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TheWombatWarrior
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Like night and day, render times just got ridiculous out of the blue.

Jun 27, 2012 3:26 PM

Hello.

 

Last night I finished a 16 minute video (due to client tomorrow) of 5D footage transcoded to Pro Res.  I rendered using the Vimeo HD preset in Premiere, uploaded to Vimeo, and got approval of the final project, with the exception of a handful of edits.  This render took less than an hour. 

 

I make the changes requested (minimal stuff: shortening a scene here, lengthening one there), save, and attempt to render to the same Vimeo HD preset, and now all of a sudden Premiere insists it needs five hours to render a 16 minute pro-res video that took less than an hour to do last night.  Nothing has changed.  Restarted computer several times.  Tried rendering fil to different drives.  It's serious about the five hours thing, too.  I left it alone for an hour thinking it was bluffing, and that it'd finish as fast as last night.  Nope.  An hour in it still said it needed four more.  On top of all of this, the project's already rendered!  Green line throughout entire timeline.  Unacceptable.

 

Specs:

 

Early 2008 Mac Pro  (3.2 GHz 8-core)

 

Lion 10.7.4

 

Premiere Pro CS5

 

32gbs RAM

 

Programs and project file on 1 tb boot drive

 

Footage on 4 tb CalDigit eSata drive

 

Trying to export to additional 4 tb CalDigit eSata drive

 

Any help is greatly, greatly, greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks!

1184 Views   12 Replies   Latest reply: beckmanVFX, Jul 13, 2012 7:06 PM
 
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  • beckmanVFX
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    1. beckmanVFX,
    Jun 28, 2012 5:13 AM   in reply to TheWombatWarrior
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    If the timeline is rendered, make sure you select "use previews" in the media encoder window. This should dramatically speed thing up.

     

    -mike

     
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  • Harm Millaard
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    2. Harm Millaard,
    Jun 28, 2012 7:18 AM   in reply to beckmanVFX
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    In general never use previews when transcoding. Sure it will cost more time, but the end results will have better quality. There are but a few cases where this general rule does not hold and you can use previews, but that is only when all source material has the same format, the same framerate and the export format is identical and MRQ has been turned on for the sequence. Even the inclusion of stills, mixing i and p format, etc. will make previews unwanted for the final transcoding.

     
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  • beckmanVFX
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    3. beckmanVFX,
    Jun 28, 2012 7:59 AM   in reply to Harm Millaard
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    I would say that there are several factors to consider, and so I wouldn't want to suggest that one "should always do this" or "never do it that way"

    In the case of selecting the "use previews" button, I use it frequently with great success. Now, I typically set my sequences to Prores 422HQ, so the rendered timeline looks quite nice.

    I'd certainly try a test render, as the encode will not take very long. (just try a 30 second select from the timeline and evaluate the final quality.)

     
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  • TheWombatWarrior
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    4. TheWombatWarrior,
    Jun 28, 2012 7:45 PM   in reply to TheWombatWarrior
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    So it's gotten worse.  I gave it a day so I could try to do research, went back to it this afternoon, and now it says it needs over seven hours to do a sixteen minute video that's already rendered.  Turning on previews definitely makes it go faster, but I'm concerned about what Mr. Millaard said about doing that, since this is the final version to be delivered to the client.  I guess before we go any further I should establish: am I right in assuming, given the specs I provided in my original post, that over seven hours to export a 16-minute video is unacceptable?  There are thousands of people cutting longer videos than this in Premiere that they shot on 5D's, surely they all don't take this long?  So frustrated!

     

    Thanks again.

     
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  • lasvideo
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    5. lasvideo,
    Jun 28, 2012 8:11 PM   in reply to TheWombatWarrior
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    Give us more details about your timeline. What kind of effects / CC / Scaling / etc? What GPU do you have? Something sounds way wrong. Does your timeline match your clips? Whats is its Format / frame rate? What codec / format are you exporting to?

     
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  • TheWombatWarrior
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    6. TheWombatWarrior,
    Jul 13, 2012 9:13 AM   in reply to lasvideo
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    Sorry for tardiness!

     

    The only effects I've added is some work in Magic Bullet Looks to each clip of the sixteen minute video.  Some clips required more extensive color correction than others, but I don't feel like I did anything too crazy.  Other than that I've hardly tinkered with the footage at all, except for some slow motion at the end.  Plus, I've already rendered everything, it's just one long green bar at the top.  My GPU is the Quadro FX 5600, whhich is kind of old, but the upgrade options for my Mac Pro are rather limited right now.  I'm pretty worried now.  Thanks for any help you can offer!

     
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  • Jim Simon
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    7. Jim Simon,
    Jul 13, 2012 9:16 AM   in reply to TheWombatWarrior
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    effects I've added is some work in Magic Bullet Looks to each clip

     

    Pfft!  That'll do it.  Looks is notoriously slow to render, even more so at HD resolutions.  What you're seeing is pretty normal.  About the only things you can do to speed things back up is get a better GPU (Looks is rendered using OpenGL), or remove the Looks effects.

     
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  • TheWombatWarrior
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    8. TheWombatWarrior,
    Jul 13, 2012 10:52 AM   in reply to Jim Simon
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    You just made my day.  Possibly even my month.  Bummer that it doesn't sound like there's too much I can do currently, but I'm relieved beyond belief that the problem isn't really on my end.

     

    I just want to clarify a few things, though.  Is it normal for Looks to cause everything to run so slow even when my work area has the green bar?  And finally, at 32gbs, I've maxed out what my '08 Mac Pro can take for RAM, and I'm about to buy a SSD for the boot drive.  I'll be looking into some of the high end GPU's offered by MacVidCards, but other than that, is there nothing else I can do to make Looks go faster? 

     

    Thanks so much for solving this!

     
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  • Jim Simon
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    9. Jim Simon,
    Jul 13, 2012 3:55 PM   in reply to TheWombatWarrior
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    Exports with Looks will still go slow with the green bar, assuming you're not using the preview files for export (and generally, you shouldn't).

     

    Memory and SSD won't help much.  Only removing the effect or buying a better graphics card.  And even with the new card it'll be a hell of a lot slower than export without Looks.

     
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  • beckmanVFX
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    10. beckmanVFX,
    Jul 13, 2012 5:55 PM   in reply to Jim Simon
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    Have you tried a test to see if the same Looks setup will render faster in AE? I know this is certainly the case when using the Premiere render engine for dynamic-link comps, vs rendering direct out of AE.

     
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  • Jim Simon
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    11. Jim Simon,
    Jul 13, 2012 6:05 PM   in reply to beckmanVFX
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    My comps always come out of PP at the same speed or even just slightly faster than out of AE.

     
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  • beckmanVFX
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    12. beckmanVFX,
    Jul 13, 2012 7:06 PM   in reply to Jim Simon
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    I'll have to re-test that featuer on my end. I'd kind of given up on it in CS4 as my DL renders were consistently taking longer. (Although the feature I'd really like in this instance is to be able to protect/preserve/lock a designated timeline render so that it can be moved and/or edited in the timeline without breaking the initial render link. -certainly helpful for heavy AE comps.)

     
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