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jwoll81
jwoll81
Known Participant
December 28, 2016
Answered

Reducing Export Time with 4K Footage

  • December 28, 2016
  • 3 replies
  • 1182 views

Mac Sierra 10.12.2

2.5 GHz Intel Core i7

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB

Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

16gb

I understand the proxy creation feature built into Premiere, but that feature doesn't allow you export files that are from those files. If I have a 15 minute project with two camera angles both at 4K 30gb file sizes a piece, the export time even for an H.264 - CBR 10 - is going to take 3 hours with this machine.

What I've tried to do is put the media offline in the timeline - relink it with .mp4 files that are 2gb in size - but Premiere is still reading the master files.

There is probably a better work around for this, but I would appreciate any insight on how to get rough cuts out at a faster pace. They don't have to be high resolution because there are 18 separate videos and 3 hours a piece for initial previews is not going to cut it.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer R Neil Haugen

That's not a particularly hot laptop there, and I would imagine everything is on one internal drive and/or internal and maybe one external. Unless that's got an NVMe or m.2 drive in it (doubtful), you've probably got quite a bottleneck even feeding data to the CPU to work on.

The internal proxy feature that was added was designed to get best operation in playback, not exporting. It doesn't allow exporting from the proxy files it creates. So that's not an option.

Unless you can get the media & project file off that machine and use another for export, it's going to take a while. You might try a few other codecs, unless you MUST have an H.264. Perhaps a ProRes or Cineform or DNxHD/R export (using less compression, less work on the CPU) might go faster, you'd have to test.

Neil

3 replies

E
excited_Genie16B8
Legend
December 29, 2016

There are two ways to speed up exports.

1. Get a faster CPU.

2. Get a better GPU.

R Neil Haugen
R Neil HaugenCorrect answer
Legend
December 29, 2016

That's not a particularly hot laptop there, and I would imagine everything is on one internal drive and/or internal and maybe one external. Unless that's got an NVMe or m.2 drive in it (doubtful), you've probably got quite a bottleneck even feeding data to the CPU to work on.

The internal proxy feature that was added was designed to get best operation in playback, not exporting. It doesn't allow exporting from the proxy files it creates. So that's not an option.

Unless you can get the media & project file off that machine and use another for export, it's going to take a while. You might try a few other codecs, unless you MUST have an H.264. Perhaps a ProRes or Cineform or DNxHD/R export (using less compression, less work on the CPU) might go faster, you'd have to test.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
jwoll81
jwoll81Author
Known Participant
December 29, 2016

Thank you Neil and Jim for the insight. Based off what I have read the difference between this maxed out laptop versus the new MacBook pros is not worth switching. It's a shame, I don't want to switch to PC, but performance seems to be moving faster in that direction. Take care

R Neil Haugen
R Neil Haugen
Legend
December 29, 2016

The Colorist multiverse has been nearly totally Mac-centric. Most of the colorists I know have never "sullied their fingers" on a PC-connected keyboard ... ever. Until ... recently.

They're so freakin' hardware-intensive in operation. Go watch a decent colorist show & explain the setup in his suite, wow ... multiple massive RAIDs  on the computer, massive network connection requiring multiple cables between the computer & the network server system, 3-5 monitors including external scopes & say a Flanders Scientific calibrated "program" monitor let alone the larger viewing system for the project managers to watch from the couch ... the colorist control surface and four-five other external control tool things ... 2-5 external "boxes" from BlackMagic, AJA, or Kona feeding various monitors & such ... totally amazing setups.

However ... the basic Big Mac is running around a five-year old motherboard that's had a few tweaks since then. It's ... tech-wise, ancient. They've not had a single thing to announce for the Big Macs for what, three full cycles now? The CEO has said he doesn't seriously understand why anyone buys a desktop computer these days. Vendors in the aisle-talks at NAB lament how little lead-time or concern Apple has for them any more as far as testing new OS releases on all their gear. Little communication, no sympathy ... not at all like "the old days" when Apple courted them carefully.

One of the major teaching colorists (Robbie Carman) has come out saying that the writing is a little past being on the wall. He's always been a total Mac geek-boy, loved the Mac "ethos" ... but built a home setup on a mixed PC/Linux box, and found that especially after putting in a 1080 GPU the thing was hot ... for a lot less than his studio suite rig.

So he's now counseling colorists on how to cross-over to the PC side, and telling them that, shockingly! ... there's even calendar apps in the PC side that are about as cool and useful as the Mac ones. Wow ... think of that! PC's even can have calendar apps!

He's watched me have trouble keeping from howling with laughter out load at a couple presentations, just shook his head at me.

Anyway, there's a few other colorists out there that have come out and stated their new box is a PC or mixed dual-boot PC/Linux machine ... just because they can build capability they can't with a Mac now.

MacBooks ... yea, there's some cool connectivity things there that have been rolled out ... but they're still a laptop.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
jwoll81
jwoll81Author
Known Participant
December 28, 2016

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