Long time lurker on Mac forums, first time poster.
Myself and a small group of people run a citizen journalism ring. We focus mainly on video recording events around the area. We're trying to become more professional in our methods, and one of the ways we're trying to improve on is getting our footage uploaded as quickly as possible.
Our cameras run AVCHD, which I've come to despise, but the battery life of our Sony Handycams absolutely slays anything from any other manufacturer by several hours.
Our videos are usually pretty basic. Some titling of the event and date, some titling of people or certain things that should be pointed out in the videos, basic cutting, sometimes inserting a freeze frame or a still picture, and sometimes zooming in. We've been using iMovie 9.X for a few years, which does everything we need done. There are a few main issues with our process; The time that it takes for iMovie to import, build thumbnails, and export, along with the massive file size that iMovie creates.
Between us, we have 3 MacBooks; 1 mid 2010 15", 1 mid 2010 13", 1 mid 2014 13". The 2010s have recently been upgraded to max 8 GB RAM and SSD drives, both running 2.66 i7 dual cores. Laptops are essential for us because a lot of our work is in the field. For 2 of us, buying new machines is way out of the budget, so we're trying to maximize the 2010 machines. Most of what we're trying to improve on centers around the 2010 machines. The 2010 15" is mine, and I did a fresh install of El Capitan on the new SSD, and also have a slave SSD in the optical drive slot and I've tried many of the methods below writing to that drive as well as the master drive.
We've set up a benchtest of a 30 minute video done with the Handycams, then exporting a random 4 minute clip, and we're measuring import and export times, which are the number one priorities that we want to improve on.
In iMovie 9.0.8, these times have not improved with the SSDs. In fact, the import takes a bit longer now, at just over 9 minutes for a 30 minute clip. The thumbnail creation is much quicker, though, and is really the only significant improvement with the SSDs. Using the default "share" option in iMovie to 720 takes just over 9 minutes to export a 4 minute clip, and 20+ minutes to make a 2080 file. The 2014 machine exports the 4 minute clip in about 5 minutes.
We've tried iMovie 10.1, as well. The import is MUCH faster, takes about 1 minute to import the 30 minute clip. VERY NICE! That's what we want! Very little in the way of reencoding anything, and the file size is about 1/5 of what 9.X creates. However, the export on 10.1 is ridicurous. Takes about 25 minutes to export the 4 minute clip.
We've tried some other apps, too. FCPX crashes on export in El Capitan. Premiere doesn't bring in the audio when doing a direct import of the AVCHD, but does have the audio when I bring in the .mov clip that iMovie 10.1 creates. Premiere, however, takes about 10 minutes to export the 4 minute clip. VideoPad also takes too long on the export.
We're fine with the import time and file creation that iMovie 10.1 does, so we are totally down with using that solely for the import, then using another app for the editing and export, but we'd prefer to just use one app to do it all. There has GOT TO BE A SIMPLE WAY to export these to 1080 that doesn't take more than twice as long as the clip itself. We've tried matching up the exact codec and other things from the 10.1 clip in hopes that whatever we use doesn't have to reencode the entire clip, but so far no luck. Why in the **** does it take 25 minutes to export this in iMovie 10.1, using the clip that it created?
Other than spending $3000 each for new machines, does anyone have any suggestions?
Myself and a small group of people run a citizen journalism ring. We focus mainly on video recording events around the area. We're trying to become more professional in our methods, and one of the ways we're trying to improve on is getting our footage uploaded as quickly as possible.
Our cameras run AVCHD, which I've come to despise, but the battery life of our Sony Handycams absolutely slays anything from any other manufacturer by several hours.
Our videos are usually pretty basic. Some titling of the event and date, some titling of people or certain things that should be pointed out in the videos, basic cutting, sometimes inserting a freeze frame or a still picture, and sometimes zooming in. We've been using iMovie 9.X for a few years, which does everything we need done. There are a few main issues with our process; The time that it takes for iMovie to import, build thumbnails, and export, along with the massive file size that iMovie creates.
Between us, we have 3 MacBooks; 1 mid 2010 15", 1 mid 2010 13", 1 mid 2014 13". The 2010s have recently been upgraded to max 8 GB RAM and SSD drives, both running 2.66 i7 dual cores. Laptops are essential for us because a lot of our work is in the field. For 2 of us, buying new machines is way out of the budget, so we're trying to maximize the 2010 machines. Most of what we're trying to improve on centers around the 2010 machines. The 2010 15" is mine, and I did a fresh install of El Capitan on the new SSD, and also have a slave SSD in the optical drive slot and I've tried many of the methods below writing to that drive as well as the master drive.
We've set up a benchtest of a 30 minute video done with the Handycams, then exporting a random 4 minute clip, and we're measuring import and export times, which are the number one priorities that we want to improve on.
In iMovie 9.0.8, these times have not improved with the SSDs. In fact, the import takes a bit longer now, at just over 9 minutes for a 30 minute clip. The thumbnail creation is much quicker, though, and is really the only significant improvement with the SSDs. Using the default "share" option in iMovie to 720 takes just over 9 minutes to export a 4 minute clip, and 20+ minutes to make a 2080 file. The 2014 machine exports the 4 minute clip in about 5 minutes.
We've tried iMovie 10.1, as well. The import is MUCH faster, takes about 1 minute to import the 30 minute clip. VERY NICE! That's what we want! Very little in the way of reencoding anything, and the file size is about 1/5 of what 9.X creates. However, the export on 10.1 is ridicurous. Takes about 25 minutes to export the 4 minute clip.
We've tried some other apps, too. FCPX crashes on export in El Capitan. Premiere doesn't bring in the audio when doing a direct import of the AVCHD, but does have the audio when I bring in the .mov clip that iMovie 10.1 creates. Premiere, however, takes about 10 minutes to export the 4 minute clip. VideoPad also takes too long on the export.
We're fine with the import time and file creation that iMovie 10.1 does, so we are totally down with using that solely for the import, then using another app for the editing and export, but we'd prefer to just use one app to do it all. There has GOT TO BE A SIMPLE WAY to export these to 1080 that doesn't take more than twice as long as the clip itself. We've tried matching up the exact codec and other things from the 10.1 clip in hopes that whatever we use doesn't have to reencode the entire clip, but so far no luck. Why in the **** does it take 25 minutes to export this in iMovie 10.1, using the clip that it created?
Other than spending $3000 each for new machines, does anyone have any suggestions?
