Premiere Pro CC taking 51 hours to export 1 hour video

[blakej92670721]

Hi everyone!

I've been digging and digging through the forum for an answer to this problem but nothing seems to work. I'm trying to export or render a video that is 1 hr and 17 mins long. It is shot with a Panasonic HC-V700 camcorder that is 1080p and 60 frames per second 15 megapixels. It records with AVCHD files which I was able to open in Premiere.The footage is all one take and the only effects that I have applied are Lumetri Color, Sharpen, and Motion to correct scale. Nevertheless, every time I try to export or render my video it estimates an ungodly amount of time... Currently it states 51 hours until completion. I replaced the video with an After Effects Composition as well in order to reduce noise, if that makes a difference.

My export settings are:

Format: H.264

Preset: Custom, Match Source, High Bitrate

VBR 1 pass

Target 9.00 Mbps Max 12.00 Mbps

AAC, 320 kbps, 48 kHz, Stereo

Render at Maximum Depth is checked

Estimated file size: 5156 MB

My computer stats are:

iMac

3.4 GHz Intel Core i5

Memory 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

What is wrong? This seems like an insane amount of time for exporting. Is there a setting that I need to change? A different format I need to use?

[R Neil Haugen]

A few things right off the bat.

First, Render at Maximum Depth is only of use if you're dealing with 10-bit media and a lot of color effects ... maybe. Otherwise, it adds time ... and often artifacts ... without any improvement of the export. That and "Maximum quality" are best left un-selected for the vast majority of exports. Maximum quality is only of use if you're resizing significant amounts of material and you're getting stair-stepping without it.

Next ... the AE comp for noise is going to have added a ton of time ... that's probably more than an hour if not 2 or 3 of that export right there. Video noise is typically handled right at the end, true ... but I'd think of testing a section working it in PrPro without noise until everything else is done, going to AE for the noise, then exporting from AE. Might not improve the time, but I'd test a section. From my experience, both Red Giant's noise reduction plugin and Neat Video's plugin are faster at denoising than the AE tool. Just ... fyi.

Now ... how many drives and of what type, and how connected to the motherboard, are involved here. Plus ... do you have room on the drive you're exporting out to, for at least 4 times the finals size of the file? If you don't, you are probably taking a huge processing hit there.

For a job this size, you'd want a fast drive with a preferably internal connection but NOT the one that the programs/OS are loaded on. A fast m.2 or say the Samsung EVO's used only for the export might help. If you need an external, using the Samsung T3 external SSD via a USB3 port might work.

Neil

[excited_Genie16B8]

Render at Maximum Depth is only of use if you're dealing with 10-bit media and a lot of color effects ... maybe

I don't agree with that.  This setting can improve even 8 bit media going to an 8 bit export when 32 bit effects are used (as Lumetri is).  To wit:

" A DV file with a blur and a color corrector exported to DV with the max bit depth flag. We will import the 8-bit DV file, apply the blur to get an 32-bit frame, apply the color corrector to the 32-bit frame to get another 32-bit frame, then write DV at 8-bit. The color corrector working on the 32-bit blurred frame will be higher quality"

The Video Road – Understanding Color Processing: 8-bit, 10-bit, 32-bit, and more

I do recommend it's use pretty much always.  It should not have any noticeable impact on export times.

[Warren Heaton]

Heya, Blake:

I know that this isn't what you want to hear, but that doesn't sound all that long.

-Warren

[Braden24806464a8qz]

51 hours is not very long? That means a normal export time for a 3 hour movie or video would be around 6 days lol

[elootoo]

I had the same problem with ballet performance videos over an hour length in Premiere Pro.  Then I figured out what was going on.  With Neat Video set with a temporal radius of 5, the system has to process 11 frames for each noise reduced frame.  This means that all effects (other than Neat Video) are calculated 11 times per noise reduced frame.  This is apparently discarded,and calculated anew for the next frame.  In other words, there is huge amount of calculation going into each noise reduced frame, far more than one might expect.

My solution to this is to apply only Neat Video to a sequence, use export media (queued so you see what the render status is) using one of the GoPro codecs, and then import the rendered video back into Premiere and use it instead of the original.  You can then apply other effects such as Lumetri.  Now when you export this for your final output, you are applying those effects to each frame only once.

As an example, exporting a 90 minute video with Neat Video (temporal radius 5) plus Lumetri was taking about 57 hours.  But just Neat Video reduced this to about 12 hours. Of course, there is also the final render time to add. Obviously, times will depend on the clip and your computer characteristics.

Note that you cannot do this using Render and Replace, since that function does not apply most effects.

[R Neil Haugen]

Excellent call. The way that effects can be 'stacked' can cause all sorts of issues, and bloating the time is one of them. I know a number of editors who look at any long project where video noise reduction is needed for most/all of the media, and assume they're going to first do a pass with noise-reduction exported to high-Q intermediate codec, run that overnight ... then import that into PrPro to begin the main project.

Neil

[francis-crossman]

I replaced the video with an After Effects Composition as well in order to reduce noise, if that makes a difference.

Yes, this makes a HUGE difference - probably 50 hours worth of difference.  Noise reduction is a  VERY computationally intensive process and I'm actually not surprised at all that it is taking this long. 

[Warren Heaton]

Did anyone mention transcoding from AVCHD to a Smart Rendering CODEC in this thread yet?

Smart rendering in Premiere Pro

Since Blake, the original poster, is on an iMac and currently using AVCHD, I'd go with AppleProRes (LT).