30+ Hours to Export a 6-minute video in Premiere Pro?

Report · Dec 04, 2019

I'm at my wit's end and can't figure out how to fix this. I have a video I've created in the latest version of Premiere Pro (as in, I downloaded it 4 days ago). I created my first video using a motion graphics opener I purchased off Envato that lasts 33 seconds, the rest is a combination of clips from people's smartphones and some jpg images, all of it set to 1920x1080. I pre-rendered everything (which literally took around 6 hours), and am now trying to export it for YouTube using H.264 and 10Mbps target rate at 29.97 fps, which is the rate of the source clips.

I realize I do not have a robust system, MacBookPro 2015, 8Gb, Retina, Intel Iris Graphic 6100 1536MB, running High Sierra 10.13.2. But is there anything I can do to speed this up? I have spent all day trying to figure out how to make it render faster. I have cleared the media cache in Premiere, I have set the memory to the max I can dedicate to the program. What else can I do? The estimate for render keeps climbing and is now at 33+ hours with 0% rendered after 20 minutes. This thing was due hours ago and I'm desperate.

UPDATE: Tried exporting via Quicktime Apple ProRes 422. Says it will take 22+ hours, faster, but not that helpful. I'm worried about burning out my Mac.

Thank you.

Report · Dec 04, 2019

If you do have a fully rendered timeline, with a green bar all the way along the top, then:

Make sure Use Maximum Render Quality is unchecked and Use Previews is checked and export:

MtD

Report · Dec 04, 2019

Okay. I already had Max Render unchecked, but let me try checking Use Previews. Thanks. Crossing fingers.

Report · Dec 04, 2019

Nope. Initially excited to see an estimate of only 5 hours 36 minutes. But it's now 23 hours and climbing. Dang.

Report · Dec 04, 2019

Are you using something like Neat noise reduction?

MtD

Report · Dec 04, 2019

Post a screen shot of your export settings showing the summary, like this example below:

MtD

Report · Dec 04, 2019

Report · Dec 04, 2019

As a test, I exported 33 seconds of the opening sequence with the motion graphics. That took a little over 3.5 hours to export, even after pre-rendering. I really thought that was what was bogging things down, this huge .mogrt, that the rest of it would zoom through, but apparently not. I have some lower thirds on top of a few clips and crossfades, but that's it for effects. I didn't bring in any .psd files or apply any layers.

Report · Dec 04, 2019

And, I just moved the whole project onto an external hard drive. It's not cutting down on the render time, but I'm hoping the process may go easier on my laptop. I guess I have no choice but to spend 30 or more hours rendering this. I've just been told that I'm an idiot for producing a 6-minute video of authors talking, and should have divided it into three two minutes segments, but it's a little late now.

Report · Dec 05, 2019

How full is the destination drive? Something is dreadfully wrong here!

Can you export to an external drive, like a USB 3.0 model perhaps? Is ALL your media/project/export on same hard drive?

Report · Dec 05, 2019

Can you post a link to the opener in Envato?

That opener may have some very intense effects causing the long expor times.

Report · Dec 05, 2019

I'm with Meg. Yea, that's a rather low-powered system, and 8GB of RAM means Premiere is barely able to operate.

That said ... this looks like something is not right. Two to three hours I could see ... over twenty ... not. My one quibble is I'd use the "Adaptive bit rate" options and that might make a few minutes difference with no difference in image quality. But shouldn't make THAT much difference.

Now ... the bits from smartphones ... perhaps if that was transcoded to say Cineform or ProResLT prior to working, might help some. You might test by transcoding a few clips, create a new sequence with some of your graphics, and export say 30 seconds sequence of that. Check comparative times.

Neil

Report · Dec 05, 2019

Bad idea using Preview Files when exporting to H.264. It is using a lesser codec.

Report · Dec 05, 2019

Unless speed is the issue. If the OP has already spent 6 hours rendering the timeline, using those rendered preview files will expedite the export as those effects won't have to be re-rendered.

MtD

Report · Dec 05, 2019

There is something not right: those are redicolous render times.

Report · Dec 05, 2019

I agree.

MtD

Report · Dec 05, 2019

I'm with Neil on the phone footage and forget to post that! Many if not most newer phones now record using Variable Frame Rate, and that can wreak havoc on the editing. If the source clips are not a constant frame rate of say 29.97, then they need to be converted to such before editing. The free Handbrake software works well.

Report · Dec 05, 2019

Thank you, everyone, for your input. Okay, I'm going to try and answer some of your questions. Destination drive still has 300Gb of open space, so I don't think that's an issue. The finished file is estimated to be half a gig. I can try exporting it to a 1TB Seagate drive I have, though I'm not sure that would help? That's the drive where I transferred everything while trying to render it from an external (my Mac was still revving up the fans so much that I was worried what 30 hours of that would do, and hit cancel).

Here's the link to the opener: https://videohive.net/item/winter-titles-premiere-pro/25045449.

I was able to get most of the opener to successfully render after 3.5 hours-ish, but I also tried rendering an equivalent segment of the video from the middle and render time was still as long.

The bits from the smartphones...people threw all sorts of things at me. I did my best to weld them together into something cohesive. You've lost me, though, with part about transcoding. I'm sorry, I'm a Photoshop geek. The closest I've gotten to videos is watching them, so I'm a newbie. Everything looks really clean in the timeline, though...?

I checked to make sure all clips were 29.97 before trying to render. At least that's what they say when I bring them up in the program.

Report · Dec 05, 2019

Right-click each phone clip (or Mac-equivalent) in Project Bin and select Properties, and that should show the frame rate. If is it anything odd like 30.01 or 26.8 or whatever and not 29.97, then probably variable frame rate and probably causing trouble.

In the Handbrake converter, you IMPORT the phone clip, ADD TO QUEUE, and set up for H.264 with CONSTANT frame rate of 29.97 and then start the export which create a copy of original file, but with constant frame rate, ready to edit in Premiere.

Report · Dec 05, 2019

@safeharbor. Okay. I'll try that. Right now I'm attempting to upload the whole project folder to my Google Drive, 1.67Gb and don't want to interrupt it by doing anything intensive online. Google says about 5 hours to upload at my blazing fast Centurylink upload speed of 0.69 Mbps. Yup, definitely tech-challenged here, lol. Hopefully, the estimate will go down after it's chewed through some of the bigger files, but if not, it will be time for a Starbucks run to upload it there. Then, I'll go do handbrake.

UPDATE: omg, you're right. The frame rates on some of these are off, 29.98, or 30.00, or 30.xx, 28.xx, etc.

UPDATE #2: Just ran every clip through Handbrake, removed the old clips and replaced them with the new in the timeline. Estimated time 29 hours 50 minutes for export. 😞 Darn, I was really hoping that would do it.

Report · Jul 13, 2020

Hi,

I am sure your issue is resolved by now but I ran into this issue and was struggling to fix over the past 2 days. Finally, got it to work in the following manner. To start off, I used a Nikon D750 camera to shoot at 60fps. The file format is the default MOV file.

1. I used Adobe Premiere Pro CC version to edit

2. The length of the final processed video was 3:25 min

3. Once all the changes are done, selected all clips from timeline and clicked on "Render In and Out" from Sequence file menu. This took 1 hour to render the complete file

4. Now, click on Export --> Media --> Format as H.264 and Preset as Match Source - High Bit rate. Rest of the details are default (did not change anything). This took like 25 mins to complete

Overall, it took 1.5 hours to render and export an MP4 file. As per me, it is still large for a 3.5 min video but I atleast got a solution that works! I still hope if Adobe can give a working solution for this issue.

Report · Dec 22, 2020

Maybe you figured this out already, but in my case my 1 minute video was saying that it was going to take 30 minutes to render.... not acceptable. For me, the problem was that I had basically "Ping-ponged" the current 1-minute video project off of at least on other project file that was ENORMOUS. The giant project contained almost 400gb of footage that I had just imported from multiple locations on my main 8tb drive and would eventually consolidate down to a final "project mixdown folder" that ended up being only about 20gb. For the one minute project, since I had used the gigantic project as the asset base for the small video, it was having problems rendering the 1 minute video in less then 30 minutes... I don't know why this is the case if it's only rendering what's on the timeline, but I basically had to go through and delete all the access imported footage, audio, assets, mographs or anything I wasn't using in the 1 minute project. Afterward, the gigantic project's size was decreased significantly and the 1 minute video only took about 1 minute and 30 seconds to render out. Again, I don't know why this was an issue especially since I have had huge projects like this before and not had any problems, but this solved the problem for me. Hope this helps someone.