Render and Export

Hello,

I made this banner fusion clip to overlay on my game footage: it consists of a timer, which teams are playing and the score.
However Rendering and exporting takes 3 hrs for a 90' soccer game. Playback and moving forward, backward during editing is not an issue.

So far I have tried to speed it up by:
1) using render cache (Render Cache Format ProRes 422); all checkboxes automatically cache ... checked.
2)Timeline format and Monitoring = 1280 x 720; I also use 720 for export.

Next I tried to break down the fusion clip; since the timer is the same for all games.
I tried to export the timer as a video file, however I can't seem to get it exported with transparent background.

Is it a hardware issue?
Macbook Pro (2018, 15 inch)
2,6 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7
16 GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

any help to get this exported more quickly is highly appreciated,
Sam

Hello,

Switched from MacbookPro to Windows PC:

AMD Ryzen 7 3800x
32 GB RAM
RTX 3070

but no luck speeding up this render, athough I found that the windows version differs from the mac regarding decoding H264, only way to deal with that is the upgrade to Studio?

But I don't want to spend 300 euro on software if I'm not 100% sure that will solve my problem, since I don't really need any of the other Studio features.

Any help appreciated.

-Sam

For ProRes export it doesn't sound right. It should be way faster even on your hardware.

Hello,

Update on Workflow (working on Windows system described previously):

1) After updating to DVR17, I managed to export my game clock as a transparent video.
So now I have 3 video tracks:
A) Game Footage*
B) Game Clock video
C) Fusion custom title with teams and score (keyframed the text for the score)

*My game footage is:
duration: 1:44:00 (hrs:min:seconds)
codec: H264-MPEG-4 AVC (part10) (avc1)
resolution: 1280 x 720
FR: 60
bitrate: 5000 kb/s (checked with VLC; is this the same parameter that DVR asks for in Deliver Tab, standard 30000?)

Main Q: How can I just overlay the game clock and score and export the file to same quality etc as original?
Q1: Does it make difference to render my original fusion comp or using gameclock video and title?
Q2 : Does it make sense to render cache the game clock to DNxHD LB since it's very simple and small (small banner in upper left corner) or does the render cache also affects the game footage?
Q3 : One problem I see is that my "edit" is very basic; so edit is already done while render is only done for 1-2 minutes. Export Time = 1 hr 45 minutes
Q4: Is Quality parameter in deliver tab the same as indicated by VLC? So I can keep it at 5000?

I tried to follow things, but am not quite understanding.

How long does it take to export just your edited footage with no overlay? Adding the overlay will never be faster than this, so if it takes 2 hours and 45 minutes to export your 90-minute edit, the overlay is only adding 15 minutes or so. Just asking so we have a baseline, in case something is causing your base video to be slow to export.

What size are your backgrounds and other elements? My guess is they're defaulting to your project settings, which could be larger than your timeline -- maybe 1080 instead of 720 -- which probably shouldn't make much difference, but it might help, or maybe somewhere you've gotten an enormous element in there. (You can usually find/set their size in Fusion in the Image tab.)

As for your last, main question, if you bring in your pre-rendered game clock and put it on a higher track in Edit/Cut, it should work just fine. No need to bring it into Fusion. That's assuming it has an alpha channel and actually has a transparent background. Even if it only has a black background, you can just use the Composite tab in it's Inspector window and choose Add mode. (Adding black to the image below does nothing, adding white turns it white. The opposite effect, for black text on a white background, would be to use Multiply mode, since multiplying by black results in black, and multiplying by white results in the same color.)

I can't see that a pre-rendered game clock would help, though. It doesn't take all that much for Fusion to generate some text. (Again, unless you're generating enormously large text and then sizing it down or something.)

Hello,

Exporting the video from DVR without overlay takes 35 minutes.

I'm not sure what you mean by size; XY dimensions or Length? Length is similar to full length of the video, since it is the game clock that needs to be visible all the time.
For XY; the composition is made up from different text nodes, and background nodes with a rectangular mask to add colored bars under the team names. All ends in a transformation node with size 0.53?
Not sure if this is what you mean?

As for your last, main question, if you bring in your pre-rendered game clock and put it on a higher track in Edit/Cut, it should work just fine. No need to bring it into Fusion. That's assuming it has an alpha channel and actually has a transparent background.

I have 2 workflows now:

1) Is adding one layer with a fusion comp containing the clock and scores and export that on top of the game video

2) Adding 2 layers extra: the gameclock as a video file, on top of that a Text+ title containing the score, al on top of the game video

I was just wondering if one of them would render faster, so if I'm using flow 2, I'm not using Fusion anymore.

I can send you the comp file if you want to have a look?

I'm thinking of working with overly-large (width, height, depth) elements or less-optimal-format (for images that might be imported) elements that might cause Resolve to hit your GPU memory harder than it needs to. But I don't know how Fusion works internally, so can't be sure.

For example, if you have a 6000x6000 logo of a team and are ultimately using it at 200x200 onscreen. Or the logo is PNG (I've read about complications with PNG images in Fusion 17). Or the logo is 32-bit color. Or if you're making making your text at 3000x3000. You can see this in the Background, Text+ and other nodes in their Image tab. By default, a Auto Resolution checkbox is selected which I believe fixes the size at your project's resolution, or maybe the timeline's resolution.

Just grasping at straws, really. I don't have a firm answer...

One puzzling factor is you said that your original Fusion comp plays back in the Edit timeline pretty much in real time? If that's true, that would seem to indicate that your Fusion comp really isn't the issue. Unless there's a bug of some kind. Am I misunderstanding that?

I would guess that your two workflows end up with the same performance. It doesn't seem that some text should really slow things down that much. (Though I guess you also have your TimeBar in that render as well, but that shouldn't be bad either.) Have you tried them? You could just set an In and Out point for a 10-minute output instead of doing the whole thing. Unless in previous runs you noticed an extreme slowdown at some point in output.

Hello,
Thanks for the input, I'm indeed using png logo, that I scale using a transform node. So if I understand correctly it's better to scale it to correct size outside DVR.

When people make this social media overlays you see on YouTube, those are generated in a smaller resolution? Not in same resolution as main video?

I'm using the free version of DVR on Windows as shared before

Both CPU and GPU never exceed 21% during export, that's why I'm puzzled. And yes, the comp itself plays back smoothly. The h264 game video struggles during playback, but not during export on it's own (35 minutes for whole game)

I will export small pieces with different overlays: text+; 2x text+; clock video; clock video + text+; fusion comp.

Maybe first redoing the clock video at lower resolution? With and without logo?

Hello,

I did some testing:

First I cut my game video to 10 minutes, and replicated that 6x on the timeline (so 6 video clips of the first 10 minutes)
Than I made different overlays and exported the different clips; some interesting findings:

Custom title: a fusion Comp saved as Macro containing 5 Text Nodes, 4 Background nodes, 4 Rectangle Nodes, several merge nodes to bring it together.
Timer Video: is exported video of a timer with logo and a graphic bar that fills as time progresses.

Export Times:
Clip 1: Video + no overlays: 00:03:55
Clip 2: Video + Text+ (as timecode counter) : 00:04:10
Clip 3: Video + Text+ (as timecode counter) + Custom Title: 00:09:36
Clip 4: Video + Timer Video : 00:04:00
Clip 5 : Video + Timer Video + Custom Title: 00:09:36
Clip 6 : Video + Fusion Comp (containing the Timer graphicd + Custom Title): 00:41:27

Export was done without render cache or optimized media

Hello,

Since last post revealed that it seems my Text banner composition is the cause of slow render/export.

So I broke it down further and repeated export.
I used Clip 4 as my template: Game Video + Timer Video.

I switched the TimerVideo to a Fusion Comp and started rebuilding the banner.

First I added text only: export 00:04:04
Second I added 4 Background and rectangles for Team Colors, but suddenly export time : 00:08:44

Is there another way to add some simple colored bars without doubling the export time?

If you go into the Background's Image tab, you can uncheck the auto resolution checkbox and then specify the dimensions you want, which looks very small. It seems wasteful to make it 1920x1080 (or 1280x720) and then crop it with a mask, instead of making it the size you want from the start. Then use the Merge node's positioning to place it where you want.

This might not make a big difference, and maybe you're already doing this. I'm just going off of your original comp that had masks -- in one case two masks -- for your Background items.