FCPro Render times - much longer with different Sequence?

Has anyone else noticed this? For many years I have worked with just a few Sequences in FCPro, and the render times seem to be similar in them all - at least that I've noticed. When I slow motion scenes, or render simple graphics - I kind of have a feel for how long I have to wait for various things. Both with my MacBook Pro (2010) and Mac Tower (2 years old). I've always found render times, not excessive. Usually I've worked with DVCProHD.
BUT NOW . . . I'm noticing I'm waiting 2 to 3 times longer for any render. By NOW, I mean since I bought the XF300 and am natively importing 50mbs 12x720 footage into FCPro. (I overcrank a lot, so I tend to stay with 720.) It can now be done after the firmware upgrade a few months back. I love how much faster "native" import is, and I love it using 50mbs as it should, not 70mbs, which it did using ProRez import.
BUT I'm noticing much longer times to render in the XDCAM 422 720p30. Render screen says "conforming edited MPEG-2." Of course, this takes away some of the excitement, and is downright annoying! Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me? Can render times change significantly, depending simply on the timeline Sequence setting? If they do, I'll just live with it - but I need reassuring that it's normal to take much 2 or 3 times the time - or I'm kinda hoping I'm doing something wrong!
Thanks,
Larry

OK Shane, I've done a bit of work here - this might surprise you? Maybe you'll learn something, we'll find out. But you've certainly been helpful to me!
OK, I took a 5 minute Sequence, shot with the Canon XF300, imported natively into FCPro. The test here is to now render in XDCAN vs. render in Prorez. I LOVE Logging & Transferring in NATIVE as the files are 30% smaller (50mbs vs. 70mbs - and that goes for the ProRez exports as Self Contained movies, too - 70 vs. 50mbs.)
So now it gets interesting . . . to render the 5 minute movie using XDCAM HD rendering (same codec) as importing footage = 5 minutes to render the timeline. Not much rendering was needed. Coincidentally, 5:00 even to render about a 5 minute movie. The total render "space" it used was 932meg.
Now . . . I did the same render (after I deleted all renders) but this time I had it render in ProRez instead. It took 3:30. Soooo, it saved 1:30 in the rendering process. GOOD! So we "learned" FCPro renders faster in ProRez as compared with XDCAM, which is exactly what you said! Oh, it ony used 832 meg for the ProRez renders, which means not only is ProRez faster to render, but it uses about 10% less space to actually "do"it.
But here's the GLITCH I can't explain. I then exported to self contained movie (which we normally do in our workflow, master to a self contained movie to save). In the XDCAM render sequence, it takes 1:35 to export to self contained movie, about normal for a 5 minute movie. But the ProRez render took almost 6 minutes to export!!
WHY would it take over 3 times longer to export the ProRez sequence compared to the XDCAM sequence? This is what didn't make sense to me. (I'm wondering maybe in the export process, FCPro doesn't "see" the (ProRez) renders and has to rerender it just to export it? And that's why the export time is so much longer with ProRez? What do you think?
So to sum up, NATIVE import is faster and smaller files. Then ProRez render is faster and smaller files. So I'll do that! BUT then it takes longer to export the "ProRez" rendered Sequence You just can't win!!! If you have a 60 minute timeline, it's seriously longer!
Do your findings parallel mine? Anyway, thanks for your time, and if you can't tinker with this, I certainly understand. I'm just trying to setup a workflow here. I've tested this 3 times, my results are consistent.
Thanks again,
Larry

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Good to know, thanks for the update. 10.6.x does manage memory differently, but our testing for performance has shown a slight improvement in the newer OS. So I am guessing that the OS update is not the issue. I just ran another test on a Mac with your configuration and saw a 4% improvement on 10.6.4 over 10.5.8.
It's uncertain what state the system memory was in when you started your tests. That's why I asked for a restart of the computer. The times reported seemed like there was a possibility that the OS was swapping. XDCAM footage places a high demand on system resources. But it's hard to say without being there.
What I was seeing with the initial post was that the two extremes of allocation per background cpu were tried, but not the middle ground. To better see this, launch the Activity Monitor utility or look at the last line of the MP preference. With the 4GB reserved and the 3GB/ bkgnd cpu setting you weren't getting any extra processes spawned for multiprocessing. You can see this in the preferences multiprocessing section as "Actual CPUs that will be used = 0". Then, by setting the pref to .75GB/bkgnd the app launched 8 bkgnd processes, but for the task at hand, I am guessing that they were starved for memory and sometimes failed to render. This was faster than the first test, but still slow. By setting the pref to 1.5GB/bkgnd cpu you were now getting 4 new processes spawned for multiprocessing. The background processes had enough memory to succeed so that made it render faster still.
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We are upgrading our teststations from TestStand 4.2 to TestStand 2013. With TestStand 4.2 we have copied and modified the Sequential-Modell to a Multi-Dut-Modell (10 UUT's). This worked fine. To start the Modell-File we used a Start-Sequence-File. We have to linearize 10 Rf-Sytnheseizers (each UUT has a different Sequence-File, with different Limits). With TestStand 2013 it is not anymore possible to Run a Modell-File .
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Regards Paul
Solved!
Go to Solution.
Attachments:
E4_StartMultiDut_02.seq ‏4 KB
E4_MultiDutModel_02.seq ‏179 KB

Paul,
First, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this statement: "With TestStand 2013 it is not anymore possible to run a model file". Could you explain a bit more about what you mean? I can't think of any changes we would have made in TestStand 2013 that would affect the types of sequence files you could call or their interaction with a process model.
Second, it seems to me that the best approach might be to create a separate sequence file for each type of UUT you want to test, and call sequences from these files from one master sequence file. So for example, you might have 3 files:
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2. Sequence file for UUT type A which contains all of the tests for that type of UUT
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Do you think this type of approach would work for your system? I'm not sure how you were architecting it before, but if there are any other factors that might have an impact on this type of solution, go ahead and post that and we think of some alternative approaches.
Hope it helps!
Daniel E.
TestStand Product Support Engineer
National Instruments

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Raj Nagar wrote:
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