I’m encoding multiple scenes in multiple formats for VoD. But, the rending times are off the scale horrible. We bought a computer specifically for this task and when encoding, that is all the machine is doing. Should be pretty good, right? I’m getting render times of 9 or even 10 to 1. That is an hour of video taking 10 hours to encode. And that’s just for one of the formats!
We bought Sorenson 6.5 on advice that it was the way to go with the Mac we are using. I’ve never been more disappointed with a software purchase. Over 14 years of doing this, Sorenson has been the most disappointing.
Here is what I am dealing with. My Mac is a Quad Core i7 2.93Ghz, with 8GB memory DDR3 1333Mhz. My 1TB drive has 834GB still available. For maximum render time, files are moved onto this drive while being worked on. OS X is 10.6.8
A 20 min scene takes about 18 hours to render all 4 files. Source file is HDV 1080i60. When an option I am doing a 2 Pass VRB because the improvement in video quality and file size is substantial.
I am currently testing to see if converting the source file to DV might speed up render times. And I’m seeing if splitting the files up to different programs might be better. FLVs on Adobe Encoder, MP4 on Sorenson, and the WMV through Final Cut’s Compressor.
I am sure this should be taking a lot less time. And be a lot simpler. I thought for sure Sorenson would be able to do all this in better time.
Re: Video Encoding times with Sorenson, Adobe, Compressor, etc
Sorenson went to shit after Squeeze 5.1. They stopped supporting some nativw HD formats and even after being on their beta testing team for version 7.0 they proved un-interested and incapable of responding to feedback.
But looking at your machine spec… I would say it’s the speed of your hard-disc that’s slowing things down.
Re: Video Encoding times with Sorenson, Adobe, Compressor, etc
If you were on Windows and had a CUDA capable nVidia card you could use BadaBoom: http://bit.ly/t2p1eg
I am sorry to tell you Mac is not where “it’s at” any longer for serious bulk editing. I know people will disagree but those are the people who are in denial that spend thousands of dollars. I left Mac for professional editing when they abandoned their professionals for the more profitable consumer market. Additionally, just until recently Mac was not able to use multiple cores for rendering and you had to setup a “virtual render farm” to utilize all cores. With Adobe AfterEffects and a gigabit network, you can build a very reasonably priced network render farm out off low cost PC hardware.
I would however still buy a Mac for personal use and am not saying that “PC IS BETTER THEN MAC” but in this use instance I believe PC has the upper hand in HD editing now, and foresee it to keep it in the future. When your working with HD footage your really going to want Premiere Pro’s CUDA Realtime capabilities, and Adobe Media Encoder to automatically output your edits into different file formats, and automatically FTP those to your site server while you sleep.
Re: Video Encoding times with Sorenson, Adobe, Compressor, etc
Hi,
We are encoding in MP4 h.264, 1280x720 @ 6000 kbps or 720x480 @ 2500 kbps using Microsoft Expression Encoder, on a Windows 7, i7 3.3 ghz, 8 GB DDR3 1333 mhz. The average time to encode a full movie (5-6 scenes) varies from 20 minutes to 60 minutes (depending on lenght). We used to play with Sorenson and the time varied from 120 minutes to 300 minutes (but still much lower then what you get).
We use 2 computers for encoding, one has a CUDA video board, the other doesn’t. The CUDA PC is obviously much faster (up to 60%) but it also skips some frames from time to time, so we no longer use it. We prefer having a longer encoding time but ensuring we are not missing any frames at the end.
You should give Microsoft Encoder a chance, maybe it will lower the encoding times for you, but I’m not sure if Sorenson is your main problem - the encodig takes way to long (10 hours for a movie) to be a software issue.
Re: Video Encoding times with Sorenson, Adobe, Compressor, etc
A couple of my editors that upgraded to the latest Final Cut downgraded again and told me it looks like Apple just wants out of the professional editing business. I haven’t seen it myself, but, I’m told Final Cut now looks like iMovie PRO. LOL.
Although, I am restricted to a solution in the short term that uses this machine, a PC farm is the direction I’m leaning. My company is looking at bringing a huge amount of content online early in 2012. So, piddling along with the Mac is out.
Thanks for the advice! This helps.
Re: Video Encoding times with Sorenson, Adobe, Compressor, etc
Andre it does look like a non-Mac solution is in my future. I agree with the longer encodes. I prefer a 2 pass on anything I can because it results in a smaller file and better quality. Which is what brings the customer back.
Do you have problems with customers trying to view something encoded at 6000 Kbps?!! I was worried about pushing the 1600 Kbps at them. We get complaints from people who are streaming from slower connections even with 1600. I would much rather put up 6000. We go through the trouble of producing high quality HD footage only to see it compressed down to deliver. It’s heart breaking.
Thanks for the help!
Re: Video Encoding times with Sorenson, Adobe, Compressor, etc
when i’m reviewing, i see videos with 2000, 3000 and 5000k all the time. i’ve seen some between 8000k and 10,000k, although i felt those were overkill, and annoying to download.
wouldn’t it make more sense to have 2 sizes - one at 1000k and one at 3000k? HD doesn’t look great at 1600k, and i see that speed more for standard videos.
Re: Video Encoding times with Sorenson, Adobe, Compressor, etc
[QUOTE=gordreece;105528]Andre it does look like a non-Mac solution is in my future. I agree with the longer encodes. I prefer a 2 pass on anything I can because it results in a smaller file and better quality. Which is what brings the customer back.
Do you have problems with customers trying to view something encoded at 6000 Kbps?!! I was worried about pushing the 1600 Kbps at them. We get complaints from people who are streaming from slower connections even with 1600. I would much rather put up 6000. We go through the trouble of producing high quality HD footage only to see it compressed down to deliver. It’s heart breaking.
Thanks for the help![/QUOTE]
Well most of our customers download the files, instead of streaming them online. Indeed, a 6000 kbps encoded movie can go up to 5-7 GB in size, so it might take a while for them to download, but in the end they are very happy with the quality, and started to move from buying DVDs to buying downloads. Even if it takes some hours to download a movie and it might seem much, it’s nothing compared to shipping a DVD (the shortest time we can ship an order is 2 business days until it reaches the customer).
We do stream 6000 KBPS movies on our streaming site, but we also always offer a lower (1500-2000 kbps) version for those with lower bandwidth.
But there is another factor involved here, most of our customers are from Europe and they generally have higher bandwidth then US customers. I for one have a 100 Mb/s connection (as do 70% of the people in my region) so downloading a 1280x720 @ 6000 kbps file generally takes 1 hour or so, as well as enjoying perfect smooth streaming.
It all depends where your customers are, if they prefer download or streaming the movies. But ideally, as Basschick mentioned, offer them choices. Do several formats and see how that goes. It may take longer to encode, but it will eventually make your customers happier and willing to come back for more.
I also agree with Basschick on the 10.000 kbps files, those are really overkills. 1280x720 @ 6000 kbps is almost perfect DVD quality while keeping the file around 5 GBs for a full movie - it should be enough even for the most demanding customers.
Re: Video Encoding times with Sorenson, Adobe, Compressor, etc
Thanks basschick and andreiDL,
I’m going to do some test files at 6000Kbps. These larger files, are you talking about FLVs, MP4s, or some other format? We make WMVs too. (which looks horrible no matter what settings I use) Because customers ask for them. Do you guys only render in one file type? Or are you making a few like I am?
I was leaning to encoding MP4 only until Google said they weren’t interested in supporting h.264 after MPEG starts charging for use of the format. Now it seems to be an open field. What are the Europeans, or the Asians leaning towards in the way of file type?
Thanks again for the advice. If I’m going to spend the time on these files, I’d like them to be the best quality and delivered in a way that the most people can enjoy. This helps.
Re: Video Encoding times with Sorenson, Adobe, Compressor, etc
We only encode using MP4 format, but we do include free codecs or links to free playback software (like Gom Player) or codes.
We haven’t had a bad comment yet regarding using MP4s, nor have our customers requested WMV or any other file type. They seem to be very happy with the quality they get.
I know we had 2 weeks of meetings based on what to choose between WMV and MP4, and the latter won. We never even considered offering .flv. It doesn’t work on iPhone, iPad… now even Adobe gave up on supporting the flash player. Youtube for mobile works in HTML5 with h264, Internet Explorer 9 works with h264. Encoding in .flv, from my point of view, is a complete waste of time.
Regarding mp4 vs wmv, we decided to use mp4 because of H264 and the support for AAC audio. Basically a DVD quality video is a mpeg2 at 9000 kbps. You can get the same quality using h264 at about 4000-5000 kbps. Thats about half the bitrate for the same quality. We use 6000 kbps just to be safe.
Another plus for MP4 was the fact that there are a lot of customers that like to burn the files to DVDs and play them via DVD player, and MP4 is widely supported by these.
To answer your final question, our main customer base is in Europe and, as mentioned before, nobody complains over using MP4 as we offer a nice document containing help links & FAQ in case someone can’t playback the format.