Extremely Long Transcoding Times In REDCine-X

[Christina Choe]

Hi all,

I'm working on a Macbook pro with 3.06ghtz and about 4g of ram and my render times are about 2 hours and 40 odd mins for a 3 min clip. Would it be worth it to get a red rocket card or just try using a faster comp?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Von Thomas]

Rocket card all the way, and the fastest MacPro along with Rocket card, wouldn't hurt either.

Von

 

[Nick Shaw]

my render times are about 2 hours and 40 odd mins for a 3 min clip

That sounds like render times for a full de-Bayer. Doing a full de-Bayer on a 3 minute clip makes it sound like you are transcoding all of your rushes like that (apologies if I'm making incorrect assumptions.) If you only have a MacBook Pro and no Rocket I would seriously look at an offline/online workflow. You can transcode much faster than that, even without a Rocket, at a quality which is more than adequate for editorial.

 

[Christina Choe]

I just don't understand how I was able to transcode a whole feature using redrushes rendering each days footage over night and now its going to take over 2 weeks to transcode 750gb. When did they get this whole REDrocket deal? and is it required to get a decent transfer time in REDcine X?

I'm just trying to figure out if its user error. like if there is a setting I'm missing or can change or something. Very frustrating to say the least...

 

[Nick Shaw]

It all points to the fact that you are probably not transcoding with the same settings in REDcine-X that you previously used in REDrushes.

Full quality transcodes have never been fast without a Rocket, so if you were transcoding everything in a reasonable time in REDrushes, you were probably not doing it at full quality (not a problem for editorial purposes.) When you create an export preset in REDcine-X, De-Bayer settings default to "full" unless you change them. I forget what the default in REDrushes was.

 

[Steve Marshall]

Set up a bunch of different export presents using combinations of HD, 2k, 4k and 1/2 and Full debayering to whatever codec you're working with (i.e. ProRes) and see what results you get.

As Nick said, you should consider an offline/online edit if your transcode times are extremely slow.