited and exported. MANAGEMENT NIGHTMARE - I have MPEG Streamclip - Compressor 3 - FCP 7 on an 09 Mac Pro. and FCP X on an i7 MacBook Pro.

All footage is on one 7TB Firewire 800 connected RAID. I'm currently reading and writing back to the same device (could this be my bottle neck?)

Compressor simply says that each convertsion will take in (as of right now) 170 Hours.

I am pretty good with conversion but this is kicking my backside, Is the h.264 my problem. Is that what's taking forever to convert?

I don't have to do any thing to these meeting clips (1 Hr. 15 min Each) except lop off the Head and tail then upload to Vimeo.com. Again FAST is the key.

Thanx!

Posted on Jul 2, 2014 7:27 AM

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Answer 1

RatVega™

Level 4

2,005 points

Jul 2, 2014 8:30 AM in response to David White6

I don't use it, but FCP X is supposed to cut H.264 as is, so that is probably the way to go. You might want to install FCP X on your Mac Pro as well.

If you're going to work on the Mac Pro, you probably want to get one or two clean SATA drives internally to cut from, since a FW 800 connection isn't going to do you much good; FW800 is good for 60-70MB/sec in the real world. Most (clean) 7200 internal SATA drives will beat that.

Apple's estimation algorithm continues to confuse, I've seen 3 days turn into 45 minutes on some renders... LOL

On the other hand, H.264-to-ProRes is usually slow. You may be better off in DVCPro HD. I've found that Compressor likes fast target disks (the write speed tends to pace the transcode, so a faster target disk speeds things up.

good luck

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