02-21-2011, 09:07 AM

I am new to this forum-- glad I found it!

I recently began implementing video into my marketing- and am using imovie- it is awesome to work with; however, when I am finalizing video, it takes an hour to finalize a 3 minute video.

Does "Final Cut" take as long and is it worth the money?

My Macbook pro is a month old, so I know it isn't the speed of the computer- wondering if this is a imovie issue?

Look forward to learning more on this forum- and contributing when I can!

Jesse

02-21-2011, 09:52 AM

Hmmm...I use iMovie quite a bit...and a 3 min. clip would usually take between 6 - 9 minutes...in HD. I don't know what your source files are or what your rendering settings are...That rendition time is definitely alarmingly long...it is not typical of iMovie...

02-21-2011, 10:21 AM

thanks for the response... I will have to look into the source files - not sure what you mean but will look it up!

02-21-2011, 10:55 AM

Originally Posted by jerickson

I am new to this forum-- glad I found it!

I recently began implementing video into my marketing- and am using imovie- it is awesome to work with; however, when I am finalizing video, it takes an hour to finalize a 3 minute video.

Does "Final Cut" take as long and is it worth the money?

My Macbook pro is a month old, so I know it isn't the speed of the computer- wondering if this is a imovie issue?

Look forward to learning more on this forum- and contributing when I can!

Jesse

It really depends on your application. If all you are doing is putting together a few short videos here and there for youtube uploads, then I would stick with iMovie. It's hard to judge whether or not Final Cut would be "worth the money" for you without knowing exactly how much and what kind of editing you are doing. I will say that it is definitely more flexible, and more powerful for that matter.

Regarding your issue, it definitely should not be taking that long for a three minute video. I agree with codda in that source files and settings would be helpful to know.

02-22-2011, 03:36 AM

OP, you need to mention what the inputs are; HD, pictures and types & sizes. Then what is your output choices from the Share menu? Also, what specific model is your MBP? Does it have a discrete GPU? Are you running other CPU intensive applications at the time of the export?

02-23-2011, 12:41 AM

Mac is def. the best platform. As far as recreational short videos, imovie creates some relatively slick films. That being said, you are very limited with customization. I.e. it's so basic that you will feel constrained, but will be able to make decent looking movies.

03-03-2011, 09:09 PM

Just to weigh in really quick... I agree with everyone here that iMovie is good for quick and not very complex movies. In fact, it even works great for YouTube (as mentioned).

Final Cut is a professional program that (in my opinion) isn't very intuitive, however, it IS very robust and is what folks getting Media Arts degrees in college use... If you can take the time to learn it, it's definitely a GREAT skill to have.

03-04-2011, 01:57 PM

That rendering time seems quite off IMO. Even if you were doing full HD for 3 min with overlays and effects, an hour is not close to being right so there has to be some specific parameters you have set or that the source video has set that is accounting for the conversion time. Really not sure without knowing more, but unless you are really taxing your CPU with other stuff at time of Finalizing, it should be relatively painless to do a 3 minute movie.

03-19-2011, 01:55 AM

using i movie11
june 2010 15 in macbook pro

panasonic hdc tm60 avchd
set to hg1920 which i know now is too high and i will turn the camera down

but i also am having 1 hour or longer times to convert/export 5 min videos

at this point i plan to get final cut express, hoping this is a stronger program,faster etc

i do not have any thing but mail and maybe safari open when i try to do anything with imovie so do not think that is an issue

any input on this would be great
i am pretty sick of imovie and the issues i am having
but dont want to waste 200 if it is not going to solve my problems

also will i be able to set fce up where when i plug in the camera it automatically opens and will ask me to import/log into fce, bypassing imovie altogether?

thanks for any help

03-20-2011, 01:30 PM

cvincent, don't assume FC can fix your problem. It isn't likely.

What is the input file details? Looks like 1920x1080 AVCHD which converts on import. Do you have a lot of effect/titles/transitions in your project? Is the iMovie 'Video Standard' preference set to the correct one for your area & camera?

What are the export details? A preset, 1920x1080 HD? What export codec are you using and data rates for both the video and audio?

Does you MBP have a discrete GPU?

Are you running off of the internal drive only?

A side note. If you've had Safari open a very long time or have many web pages open, it can take up a lot of memory. This can cause memory swapping when working with another application that needs more memory than is available and that can slow things down.

I don't know the answer to your last question.

03-20-2011, 05:58 PM

hmm, i dont know the answers to all these questions

not sure about the gpu on the laptop, it is the standard core i5 i think

i do have safari open almost all the time and all day, so i can close that

i went ahead and ordered fce, so will load that and before i do anything with the camera i am going to research and make sure i have all the settings correct for this camera and fce
i dont remember if it ask me to set settings when i first plugged it into imovie
maybe that was the problem, the genius bar did not mention that

i see that on several forums, so will make sure i pay major attention to the settings this time

i also removed and reloaded imovie, a thing popped up saying i needed to do that for quicktime, so not sure if that was an issue or not

they did a lot of stuff with my computer at apple working on this and i dont remember seeing any pop ups before they did that, but who knows
maybe i movie was never right

thanks for all your suggestions, etc

03-21-2011, 02:09 AM

You could try a QuickTime export. See a guide I wrote about that. It think the thing to pay attention to is data rate and codec to use. I'd try the H.264 codec with a data rate of say 1500. If the image looks bad, up the data rate.