I just downloaded Shotcut today - so obviously a clueless newbie. I have a video of about 10 short clips joined together with a transition between each one and a couple of text titles. Entire video is just over 2 minutes. It took THIRTY minutes to export. I chose YouTube in the list of formats and didn’t make any changes - just clicked on Export File. Below is a screenshot of what specs were automatically there.
On my iPhone I use Videorama to edit, add transitions and add text, etc., and it is very user friendly and it uploads to YouTube in a short period of time. But I thought I’d try Shotcut because sometimes it’s easier to edit on my MacBook Air than on my iPhone. But if this is a “normal” export time I’ll just stick to my phone. Are there some changes to the specs I should make that would speed this process up? I’ve searched and read through this forum (and most of it was Greek to me), but it seemed that some people said the export should take about as long as the length of the video. But that wasn’t the case for me. Help appreciated…
There are so many variables to video rendering (export).
Are all of your files in MP4 formats?
What are your computer specifications?
I know time is critical when trying to get something done, but with video rendering it’s not an exact science. If you’re using your computer while it’s rendering it will really slow down the process. Video rendering is very CPU and Memory intensive.
I’ve seen know a few people talk about using HandBrake for converting video. If your files are not in MP4 format, or something similar it should help out with rendering time. I have never used HandBrake as I never had the need to use it. @Steve_Ledger, what is the program you’re recommending for transcoding? (Trying to find the name of it in the forum, but can’t find it.)
Edit: Finally found it… “Avidemux”
Then once you have all of the files in MP4, then you can add titles, transitions, etc…
This is a weak device as far as CPU is concerned. Your iPhone is using dedicated hardware chip functions for encoding H.264 and HEVC video. Shotcut does not yet have hardware-accelerated encoding on macOS although that is planned for by end of the year. (Currently, Shotcut on Windows and Linux with NVIDIA can use its GPU).
All of the files are .mov files. Just airdropped them from my iPhone to my laptop. Then dropped them into Shotcut and added the transitions, etc.
I was not using my laptop at all while it was rendering.
And none of this is a knock on Shotcut. I was just trying to find something that would be easy to work with (it is!) when all I do is trim videos a little, add transitions and titles and upload to Facebook. So it sounds like I should just keep doing it on my iPhone. Don’t know enough about “dedicated hardware” etc., to understand all of that. But what little I do understand says that maybe by the end of the year there will be some encoding on macOS that might speed up the process.
According to a graph and generally speaking: if you sit 3 m. (or 10 feet) away from a 50" TV you won’t be able to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p.
And according to a researcher in cognitive sciences (M. Andre Chopin): “After 24 Hz (or frames/sec) you won’t get better, but you may have some phenomenological experience that is different”.
Young trained eyes might get an edge in gaming under higher framerates and resolution (by using peripherial vision and profiting on a still perfect eyesight).
But most people will not notice any difference in the videos if you lower the iPhones video resolution settings (e.g. to 720p HD at 30 fps).
These files will be easier for the MacBook to handle and export will be faster.
I use both Handbrake and Avidemux. But Avidemux is best for direct stream copies, I use it to copy .MTS to .MP4 in order to open sequential files in Davinci Resolve (which only opens the first .MTS otherwise). Direct Stream Copying is fast.
