Render times

I am trying to make a master file but it seems to be taking forever. My project is 70 minutes long and it has been going now for 15 hours and is currently at 45% done. Is this normal and is this where compressor comes into the picture and does and better and hopefully faster job than FCP?

How long it takes to export a master file depends on a lot of different factors:

1. If your timeline has many titles and/or clips with heavy effects or color correction filters applied to them this will have an impact on the time it takes to export the file, especially if the timeline is un-rendered.

2. If you work with native (not optimized) heavily compressed formats such as H.264 or AVCHD or the likes this will have a huge impact on your export time.

3. If you work with a computer with a slower CPU/GPU this also will make your export slower.

4. If you export to the same drive as the drive where your media are stored this will make your export slow, especially if this drive is your system drive or an external drive with a very low throughout such as USB2. Things will certainly be very bad if your system drive or the drive you are exporting to are nearly full.

5. If your master file settings are set to H.264, MP4 or any other heavily compressed codec 15 hours for 70 minutes is not exceptional at all.

To sum it up: it's very difficult to say wether this is normal or not if we don't have more information about your system, your footage, your project and your export settings. Exporting via Compressor won't make any difference.

- Ronny

well done Ronny

that all makes perfect sense

what is the purpose of even exporting a master file ?

A: it ends up being a huge file
B: you cant edit it any further
C: i couldnt get one to go on a usb due to size

why would one even do it ?

i usually export one to youtube and one to usb then pack up the original footage into an archive in case i want to do something with it later

im not saying dont do it or being critical, just dont understand why its done ?

A ProRes master file can be useful. Exporting to ProRes gives you a high quality master from which you can quickly create all different kinds of delivery files. And you can keep the ProRes master as a safety version of your edit in case something would go wrong with your archived project. So it's not always a bad idea to also make a high quality master of your edit.

- Ronny