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Painfully slow render time?
Is it just us or does Silverback render _painfully_ slowly? We recorded an hour-long sesson, and output the video at the lowest possible settings, and it _still_ took around seven hours to render (on a brand new iMac). Seven hours?? That kind of render time will *ahem* render Silverback useless to us. Any suggestions?
I’m confused and frustrated
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The best answer from the company
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Hi davidc, and thanks for the feedback.
You should actually find the export time will be reduced if you export at the highest quality settings, as it's the compression that is extending the processing time. We realise that this is counter-intuitive, and in a future update we're looking at a way to make it clearer that the trade-off is smaller file size and longer export time vs. larger file size and shorter export.
Another way to reduce export time is not to use semi-transparent video overlay. Processing time will be less with no video at all (obviously), or with video 'on' rather than semi-transparent. The trade-off there is the ability to see activity 'under' the video vs. a shorter export. You might also want to record at a lower resolution if you have a huge screen.
In terms of general export times, we will continue to try to improve performance in future updates, but our tests show that Silverback's export times are faster than other software which compiles screen activity with video, under similar conditions.
When we've used Silverback for long sessions, we've left it exporting overnight. We're also looking into a batch-export feature as a priority, so that you can start exporting several long sessions and leave all of them going at once.
Please try re-exporting the same session at a higher quality and with no semi-transparent video, and if the export time is still as long could you email me (paul@clearleft dot com) and I'll ask you to send me some tech specs about your Mac to see if this is a bug.
Hope that helps!
I’m confident
The company says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Hi davidc, and thanks for the feedback.
You should actually find the export time will be reduced if you export at the highest quality settings, as it's the compression that is extending the processing time. We realise that this is counter-intuitive, and in a future update we're looking at a way to make it clearer that the trade-off is smaller file size and longer export time vs. larger file size and shorter export.
Another way to reduce export time is not to use semi-transparent video overlay. Processing time will be less with no video at all (obviously), or with video 'on' rather than semi-transparent. The trade-off there is the ability to see activity 'under' the video vs. a shorter export. You might also want to record at a lower resolution if you have a huge screen.
In terms of general export times, we will continue to try to improve performance in future updates, but our tests show that Silverback's export times are faster than other software which compiles screen activity with video, under similar conditions.
When we've used Silverback for long sessions, we've left it exporting overnight. We're also looking into a batch-export feature as a priority, so that you can start exporting several long sessions and leave all of them going at once.
Please try re-exporting the same session at a higher quality and with no semi-transparent video, and if the export time is still as long could you email me (paul@clearleft dot com) and I'll ask you to send me some tech specs about your Mac to see if this is a bug.
Hope that helps!
I’m confident
The company says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Thanks for the quick response, Paul. We'll give that a shot and get back to you.
I’m pleased with the quick response and hopeful
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Inappropriate?That seems to have done the trick. We exported it at the highest quality, with video, and it only took three hours. We're trying it now without the video. Thanks for the tip!
I’m much happier
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Inappropriate?Yup -- Took an hour-and-a-half at highest quality with no video. Much better than seven hours. Thanks!
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?Wow, you guys have way old computers! ;-) Okay so technically while the video is recorded is stored somewhere. I believe it's inside a temp directory.. I swear I saw it somewhere, you could just take that video and not re-compress it.
You might do well to use h.264 turbo USB stick, but it doesn't look like silverback lets you select customized quicktime encoding..It doesn't seem to expose that API.
I’m mellonballed
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Inappropriate?Thanks for reporting back, David, and glad that got your export time down to 1.5 hours for a one-hour session with no video, or - more usefully - 3 hours with video. That's far closer to what I'd expect!
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?Woot! When I took out video and rendered at highest settings, took all of 15 minutes. (2.8ghz, 4gb of memory)
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?Even on my reasonably modern Mac the render times make using Silverback problematic. I appreciate that nothing much else can be done within the program. However, could, or does, Silverback support external hardware to turbo-boost the process?
What about....
Elgato Turbo.264 ?
I have included a screen grab showing the progress after 40 minutes on the following settings.
Silverback settings
Video Recording at 1440 x 900
1 hour 18 mins session
iSight capture 320 x 240
Export semi-transparent
iSight output size 640 x 480
Export settings
Export, 100% no compression (fastest)
Computer
MacbookPro 2.2 Ghz - 2Gig ram
29 Gig Hard disk available
OS 10.5.5
No other apps running. Main power with no energy saving interruptions
I’m impatient
2 Comments Add a comment
This answers the question
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Update. The render above completed after 3 hours and 40 minutes. -
From our research it does appear that encoding typically takes 3-4 times the length of the clip, so Silverback is in line with other video applications.
Hardware encoding should cut down export times by half, so we're currently looking at adding support for the Elgato Turbo.264
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