I posted this in the forum but I thought I'd post it here too just to see if anyone knows what's going on...
"Hey everyone,
I just finished an hour show in FCP 5.1.2 in 1080i DVCPRO HD format. There are a ton of comps and layered graphics in the animation codec in the project so naturally it's taking a long time to render all these out.
The thing that I don't understand - and maybe some of you are familiar with what FCP is doing under the hood here in this situation - is that when the timeline is entirely rendered out from beginning to end and I go to "Edit to Tape" to master onto tape, FCP wants to render video and from the calculation it's giving me... 7-8 hours, I have to imagine it's rendering the video all over again. Does anyone know why Final Cut wants to render the video all over again if everything is currently rendered and if I just wanted to crash record it would play from beginning to end with no hiccups? Our deadlines are tight and this could be a disasterous problem if I don't figure it out soon.
The weird thing about this problem is that in another edit bay, an editor working on a different episode with the same exact situation (DVCPRO HD project, lots of animation graphics already pre rednered in final cut) was not having the same problem... it edited to tape almost instantly. My work around, which seems silly, was to render out an hour movie from the timeline using Export to Quicktime, and then to bring it in to a new project and Edit to Tape that way. It took about an hour or so to render and edited to tape instantly - a far cry from FCP originally wanting to render all day.
Does anyone have any insight on what's going on and why on a different computer with near identical specs is not having the same problem I'm having? I'd appreciate it much. Thanks!
-P. Escandon Editor / Motion Graphics Artist Outdoor Channel"
Posted by: Paul Escandon on May 17, 2007 at 8:03:23 am
you might just override it by changing the Record To Tape setting to "Use Playback Settings"
quoting from the manual (instead of typing it fro myself!)...
Selecting Playback Settings
When you want to output your program to video, you can choose whether to render the effects that won’t output at full quality in real time, or output them at the reduced quality you’ve selected in order to avoid rendering.
Playback settings can be adjusted in the Playback Control tab of System Settings, or in the RT pop-up menu in the Timeline. For output to tape, you can choose from the following options in the Record pop-up menu:
• Full Quality: When this is selected, video is always output to tape at the highest quality. Areas of your sequence that won’t play back at full resolution in real time will need to be rendered prior to output.
• Use Playback Settings: Final Cut Pro uses the selected real-time effects playback settings when outputting your sequence to tape. If, as a result, your sequence will output at less than full quality, you are warned of this prior to output. Outputting to tape at low quality is useful for quickly creating sample tapes of your program when you don’t have the time to render all necessary effects first.
Note: Final Cut Pro always warns you before outputting video to tape at reduced quality when you use the Edit to Tape command.
If what you're experiencing is what I'VE experienced, this is simply an annoying bug in FCP.
I'll be willing to be that you have a lot of clips in your sequences that have their visibility turned off, yet still have filters or any effect that would otherwise need to be rendered if it was visibile.
Even though everything looks rendered before you ETT, it seems that the ETT/PTV process ignores the fact that these clips have Clip Visibility turned off, and goes ahead and unhelpfully renders them anyways.
Yes, it's very annoying. And the only workaround is to not have those kinds of clips in the sequence when you're ready to master your program.
Editor and motion graphics designer for Outdoor Channel in California. I also operate Oremus Productions where I specialize in corporate video, weddings, and television productions. I'm an Apple guy, and my tools of choice are Final Cut Pro, Adobe Photoshop/After Effects, Apple Motion and Shake, and anything else I can get my hands on.
