Editing on a Mac

Lurch

Lurch

Administrator
Hi all,

Been trying to search on the forum, but had no luck with any meaningful results, so my apologies if this has been covered before.

I have a late 2013 MacBook Pro (Retina) 4GB RAM and 2.4GHz i5 processor. I've been using iMovie and Final Cut Pro X so far to edit movies. What I would like from editing software is to simply and easily cut clips, add titles, transitions, text, arrows (inc tracking the arrowed target), blur faces/plates, zoom footage and PiP.

iMovie doesn't seem to offer a huge amount, although is great for very basic editing, FCP is better, but takes ages to render videos in H.264 with AAC audio. Just rendered a 5m53s clip at 1080p took about half an hour/40 minutes to render, and is also 600MB (down from an estimated 990MB). The raw footage (Drift Ghost) was 702MB, I just added a opening and closing title. Should it take way longer than the clip to render it?

I am very new to all this, the only editing I have done before was splicing clips in WMM (when I had a PC) of my daughter's concerts, I don't remember it taking that long to do a project.

Any suggestions for editing software that's versatile would be appreciated, I don't mind if it's a reasonably priced paid for product, although being able to trial it would be advantageous if it is a paid-for program.

Thanks all,

Lurch
 
Is it even upgradeable in these? Not had it long, still getting used to it. FWIW, iMovie rendered faster than FCP....
 
What is the model ID? There's an app in your utilities folder called System Information. Open it and under hardware you should see a model identifier.

iMovie probably rendered faster because it was doing less. Check your export settings in Final Cut and make sure you're not doing anything drastic to the output that would take a long time to process.
 
If you can't upgrade the ram take the thing back and demand a refund, because that's ridiculous.

Why are you rendering in 1080? If it's just for YT you can save a lot of time by rendering to 720. There's VERY little difference between the two once YT compresses the shit out of them.

Now for the real question. I've used Vegas Pro for the last 7 years or so. It will do everything you want, but the learning curve is kind of steep, and it can be a bit demanding on your computer. It's expensive as hell too, but that doesn't always matter. One thing you definitely need to ensure is that whatever you end up using to edit will let you render using OpenCL or OpenGL. Using OpenCL cut my rendering times in half, literally. Went from rendering in real time to being able to do a 6 minute video in under 3. You're not going to see render times that fast on an i5, especially with only 4gb ram, but it gives you an idea of the difference.
 
I've always used FCPX to make my vlogs and just use FCP's built in function to export to youtube. Never had any issues with it. As mentioned above I just go with 720p as by the time youtube compresses the hell out of it, there's very little real difference.

I've got Apple's Compressor app thingy too but TBH i've never even used it. It may be worth looking at for you as it gives a massive amount of customisation options of your output file
 
kryten said:
What is the model ID?
Click to expand...
Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,1

Trinith said:
If you can't upgrade the ram take the thing back and demand a refund, because that's ridiculous.
Click to expand...
Had no idea I'd be doing this when I bought it! It's kind of just an office machine in a way, but it will run quite nicely a specific CAD program I need. You might be able to, I'd have to look in to it, but I'll do that when I'm back in the UK.

Trinith said:
Why are you rendering in 1080?
Because it was recorded in 1080p basically. Once I set up for external power to the camera I'll probably record in 720p anyway as at the moment the battery will die before the SD card is full.

<snip> It's expensive as hell too, but that doesn't always matter.
I don't mind learning as long it's relatively intuitive and/or there are some online tutorials, and price may not be an issue as long as I can trial it before forking out.

<snip>...will let you render using OpenCL or OpenGL.
Something I'll have to Google a bit later, I have not heard of these.

<snip>You're not going to see render times that fast on an i5, especially with only 4gb ram, but it gives you an idea of the difference.
Click to expand...
I'm in no real hurry to render per se, depends on how ridiculous we're talking.

monkeystrada said:
I've always used FCPX to make my vlogs and just use FCP's built in function to export to youtube.
Some reason my FCP won't connect to YT, put in the email and password and it said account not recognised

I've got Apple's Compressor app thingy too but TBH i've never even used it. It may be worth looking at for you as it gives a massive amount of customisation options of your output file.
Still got to get it out of FCP... although if it cut down the upload size that would work for me. I had considered format converters, just not got round to looking for one. Techmoan suggested one, need to go back and find which one he suggested.
Click to expand...


Looking at my export settings on FCP, choosing all the suggested options gives you an (over)estimated file size, and H.264 with AAC audio seems to give the smallest file size, how that is relative to rendering I've no idea. Still not sure how some of them can export a 10 minute clip to be bigger than the whole of my SD card though.

Thanks for the comments and responses, much appreciated!
 
To get the youtube upload working in FCPX I had to enter a slightly different set of youtube details than my normal username/password... (don't ask me why!?)

Go to https://www.youtube.com/account_advanced and under Account Information you should see an email address with something like your youtube username plus some letters/numbers. THIS is the username you need to input into FCPX as your youtube username. The FCPX direct youtube upload should now work


Also as far as I know if you do use compressor you don't actually have to export/render the project out of FCP first. You just click File->Send To Compressor

then it loads the project into Compressor and you can export from there with whatever settings you like
 
Thanks for the info. I've seen that email address, I'll dig it out next time I'm on the computer.

Colleague has Adobe Premier I can have a look at I've just discovered. No harm in looking I guess!
 
Lurch said:
Because it was recorded in 1080p basically. Once I set up for external power to the camera I'll probably record in 720p anyway as at the moment the battery will die before the SD card is full.
Click to expand...
I see. Honestly you're just wasting time both in the render phase and the upload phase then. I can see where you're coming from, but the only time you're benefiting is when you watch the video at home straight off your computer. I'd be willing to bet that changing the recording resolution will slightly extend the battery life, though it might not be by more than a few seconds.

Also, hooking up external power while riding sounds harder than it is. If you like I can explain how mine is done. Makes vlogging a LOT easier, no need to wonder about battery life, just do as many takes as you want/need.

Lurch said:
I'm in no real hurry to render per se, depends on how ridiculous we're talking.
Click to expand...
I don't recall the exact number, but last I checked it was closer to $1000 than not.


Lurch said:
Looking at my export settings on FCP, choosing all the suggested options gives you an (over)estimated file size, and H.264 with AAC audio seems to give the smallest file size, how that is relative to rendering I've no idea. Still not sure how some of them can export a 10 minute clip to be bigger than the whole of my SD card though.
Click to expand...
A lot of the file size has to do with bitrate. What I do is set it to render in 720, with the bitrates all matching the source file, have it render to an mp4 container, and the outcome is usually a bit smaller than the (stupidly big) .mov source file. The reason you don't want higher bitrates is that you cannot add data to the file through rendering like that. Just like you can't render a 720 video into a 1080 video. The resulting file will claim that it is 1080, but it will only be 720.
 
I have a couple of plans of how I intend to power, either a USB lead up the jacket, or a 33000mAh USB pack in my jacket pocket. Latter is preferable as I'm likely to jump off the bike and forget I'm attached!! :)

Back to editing... $1000 or whatever it would be in GBP is probably a bit too steep. I have no idea how to get FCP to output the same as the source. At the moment I'm sharing to a file. It's saving as a mov not an mp4, again, not discovered how to change this. I'm guessing the direct share to YT puts it in the best possible format, thus giving the best render and upload times the machine and connection are capable of?

Cheers!
 
Wow. It looks like it's not upgradeable. That's stupid.

As for your output if you output to roughly the same format as your original file so it doesn't have to compress or change much it shouldn't take as long. I also export to a file. I've noticed that the video looks better once it's on Youtube if I do it that way.

When I was on a slower computer I used to export at night and then upload to Youtube the following morning. Now on my Mac Pro I can export and upload a 10 minute video in about 15 minutes.
 
I'll have a fiddle and a google of FCP export settings, nothing obvious as you export, maybe other preferences I can choose.

Cheers.
 
Google will tell you how to change the export settings, I don't use FCP so I couldn't tell you. Finding out the properties of the source isn't that hard, just look at the file properties, somewhere in the metadata are the native bitrates and resolution.

USB batteries aren't a terrible idea, but they're not infinite. I run a USB cable down my back under my jacket and then to the handlebars where my two power ports are. You'll only jump off once or twice and forget to unplug it. Trust me on that one. :)
 
Found the FCP setting to use the source parameters. Not found out how to export mp4, but I think that's the least of the issues! Should get Premier to try in the next couple if days.

Also discovered the size of the libraries FCP and iMovie use as basically duplicates of your source files, so had a bit of a purge!
 
Lurch said:
Hi all,

Been trying to search on the forum, but had no luck with any meaningful results, so my apologies if this has been covered before.

I have a late 2013 MacBook Pro (Retina) 4GB RAM and 2.4GHz i5 processor. I've been using iMovie and Final Cut Pro X so far to edit movies. What I would like from editing software is to simply and easily cut clips, add titles, transitions, text, arrows (inc tracking the arrowed target), blur faces/plates, zoom footage and PiP.

iMovie doesn't seem to offer a huge amount, although is great for very basic editing, FCP is better, but takes ages to render videos in H.264 with AAC audio. Just rendered a 5m53s clip at 1080p took about half an hour/40 minutes to render, and is also 600MB (down from an estimated 990MB). The raw footage (Drift Ghost) was 702MB, I just added a opening and closing title. Should it take way longer than the clip to render it?

I am very new to all this, the only editing I have done before was splicing clips in WMM (when I had a PC) of my daughter's concerts, I don't remember it taking that long to do a project.

Any suggestions for editing software that's versatile would be appreciated, I don't mind if it's a reasonably priced paid for product, although being able to trial it would be advantageous if it is a paid-for program.

Thanks all,

Lurch
Click to expand...
adobe premiere ftw
 
CBR - I used to have PCs, but fed up of replacing them every 2 years, but have several friends with Macs over 6 years old.
 
Lurch said:
CBR - I used to have PCs, but fed up of replacing them every 2 years, but have several friends with Macs over 6 years old.
Click to expand...
You don't have to replace a PC every 2 years, maybe reformat but that just depends on how well you manage your system. Hell my processor is from 2008 and it still blazes lol!
 
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