What is the recipe for fast export? (for intermediate evaluation by customers, etc)

[emil tanem]

Is there a way to really take advantage of the "use preview files" or other settings that can speed things up drastically?

Rendereing times can be a really big problem, especially if color grading etc is in place, but the customer still has one more intermediate evaluation left.
As long as it's possible to get these things up on youtube OR vimeo, it'll still do the work.

 

[Brad Allen]

Hi Emil,

Can you give us details on the sort of format you are exporting to, what resolution your going out at and how you have your sequence setup (resolution and if you have any scaled footage, how you have scaled it) as these can all affect export times pretty drastically.

 

[emil tanem]

This was more of a general question, but the average workflow would be

shoot in 4K or 4KHD
edit in Premiere in a 2K sequence (I realize now that perhaps editing in a 1920x1080 sequence would be smarter unless you're going to screen it in cinemas..)
- the footage will be scaled down using adobe premieres motion settings. Nothing fancy.
Then comes the export

 

[Stefan Scherperel]

For exporting from Premiere, if you want to have faster exports don't use the motion settings in scaling footage. This takes much longer than if you click (scale to frame size) on the clip itself. If you have clips that need to be zoomed in, choose those clips only for motion settings.
Upon export uncheck Maximum render quality.
I have done many tests with premiere and visually the quality difference between maximum render quality and un checking it is negligible. when rendering Red footage. Neither looks better, just a little different.
Using maxium render quality make premiere debayer the footage at 4K and then scale to footage with a high quality scaler to 1080P, this takes a lot of time (same thing happens if you use the motion settings on clips. By scaling to frame size and not checking Maximum render quality you are debayering directly at 1080P and it makes things much faster.
Exporting at 1080P with these settings should chug along fairly quickly. Give that a test and see if it works for you in speeding up your rendering.

 

[Maz Mawlawi]

what Stephan said exactly! make sure the "render at maximum quality" is not checked. That will save you a tremendous amount of time! The "scale to frame size" also speeds things up a lot (as opposed to using the scaling option in the motion settings)

 

[Michael Patterson]

What I've been doing for exports for client/legal review is this. I make a master edit sequence in 4k or whatever the footage was actually shot in. This is where I do all of my edits. When I have to export for review, I make a new sequence in 720p (usually I'm making a low resolution wmv for upload to FTP and review). In that sequence I drag in the master sequence and select scale to frame size for the sequence that was placed in the 720p timeline. I don't check render at max quality and let it go. It shoots out pretty quick. Sometimes if my computer isn't being lame that day, I can get close to real time exports. When it comes time to make a final version, I go back to the 4k sequence and render that out to 1080p with max render checked. This then becomes my master final file in which I make all other versions from - iPad, wmv, h264 or whatever. I usually do this in compressor or other programs instead of going out of premiere off of the 4k sequence. It seems to be the fastest way I could figure out. I'm sure there are other/better ways but this has been working out pretty well for me.

 

[Kyle Wright]

For exporting from Premiere, if you want to have faster exports don't use the motion settings in scaling footage. This takes much longer than if you click (scale to frame size) on the clip itself. If you have clips that need to be zoomed in, choose those clips only for motion settings.
Upon export uncheck Maximum render quality.
I have done many tests with premiere and visually the quality difference between maximum render quality and un checking it is negligible. when rendering Red footage. Neither looks better, just a little different.
Using maxium render quality make premiere debayer the footage at 4K and then scale to footage with a high quality scaler to 1080P, this takes a lot of time (same thing happens if you use the motion settings on clips. By scaling to frame size and not checking Maximum render quality you are debayering directly at 1080P and it makes things much faster.
Exporting at 1080P with these settings should chug along fairly quickly. Give that a test and see if it works for you in speeding up your rendering.

Thanks for the tip! My exports are much faster now!