FCP X SD Anamorphic workaround & h264 tests. Great Results.

(I posted this on creativecow also.)

I have a 2 hour timeline that was SD Anamorphic, ProRes LT footage. FCP X didn't see the footage as anamorphic and also currently doesn't let you flag a clip anamorphic so I created a SD Anamorphic project and then brought in the video and stretched it to 133% on the X axis, to make it fill the 16x9 frame. This left the entire timeline needing to be rendered because of the stretching. These were just cuts and audio fixes, so I didn't want to re-render the whole thing, but I had a plan (see method 1 below). Delivery was a h264 file to be played on an Apple TV.

In the past when I would do these kinds of projects, I would export a reference movie from FCP 7 and then use one of my presets in Compressor to make the h264. So I tried something similar (Method 1), then just for fun I did Method 2. Wow. What a difference. Here are the details:

Method 1 - FCP X to ProRes, ProRes to Compressor
1. Duplicated the timeline and changed the settings to SD regular (4x3 that is) and put all the video clips back to 100% width. Therefore not requiring any rendering.
2. Exported a ProRes version of the 4x3 timeline. Remember I didn't render the timeline. (33 minutes)
3. From Compressor, forced the output to 853x480, frame controls off and exported h264, 2000 mbp/s, 2 pass. (3 hrs 40 minutes)
Total Time: 4 hours 13 minutes
File Size: 1.88 GB

Method 2 - FCP X to h264
1. Used "export movie" on the original 16x9 timeline to h264 on FCP X share menu. No settings to change. (This timeline still showed the entire 2 hrs needed to be rendered, but I didn't render it.)
Total Time: 1 hour 4 minutes.
File Size: 1.89 GB

Wow. Twice as fast as real time h264 exporting AND rendering, and my machine is no spring chicken! (see below). There is really some amazing engine under there in FCP X. Plus I'm not going to be too concerned with rendering before I export if I am in a hurry. Note there there was a tiny luminance difference between in h264 encodes, but it looks like it might just be the color profile. The Compressor version had HD (1-1-1) while the FCP X had SD (6-1-6). The resulting h264 file played perfectly on the Apple TV.

MacPro 2006 4 core, 2.66 ghz
13GB Ram
OWC Raid (150 MB/s)
Radeon 5770

P.S. I did another test on Method 2 where I put an adjustment layer with a color change just to make sure it was really rendering the whole 2 hr timeline. No difference in time.

This was run a few days ago on 10.0, I redid it yesterday on 10.0.1. Prores export was faster by about 10 minutes, but h264 was exactly the same.

Why not just use the Apple TV preset?

I didn't use the other share options because of speed. This is h264 transcoding twice as fast as real time. That is pretty impressive.

I tried to use the share presents but the estimated time was 8 hrs with 10.0.0 and then it just stalled. Also the file was was estimated to be at 8 GB.

I tried it yesterday with 10.0.1 and it estimated 3 hrs to export, but that was with the iPhone 640x480 preset. I didn't actually go through with it because I had other work to do.

Hi! Don't you think that at list part of the difference could be because of FCPX is exporting in one pass only? I already exported in other ways on FCPX and i sometimes had the possibility of setting a dual pass on the H264.

Some people, with specific GPU's (Open CL enabled i suppose), should see faster exporting with this update on FCPX (10.0.1). Ii didn't try exporting again on my MBP (13", core2duo 2.4GHz, NVIDIA GeForce 320M).

Thanks for your comparison test.

Any Mac FCP X is running on has an OpenCL GPU. Yes, Share is a one pass, quick output. with transcoding, you always are balancing speed and quality.

The Timeline render only effects the Export in that if it's not rendered, the export process renders on the fly. If it is rendered, the export reads the render files directly.

Hi BenB and tpayton,

About OpenCL, i have one iMac that is on the list of unsupported, and for now it works and it works alright. So OpenCL is the supported official way i suppose. And i must add, that from reading Apple note, it wasn't obvious that the integrated intel HD3000 is OpenCL enabled.

As for the one pass, i just said it because it could be relevant for the comparison tpayton did.

And as tpayton wrote, I too would expect that it took more time then it did because of the "extra rendering" needed. that's good to know that it isn't such a big influence on the duration of the exporting.

Have a nice weekend!