Slow export

[Isaiah270141484u47]

I am currently editing a short social media ad for a client, the video is about 45 seconds long and is footage I shot on my Sony A7 3. The footage is 4K full frame 24 frames. I was editing this on my computer and every task would take forever so I finally stopped putting off buying a new computer and finally did it. Got the new computer with 64GB of ddr5 ram, I9 12900k CPU, 3060TI 8GB GPU with an internal 2TB SSD to edit on. I moved all my footage from my old computer onto the new one and starting editing again. This time the editing process wasn't bad but the export was still horrible. The 45 second clip has a color grade, some png logos, the dust and scratches fix effect and some key framed text. This video on media encoder is currently sitting at a 6 hour export time. I really cannot wait this long every time I need to send a draft to the client. Is there any fix for this or what could be the issue? I am currently under the impression that the dust and scratches effect is the most taxing but should that one effect make the export so slow?

[R Neil Haugen]

That does seem a bit long. Do you have only the one drive? Typically one sets up a drive for OS/programs, another for cache files, and another for editing ... projects & media. It's nice to have a fourth you export to, but SSDs can be fast enough it's not such a requirement anymore.

Neil

[Isaiah270141484u47]

Hey Neil, I have a 2TB HDD where the OS is installed and a 2TB SSD where I have the footage and project file and is the same place I'm exporting the video to. Both are also very empty and nowhere near full since this is a new computer this is my first video I'm editing on it.

Thanks for the response 

[Phillip Harvey]

What are your export settings?  

I do believe the Dust and Scratches is going to be a big impact (Most noise effects typically are). You can see for yourself how it goes without that effect. I agree with Neil that it's still surprising that it's taking that long, but maybe something else in the combination of effects and media you're working with are contributing. 

Effects order does matter, so if you're using a CPU-bound effect like Dust and Scratches after a GPU-accelerated effect, you'll nullify the speed boost from the GPU acceleration and push everything to the CPU.

Are you using any MOGRTs? Those can pretty quickly jack up render time as well.

Are the PNG's a very large resolution? I think that could also contribute.

[Isaiah270141484u47]

Hey Phillip my export setting are match source with render maximum depth and quality both checked on the video is also exporting in 4k full frame. As for the order of effects first I have the png of a logo pop up and then I have the dust and scratches effect on the rest of the video with about 5 plain text pop ups throughout. As well as a color grade on all clips. No warp stabilizer or any other effects. The pngs are also 4k resolution but they are just a few logos. And I'm not quite sure what MOGRTS are sorry lol but I don't believe I'm using anything 

Thansk for the response 

[R Neil Haugen]

Mogrt ... motion graphics. Anything created with text and or file images, using the Essential Graphics Panel (EGP) or ECP to place them and/or animate them.

Neil

[Phillip Harvey]

Max Depth and Quality are both going to also increase render time (Max Render sometimes quite significantly) on top of your slow rendering effects. I think I would keep Max Depth on because of some of the potential interactions between the color grade and effects, but unless you're scaling between your source sequence and the export I'd try turning off Max Render Quality and that may also help you.

I was also curious about the format you're encoding to and the other settings there. Like are you doing H264 VBR 2-pass, at what bitrate, etc.? For VFX-heavy sequences I would usually recommend going to an intermediate codec first, like Quicktime ProRes, and then you can bake off a compressed deliverable from that.

H264 and H265 are very complicated video codecs and they'll slow down everything about the editing process from simple playback, to the processing of effects, to the encoding times. So if you've got H264 in, processor intensive effects, and then back out to H264. It's really just the most hardware-intensive workflow possible, media-wise. Ideally your source media would also be an intermediate codec and not H264/5.

Like I said I would try turning off that Dust and Scratches effect and see what the difference is. Don't use Max Render Quality if you don't need it (scaling). Don't use VBR 2-pass if you are - and even better use an easier codec to encode to.