Re-rendering in FCE HD

It appears, that everytime I open a project in FCE HD, I have to re-render the file. Can aynone explain why?
all files are on an external HD
macbook

I've had this problem sometimes. I've heard some people say it's to do with capture files being on a separate disk than FCE, or some of the scratch files being outside the FCE documents folder. For me the problem seems to have stopped now that I have all the scratch disk files on the same drive as the captured video files - all of which should be in the final cut express documents folder. These files sit on a RAID array within the Computer, but I don't think being on an external HD would be a problem.
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Message was edited by: alicanlondon
Message was edited by: alicanlondon

Similar Messages

Am having intermittent difficulty rendering in FCE. Using the Sequence menu sometimes delivers results and Command R fails every time. Most frustrating. Any thoughts from anyone? Thanks.

Am having intermittent difficulty rendering in FCE. Using the Sequence menu sometimes delivers results and Command R fails every time. Most frustrating. Any thoughts from anyone? Thanks.

Michael,
There is a forum for Final Cut Express I'd recommend re-posting there.
Roger

Why does some video need to be rendered in FCE 4 before I can work on it?

I've been trying to get a handle on FCE 4 because it's very different than iMovie '08. I have a bunch of content in iMovie that I'd like to mess with in FCE 4, so I exported from iMovie as FCE XML and imported in FCE. There is some video that I re-encoded to Quicktime from ASF and it seems to need to be rendered before it will show up in the Canvas in FCE 4. FCE shows this content as DV/DVCPRO - NTSC under "Compressor" in the browser. Other stuff that was taken off my Sony HDR-SR7 is available in FCE 4 without any problems. This shows up as Apple Intermediate Coded in the browser.
What's the deal with rendering anyway? Why does FCE need to "render" video to add things like effects when iMovie can add effects, etc at will with no "rendering" required?

FCE can do certain effects on the fly without rendering. Some more elaborate transitions, like 3D wipes, require too much processor time to do them in real time. My understanding is that Macs with greater on-board processing power do more of these effects in real time, while slower machines must render.
iMovie can do these effects on the fly because it's working with far less information. Think of iMovie works in the DV format while FCE works in the DV/DVCPRO-NTSC format. It's too subtle a name difference but the reality is quite different. It's like editing still pictures in compressed, lossy JPEG format vs. uncompressed TIFF format. Think about how long it takes your computer to open a photo of say, 8x10" 300 dpi in TIFF vs. that same file in JPEG. Well, that's what FCE has to do. It's working in the video equivalent of TIFF -- 30 frames per second. So there's a greater demand on your processor by a factor of 10. You can see this in action in Quicktime. Save a raw video import 720x480 in .dv and then in DV/DVCPRO-NTSC format and then play it back. The .dv will probably play smoothly while the DV/DVCPRO-NTSC (.mov) will hang up on play-back. It's just too much for your process to display all of those full resolution images so rapidly. And if you look at the two images side-by-side (particularly titles) you'll see how sharp and clear the .mov file is compared to the compressed .dv file.
Hope this helps.

Rendering from FCE using full CPU.

When I'm rendering a video off with Final Cut Express.... my CPU generally runs at 35%.... is there a way to get it to run at 100%, thus rendering faster.... or might my issue be an I/O problem with the drive to which I am rendering/reading from? Any way to find this out?

There could be all sorts of reasons for this.
How much RAM is in your Macbook? FCE will run in 1GB but really needs 2GB to run best.
What is this size of your system HD and how much free space is left on it? You probably have a 5400rpm drive to begin with, which is a little slow for video work. But a full drive will also slow down your system. Rule of thumb is keep at least 15-20% free space at all times.
There is no easy way for a user to force allocate cpu resource to an individual program.

NO multicore rendering in FCE 4.0 + Leopard?

Is Final Cut Express 4.0 supposed to use multiple CPU cores for rendering tasks when available? I just got a new Mac Pro 2.8 GHZ and am running Leopard. FCE 4.0 was preinstalled by Apple. When I render video, CPU monitor only shows 1 core working at any given time. However, when I export or compress video from within QuickTime Pro, all 8 cores dutifully light up and chew through the data very quickly. What's happening here? Is FCE 4.0 NOT multicore aware? Or do I some problem with my install? Do I need a plug-in or something?

Try and follow the link:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1823178&tstart=0
You may need the update to FCE 4.0.1
Al

AVCHD 1920x1080 must be rendered in FCE 4.0?

I'm new to this....bought a Canon HF-100 and went off on a trip with two 16gb sdhc cards, shooting everything at 1920x1080. I have several hours of video I need to edit.
Today I just upgraded FCE 4.0 because it can handle AVCHD and I have log/transferred in a few clips only to find I have to render everything on the timeline. ARRGH!!!
I THINK it's because easy set-up only has a frame size of 1440x1080, is that why I have to render?
Is there a way to change the sequence setting in FCE4.0 to 1920x1080?
I heard about Streamclip, but it doesn't seem to support .mts files
Do I have to buy FCP? Yikes! I can't afford it!
Does anyone have any ideas???
Thanks!!!

Thank you for your response, Tom.
Is it better to have Streamclip convert the AIC files to 1440 or have FCE render them (which I guess is doing the same thing)? Both seem to take a LONG time.
This appears to be an onerous workflow: log and transfer all 600 clips, then either render them in FCE or convert them to 1440x1080 in Streamclip and re-import, edit the movie, and export the movie.
AND, I just tried to export two minutes off the timeline at best quality 1440x1080 QT conversion: it took 35 minutes!!!
Does that sound right? Any suggestions for steamlining the workflow or speeding things up?
Perhaps upgrading to an 2x2.8 GHz Quad-Core with 8 GB RAM instead of my measly 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core 4 GB RAM machine...but wait..first I need to buy more hard drives...since the AIC files are HUGE (1.7g for a 2 minute clip!)...but...
Since FCE only supports 1440x1080 I'm guessing to realize the full resolution of my camcorder I need to get FC Pro, which, I assume, does support 1920x1080, but does FCP support AVCHD?
Any advice is greatly appreciated since I am new to HD and AVCHD...thanks!
PS I wish Canon, Panasonic, and Sony would tell consumers that AVCHD camcorders require FC Pro and $6,000 Macs to do editing!

Rendering a FCE project for DVD

Hello,
I've made a wedding video for my friends, using Final Cut Express. Could someone please give me instructions on how to render it (best quality possible) for a DVD burn? The files were imported from an AVCHD Sony Camcorder, and I would prefer it to be a better quality. Any help would be appreciated!
Thank you!
Justin

>I would prefer it to be a better quality
Keep your expectations realistic; video will never be better quality than what was originally recorded. And since DVD is standard definition only, if you recorded in HD, it will have to be downconverted to SD so it will play in DVD players. Add to that the fact that DVD video is highly compressed MPEG-2 and you'll likely see a drop in quality from the original.
To export, go to File->Export->QucikTime Movie (do NOT use QuickTime Conversion). Use the resulting file in iDVD or Toast to author and burn the DVD.
-DH

Best way to get rendered footage from 3D app into FCE

I want to render footage from my 3D app (Cinema 4D,usually in TIFF sequences, rather than QT movies) and bring it into FCE for editing, color correcting, and possible compositing.
What format will FCE accept? I tried this scenario with iMovie and no matter what settings I used in rendering from the 3D app, the image was blurry in iMovie.
Looks fine in Quicktime, though.
I don't own FCE, yet, so I can't experiment.
Thanks.

Hi(Bonjour)!
DV and HDV (Apple intermediate codec) are compressed formats.
You must understand that FCE HD can only works in format aimed to TV set output (compressed formats).
The best quality to outfput animation movie from 3D app is... Quicktime animation codec. It retains alpha channel and give best color rendering, but give pretty large files.
Altough your animation movie looks sharp, FCE HD convert it (render) to fit the sequence format (DV or HDV: suited for TV set monitor, thus compressed). So the result will be a compressed one. That's the way FCE HD handle all material inserted in sequence.
To avoid rendering in FCE, select the same format as your FCE sequence from your 3D app (DVCPro NTSC, or Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60). By choosing the same format (DV or HDV (AIC), you choose the same compression quality however.
Final Cut Pro can handle a myriad of formats from heavely compressed mpeg to uncompressed HD. So if you put a uncompressed animation codec into a sequence with same settings, the output will be uncompressed.
If your aimed distribution format is DVD, the result will be compressed anyway to standard def format. Go with FCE HD confidently.
If you want to distribute on computer screen, DV is not a good way to go, but HDV(AIC) can give good results with Quicktime convertion to H.264 codec in full or half frame size. FCE HD can do the job.
Although DV is not best viewable on computer screen, you can produce quicktime H.264 with small frame size, say half or quarter size.
Michel Boissonneault

Whatever is Created in LiveType....Loses Quality in FCE ......?

I've noticed no matter what I create in LiveType after it is rendered in FCE as a Quicktime movie (LivetType clips used as intros) it loses Picture quality. It becomes very grainy, why???? How do I rectify this problem?

Ok. This is the thing that is throwing me off. I pplaced the livetype movie onto a movie and it improved ever-so-slightly. I understand that in livetype it is created in the highest quality and the moment you place something like that onto a dvd it loses quality. Granted I don;t have a blue ray burbner so I can keep the quality but I place some of my videos on Vimeo.com that accepts HD videos and when I placed it on there site it still looks the same. It only looks good in the LiveType editor or when i just render it as a movie. Final Cut kills the quality. So much for such creating HD videos when I can't do a simple intro in HD its more like SD.

FCE AVCHD and Importing

Hello,
I'm trying to import AVCHD files from a Sony HDR-SR11 to FCE 3.5 using Voltaic and the import time is excruciatingly slow (roughly 12x real time). I understand that FCE 4 works with AVCHD files but I'm also reading posts on this forum and elsewhere complaining about the slow import times.
Can someone please tell me if an upgrade to FCE 4 will dramatically improve AVCHD import times? I don't want to purchase/upgrade only to find out I'm right where I began. Anything close to real time import would be a huge improvement since I'm working with shorter clips.
Thanks for your help!

Are you converting the videos to QuickTime using Apple Intermediate Codec? (that is, with Voltaic?)
Correct. I'm currently using Voltaic to convert the MTS files to Quicktime/AIC. This allows me to import and edit without rendering in FCE 3.5. And it is so sloooooow.
Are you talking about Voltaic taking 12x real time; or importing the clips into FCE taking that long?
I'm talking about Voltaic talking so long. I have to convert them before importing them in to FCE 3.5. After being transcoded, the files are fine and FCE 3.5 is great.
So, I'm curious if others are having super long import times with FCE 4 and directly logging/transcoding within vs using a third-party app like Voltaic.
Again, once the clips are converted to AIC they work great in FCE 3.5 on Snow Leopard. Don't think that is the issue. The issue is converting from MTS to AIC.
Will FCE 4 do a quicker job than Voltaic?
Thanks for your replies!

Rendering - abnormally slow or normal?

Hi folks,
I'm rendering a 2 minute piece of video imported as a Quick Time file (size = 2GB). It's just taken 35 minutes and is up to 6%.
It's the first time I've rendered a .mov file. I'm used to slow rendering, but this seems excessive. Is it normal?
I just read about Magic Bullet in this forum. Is that something anyone can shed light on for speeding up rendering in FCE?
Thanks,
Andrew

Hi Tom,
The video file supplied on the disk is actually 122MB, but because I cannot import that file directly into FCE, I had to convert it to .mov first. To do this I used SnapzPro (video capture software). After capturing the video as a Quick Time file, it became 2.4GB.
I imported the .mov file into FCE, and then had to render.
6 files came on the disk, but only one plays the 2 minute segment. That one has a file extension of .VOB. The others have extensions .IFO and .BUP (don't know what they're for).
Does that shed any more light?
Thanks for the info on Magic Bullet.
Andrew

Help! New to FCE - captured audio out of sync

I just switched from a PC to a Macbook Pro. I had been using Sony Vegas on the PC and have switched to FCE since Vegas isn't available on Mac. I tried capturing my first footage last night into FCE. The audio on the tape was 32kHz, so I went to EasySetup and selected the DV-NTSC 32kHz setting. After capturing about an hour, it gave me a message saying analyzing or rendering audio for about 5-10 minutes. When that was done, I tried to play the clip, bit the video and audio were about 1 sec out of sync (video was ahead by 28 frames). In this case, I was able to unlink the audio/video and manually re-sync them, but can anyone tell me what might have caused them to be captured out of sync, and what to do to ensure that it won't happen again?
Thanks!
Erich

Thanks, I'll give that a try later today and see if that solves the problem.
One other question, does video imported through iMovie need to be rendered in FCE? I tried capturing some footage in iMovie (with the same setup) and it played fine in iMovie (no sync problems) and when I imported it into FCE, it played fine in the viewer, but when I dropped it into the sequence timeline and tried to play it there, I couldn't hear the audio, just a beeping sound, and there was a red bar over the sequence to indicate that it needed rendering.

External Audio recording to be imported & used in FCE

Hi there,
I am thinking of using this audio interface to record some vocals. It is a Focusrite Saffire 6 USB. It comes with a software called Ableton Live that can record the sound in wav or aiff format.
http://www.focusrite.com/products/audiointerfaces/saffire_6usb
According to this spec, it uses a *24bit 96kHz a/d covertor*.
http://www.htfr.com/more-info/MR326826
+TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:+
+2 channel USB audio & MIDI recording interface+
*+24bit 96kHz a/d & d/a converters+*
I am using a standard defintion miniDV tape video camera and in my FCE, in the Easy setup, I have selected DV-PAL 32kHZ Amorphic.
My question is, will the sound recorded using this Focusrite Saffire audio interface be imported into FCE4 for editing together to mix together with my video clips (recorded in my standard defintion video camera) ?
Thanks you.
Cheers

RyanManUtd wrote:
QUESTION 1:
I also discovered something strange when I check the settings of all the previous video & audio clips imported into FCE4. Those that imported in from video camera, the values are 16 bit 32 kHz (How come ? My video camera is set to 12 bit 32 kHz)
Despite the material is recorded in 32 bit, the capture process with 48kHz setting are allowed, but on long shot, you can expect a audio drift from video if sequence's audio is not the same as original sources.
QUESTION 2:
Then, I look into all the audio clips I bought from iTunes & imported into FCE4, they are all listed as 16 bit 48 kHz.
The funny thing is that both these type of different clips (ie, 16bit/32kHz & 16bit/48kHz) can be rendered without problem. How come ? FCE4 can mix clips of different audio types ?
BTW, importing iTune purchased song into FCE is prohibited by iTune EUA. Any non-natively supported media can be rendered in FCE, but as explained in question 1, you can expect audio drift on long clip. This problem is not relevant with music track audio which is it not part of a video footage.
QUESTION 3:
If I set the Ableton software output to 16bit 48 kHz, does that mean that I actually cannot make use of the hardware abilities to produce sound of 24 bit 96 kHz ? Is there much difference ?
96 kHz is used for professionnal multi-track audio editing. You have to use high-end audio monitors to ear the difference... if you can. Usually only audio engineers can ear the difference.
Audio CD use 44 kHz and the quality is pristine on hi-fi deck. 48 kHz is the standard in video production and even used in dolby 5.1 home theater configuration.
QUESTION 4:
In the Easy Setup, I cannot find 16 bit 48 kHz. I only have the following option in the Easy Setup of FCE4:
a) DV-PAL
b) DV-PAL 32 kHz
c) DV-PAL 32 kHz Anamorphic
d) DV-PAL 32 kHz Anamorphic Basic
e) DV-PAL 32 kHz FireWire Basic
f) DV-PAL Anamporphic
g) DV-PAL Anamorphic Basic
h) DV-PAL DV Convertor
i) DV-PAL FireWire Basic
So, which one do I chose ?
Use DV-PAL.
Michel Boissonneault

Easy setup FCE 4 and mpeg stream clip

Hi, i need an help for import my videocamera video. I use samsung MHX H200SP/EDC and i obtain a MP4 PAL 1280x720 50fps clip. I try to use MPEG streamclip to convert in something not to be rendered fo FCE the i import it into FCE.
Could someone tell me which set up use in MPEG streamclip and in esasy setup for FCE?
I would like to obtain max quality (doesn't matter space on HD)
I tried in this way
MPEG streamclip conversion:
Apple Intermediate Codec
100% quality
1280x720 (16:9, no scaling, HDTV 720p? which one?)
shoud i choose "interlaced scaling"?
other way?
in easy set up for FCE i tried:
Apple Intermediate Codec
AVCHD Apple Itermediate Codec 1920x1080i50
rate 25 fps
is it right? which one should i use?
best regards everybody
Filippo

The MHX H200SP/EDC saves video as MP4/H.264 files and it appears you used 1280x720p as your setting in the camera.
In that case, in MPEG Streamclip, convert the clips to:
QuickTime
Apple Intermediate Codec
1280x720 (HDTV 720p)
UNcheck the option called "Interlaced scaling" (because you have progressive video)
In FCE, select the HDV Apple Intermediate Codec 720p25 Easy Setup. Then create a new Sequence. Then import your converted clip(s).

Processor "bouncing" while rendering

I've been having issues while rendering in FCE.
The CPU normally peaks fairly high when rendering, but now it will peak for about a second, then drop to nothing, peak for another second, then drop to nothing, and continue this the entire rendering time.
This is causing my render times to double or triple. FCE also tends to "hang" for much longer than usual when trying to stop the render.
This doesn't seem to be happening in any other CPU intensive programs. Any settings I may have messed up?
Thanks for the help.
Mark

I've never watched the processor so wouldn't know anything about that.
Concentrating on your claim that FCE alone is experiencing problems, I would suggest that the first thing you do is trash the preferences exactly as detailed here http://www.fcpbook.com/Misc1.html
Also check that your hard drive is not more than about 80% full as that can mess up computer performance, though you did say everything else is OK.

Re-rendering in FCE HD

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