Render manually before sharing?

I'm presuming when I share a project to Vimeo it renders the project before sharing right? If this is the case is it quicker to render manually before sharing?

The application does not render before exporting. No render files are generated. Rendering prior to exporting will speed up sharing to some extent, but not as much as you'd think.

Thanks. Rendering, sharing it's all taking a long time, guess I need to upgrade my system again!

Tom Wolsky wrote: The application does not render before exporting. No render files are generated. Rendering prior to exporting will speed up sharing to some extent, but not as much as you'd think.

Actually some tests I helped out on at macProVideo.com proved that rendering BEFORE sharing/exporting does nothing to speed up exports. And thus took up MORE time than simply exporting.

So rendering is only useful speed/timewise for playback while editing?

And if you're exporting a master file so no transcoding needs to take place.

I'm now a little confused between exporting/sharing and creating a master file?

Files are created no in both cases?

Master File is one of the options in Sharing (which is also called exporting). Yes, any of the Share options are simply the process of writing a whole new file from scratch.

As for rendering and sharing (exporting), don't render only to make sharing faster, waste of time. Only render to help with playback during your edit. If you just happen to have rendered the whole timeline for that purpose, sharing won't really go any faster, in our carefully timed, and much repeated tests. You're faster just sharing, and ignoring any rendering that was unnecessary for playback.

www.macprovideo.com/hub/final-cut/final-...o-x-performance-test
"First: Is it worth rendering before exporting? Not usually. Background rendering is still useful if your Mac won’t play back a sequence without rendering first, and if your Mac is idle, there’s little harm in letting it do its thing. Still, it’s not worth waiting for a render before you export, because render + export of a rendered timeline is almost always slower than simply exporting. One strange exception: the older Mac Pro (and only that Mac) was faster to export after rendering on 4K footage on the three-effect test. Curious."

Great thanks for that, all clear now.

One little comment however:
- A rendered project exports much faster (only if you export a Master)

- In real life it might happen that you export a video, play it, and notice a couple of little things that are not exactly as you want them. So you modify and export again.

That's why PERSONALLY, I always render before exporting the Master. Because most likely I will re-export it, and if you export more than 1 time the saving in terms of time is big.

- A rendered project exports much faster (only if you export a Master)

Actually, the time it takes to render, then export, equals twice the time it takes to simply export an un-rendered timeline. So what is gained by rendering "only" to export? And exporting more than once, if you make a change, the renders have to be re-rendered all over again.

And we did not find Masters exporting faster with a render first in our tests. I've yet to see that actually happen in real life.

It's very interesting what you're saying. On my system, a Mac mini (so very, very slow graphic performances) it is incredibly obvious that it is faster. Once all my effects are rendered, my timeline exports in a few minutes, while it can take hours if it's not rendered.

However it does not apply if I change any export parameter, then it re-renders everything.

Is it possible that your system is so fast/real time that you don't see the difference ?

I also remember a Larry Jordan article who had made some tests reaching the same conclusions. But I can't find it back.

See the link I posted previously, "we" tested several Macs.

Seany wrote: Thanks. Rendering, sharing it's all taking a long time, guess I need to upgrade my system again!

Few Questions:
What is the length (hours/minutes) of your Timelime?
How long is it taking to Render? Or Export?

From experience, I had a stuck render because I accidentally put two NeatVideo NR Filter on one clip around 23 mins of a 60 min timeline & was stuck in that area. I rendered my Timeline & zoomed at the orange render bar where the render was stuck & there was a red render bar. I investigated the clip & sure enough there were two Noise Reduction Filters on it. I deleted the second filter and rendered again & finally got a full render.

To me, the benefit of rendering before exporting is to see if there's any areas of concern within the timeline. If time is of the essence, I would just Export & if it gets "stuck" I render the timeline & if it's stuck....investigate the clip further. Another benefit is a smooth playback for heavily filtered clips (i.e. Noise Reduction, SliceX, Optical Flow, Etc).

Good luck!

Seany wrote: Thanks. Rendering, sharing it's all taking a long time, guess I need to upgrade my system again!

What system do you have? If it is a CPU before Sandy Bridge (which was first used in the 2011 iMac), it doesn't have Intel's Quick Sync transcoding engine. That alone can improve render performance by 4x or 5x for single-pass H.264.

I know this is an old post, but I just searched for this information and was directed here. I also found a YouTube video that shows that rendering and then "sharing" does make for a faster overall export than just "sharing" alone.

Here is a link:

I don't know if it has anything to do with recent FCPX updates, the hardware...it may be different for each individual user.

StegPost wrote: I know this is an old post, but I just searched for this information and was directed here. I also found a YouTube video that shows that rendering and then "sharing" does make for a faster overall export than just "sharing" alone...

This is much more complex than that single simple test done in that video. It can vary based on version of FCPX, codec and hardware. However in general pre-rendering the timeline can save export time under some conditions.

I posted a bunch of tests in this thread: www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...-to-masterfile#96677

In October 2018 I did some more tests, results below. I reported a few of these results in this thread, however below are all the test results along with notes: www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...-video-formats-2-0-7

Then in December 2018 I did even more tests (see further below), this time focusing on the iMac Pro and apparent performance improvements in FCPX 10.4.4 after installing Pro Video Formats 2.0.7. These seemed isolated to the iMac Pro and didn't happen on a 2017 i7 iMac 27.

FWIW, I include these raw test results, including my notes where I pointed out a few anomalies that are typical of any large-scale test. It is not formatted for wide release, I just dump the results below in case it helps someone or is a springboard for further testing.

The bottom line is pre-rendering can sometimes make a big difference for a real-world timeline with lots of effects and you are exporting it repeatedly. Early in the edit it usually makes somewhat less difference. Late in the edit when the timeline is much more complex it makes a bigger difference -- IF you need to export repeatedly.

There is one hyper-fast scenario that only exists on the iMac Pro running 10.4.4, only if Pro Video Formats 2.0.7 are installed and only if the timeline and export are ProRes 422. In that case a pre-rendered timeline is simply copied to the output file with no encoding at very high I/O rates.

The late stages of editing can require many "release candidate" exports as the so-called "final" video is reviewed and scrutinized, then tiny tweaks are made and it's re-exported, often against a looming deadline. In such a situation it can be beneficial to pre-render the timeline so all subsequent exports will run faster.

FCPX export performance testing, pre-rendered vs non-rendered timeline:

System config: 10-core Vega 64 iMac Pro, 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD, macOS 10.13.6, FCPX 10.4.3. Media and library files on OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini using 4 x 2TB SSD drives in RAID-0. Output file goes to iMac Pro 2TB SSD.

Test timeline: 4k H264 8-bit 4:2:0 100 mpbs 4 min 35 sec complex documentary with 139 clips (mostly multi-cam), total clips inc'l multicam: about 300. About 500 keyframed color correction effects, also Neat Video, Imagenomic Portraiture and Digital Anarchy Flicker Free. Due the large number of test permutations I used a short, complex timeline to facilitate turnaround.

I did multiple batches of testing, both with original 4k H264 media then using optimized ProRes 422 media. I tested export to both H264 and ProRes, and for each of those with and without a pre-rendered timeline. Time is min:sec elapsed for export.

No pre-render, 4k H264 media, export to 1080p H264 fast encode: 10:09
Pre-render, 4k H264 media, export to 1080p H264 fast encode: 1:40

No pre-render, 4k H264 media, export to 1080p H264 better quality: 20:05
Pre-render, 4k H264 media, export to 1080p H264 better quality: 3:18

No pre-render, 4k ProRes 422 optimized media, export to 1080p H264 fast encode: 9:39
Pre-render, 4k ProRes 422 optimized media, export to 1080p H264 fast encode: 1:38

No pre-render, 4k ProRes 422 optimized media, export to 1080p H264 better quality: 19:20
Pre-render, 4k ProRes 422 optimized media, export to 1080p H264 better quality: 3:46

No pre-render, 4k H264 media, export to 4k H264 fast encode: 10:33
Pre-render, 4k H264 media, export to 4k H264 fast encode: 3:14

No pre-render, 4k H264 media, export to 4k H264 better quality: 21:05
Pre-render, 4k H264 media, export to 4k H264 better quality: 6:26

No pre-render, 4k ProRes 422 optimized media, export to 4k H264 fast encode: 10:26
Pre-render, 4k ProRes 422 optimized media, export to 1080p H264 fast encode: 3:12

No pre-render, 4k ProRes 422 optimized media, export to 1080p H264 better quality: 21:06
Pre-render, 4k ProRes 422 optimized media, export to 1080p H264 better quality: 6:16

No pre-render, 4k ProRes 422 optimized media, export to 4k ProRes 422: 9:31
Pre-render, 4k ProRes 422 optimized media, export to 4k ProRes 422: 9:33

No pre-render, 4k H264 media, export to export to 4k ProRes 422: 9:52
Pre-render, 4k H264 media, export to export to 4k ProRes 422: 9:55

Then in December 2018 I did another large batch of tests:

FCPX 10.4.3, macOS Mojave 10.14.1, 1:03 4k XAVC-S test file on iMP, test file name 33874

1080p Fast Encode: 00:52.2, 00:50.8, re-run with PVF 2.06 = 00:29.3
1080p HQ: 1:34.2, pass 2 = 1:34.9
4k Fast Encode: 00:48.6
4k HQ: 01:30.1

Same test conditions as above, but on 2017 iMac 27:

1080p Fast Encode: 00:41.3
1080p HQ: 01:12.9
4k Fast Encode: 00:40.0
4k HQ: 01:13.4
HEVC 8-bit: 01:23.7
HEVC 10-bit: 40:15.0
H264 Src, ProRes422 NoFX: 00:18 (anomaly?)
ProRes422 Src, ProRes422 Out, Color+Aged Film, No PreRen: 01:17
ProRes422 Src, ProRes422 Out, Color+Aged Film , With PreRen: 01:18

Same test conditions as above, but 2017 iMac on FCPX 10.4.4, Without and With Pro Video Formats 2.07

1080p Fast Encode: 00:42.1, PVF 2.07 = 00:40.5
1080p HQ: 01:12.9, PVF 2.07 = 01:13.0
4k Fast Encode: 00:39.5, PVF 2.07 = 00:39.4
4k HQ: 01:14.6, PVF 2.07 = 01:14.4
HEVC 8-bit: 01:35, PVF 2.07 = 01:35
HEVC 10-bit: (long, cancelled, presume same as 10.4.3)
H264 Src, ProRes422 NoFX: 00:43, PVF 2.07 = 00:43
ProRes422 Src, ProRes422 Out, Color+Aged Film+Water Pane, No PreRen: 01:09, PVF 2.07 = 01:09
ProRes422 Src, ProRes422 Out, Color+Aged Film+Water Pane, With PreRen: 01:10, PVF 2.07 = 01:11

FCPX 10.4.4, same test conditions as above, but on iMac Pro:

1080p Fast Encode: 00:50.6, PVF 2.07 = 00:32.9, re-run with PVF 2.06 = 00:31.8, re-run after re-update to 10.4.4 and PVF 2.07 = 00:34.5
1080p HQ: 1:36.7, PVF 2.07 = 00:56.8, re-run with PVF 2.06 = 00:56.1, re-run after re-update to 10.4.4 and PVF 2.07 = 00:57.0
4k Fast Encode: 00:47.5, PVF 2.07 = 00:38.7, re-run with PVF 2.06 = 00:38.5, re-run after re-update to 10.4.4 and PVF 2.07 = 00:38.5
4k HQ: 01:29.5, PVF 2.07 = 01:13.6, re-run with PVF 2.06 = 01:12.89, re-run after re-update to 10.4.4 and PVF 2.07 = 01:14.6
4k HEVC 8-bit: 00:48.7, PVF 2.07 = 00:47.9
4k HEVC 10-bit: 17:01.9, PVF 2.0 = 17:41.4
H264 Src, ProRes422 NoFX: 00:43, PVF 2.07 = 00:26
ProRes422 Src, ProRes422 Out, Color+Aged Film+Water Pane, No PreRen: 01:09, PVF 2.07 = 00:12.8 (!), re-run with PVF 2.06 = 00:48.0, re-run with FCPX 10.4.3 = 00:44.9, re-run after re-update to 10.4.4 and PVF 2.07 = 00:49.3
ProRes422 Src, ProRes422 Out, Color+Aged Film+Water Pane, With PreRen: 01:09, PVF 2.07 = 00:12.8 (!), re-run with PVF 2.06 = 00:49.4, re-run with FCPX 10.4.3 = 00:45.4, re-run after re-update to 10.4.4 and PVF 2.07 = 00:48.8

(Note in above varying PR422 outputs, the “fast” case was verified by iStat Menus showing 500MB/sec I/O rates.)

Holy crap! Thanks for putting in the time to get this info together joema!

Changing workflow-approaches constantly ...

Right now I see preview rendering as completely useless (also read the "lost renders" thread!). Currently favor a native & proxy workflow. But it all depends. I still wait for an iMac 2019.