Cross Platform Rendering at DVinfo.net

Owen Prideaux · July 30th, 2010, 08:08 AM

Hi, i'm a film student, my college uses Final Cut Studio 3, which i run on my intel i7 2.66ghz Mac Book Pro, But i also have a beast of a desktop PC. my question is - is there a way to setup my PC to help render my final cut projects and or After Effects projects?? My PC specs are PC running Windows 7 64bit, has an intel i7 860 2.8ghz CPU, 8gb DDR3 ram, an Nvidia 275gt GPU and 2.5TB of storage. If i could utilise the power of my PC to help render Final Cut Projects, it would be a great time saver.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Robert Lane · July 30th, 2010, 10:32 AM

Welcome to DVInfo, Owen; you're now part of the best forum for anything video related.

Just to be clear: You cannot use a PC to render a Final Cut "project", meaning, you can't transfer your timeline in any way to a PC-based editor, render it, and then send it back to Final Cut as a complete "Final Cut" project file ready to be exported out again as a final.

However, you can use a PC to make your *final encode*. For example, let's say you've completed your edits in Final Cut and are ready to then compress it for DVD, web or broadcast. What you would do is fully render your timeline in Final Cut (making sure you've set your motion rendering to "best" in the timeline preferences) and export the entire project as a "self contained" file using "Current settings", meaning you're actually outputting a finalized Quicktime in whatever format you're editing in, such as ProRes, HDV, DVCPRO-HD, XDCAM etc, etc.

Then take that final file - which will be huge, hundreds of gigs, and import that into whatever encoding program you have on the PC such as Adobe Media Encoder, Episode Desktop, MPEGStreamclip etc, and make your encode for your final output. That way you can have one machine that is used solely for editing and another which does nothing but make your final encodes - you could be working on a totally new project while the other one is being encoded for it's final output.

Hope that helps.

Owen Prideaux · July 30th, 2010, 05:57 PM

@Robert Lane,
thanks so much for your answer, i've read DVinfo forums for a long time, but never had a question that i couldn't find an answer to, i have been trying to find out about this for a while but no one has given a straight yes you can or no you cant answer,
Thanks for clearing it up for me.

July 30th, 2010, 08:08 AM	#1
Owen Prideaux Tourist Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Byron Bay, Australia Posts: 2	Cross Platform Rendering Hi, i'm a film student, my college uses Final Cut Studio 3, which i run on my intel i7 2.66ghz Mac Book Pro, But i also have a beast of a desktop PC. my question is - is there a way to setup my PC to help render my final cut projects and or After Effects projects?? My PC specs are PC running Windows 7 64bit, has an intel i7 860 2.8ghz CPU, 8gb DDR3 ram, an Nvidia 275gt GPU and 2.5TB of storage. If i could utilise the power of my PC to help render Final Cut Projects, it would be a great time saver. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

July 30th, 2010, 10:32 AM	#2
Robert Lane Go Go Godzilla Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Scottsdale, AZ USA Posts: 2,823 Images: 15	Welcome to DVInfo, Owen; you're now part of the best forum for anything video related. Just to be clear: You cannot use a PC to render a Final Cut "project", meaning, you can't transfer your timeline in any way to a PC-based editor, render it, and then send it back to Final Cut as a complete "Final Cut" project file ready to be exported out again as a final. However, you can use a PC to make your final encode. For example, let's say you've completed your edits in Final Cut and are ready to then compress it for DVD, web or broadcast. What you would do is fully render your timeline in Final Cut (making sure you've set your motion rendering to "best" in the timeline preferences) and export the entire project as a "self contained" file using "Current settings", meaning you're actually outputting a finalized Quicktime in whatever format you're editing in, such as ProRes, HDV, DVCPRO-HD, XDCAM etc, etc. Then take that final file - which will be huge, hundreds of gigs, and import that into whatever encoding program you have on the PC such as Adobe Media Encoder, Episode Desktop, MPEGStreamclip etc, and make your encode for your final output. That way you can have one machine that is used solely for editing and another which does nothing but make your final encodes - you could be working on a totally new project while the other one is being encoded for it's final output. Hope that helps.

July 30th, 2010, 05:57 PM	#3
Owen Prideaux Tourist Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Byron Bay, Australia Posts: 2	@Robert Lane, thanks so much for your answer, i've read DVinfo forums for a long time, but never had a question that i couldn't find an answer to, i have been trying to find out about this for a while but no one has given a straight yes you can or no you cant answer, Thanks for clearing it up for me.