Then, after it was published, I started to hear that people couldn’t replicate the speed increase. I decided I’d have to figure out why I was seeing behavior others weren’t. I ran some more tests, and finally figured out my process is flawed, causing the long exports when the sequence is open in the timeline.

As background, here’s my general workflow to layoff to XDCAM. I layoff on average 2 or 3 a day, and I’ve found this works best with my setup.  First, I export my timeline to a Final Cut Server watch folder that converts it to XDCAM. I work in a variety of formats, so this moves the conversion into the background so I can continue working. Then, I import it into Final Cut on a different computer that is set up to export to XDCAM. Because Compressor makes the audio channels into stereo, instead of the dual mono required to export to XDCAM, I make a multiclip sequence. This makes a sequence with the dual mono audio channels. (For a more in-depth look at why I do this, and how, check out this article - http://jamessw.com/blog/2010/01/making-xdcam-duplicates-with-correct-timecode/ ).

It turns out that my long export times are due to having a multiclip in the sequence that I was exporting. By simply collapsing the multiclip, I was able to almost get the same speedup as closing the sequence in the timeline.

Here are some results from tests I ran, listed slowest to fastest. All times are h:mm:ss. Tests were done on FCP 6.0.6 running on a MBP with a 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo Processor and 4 GB of RAM.

12 minute sequence

Timeline open, with regular Multiclip- 2:12:32 (yes, actual time exporting was over 2 hours)

Timeline open, with Multiclip collapsed 0:01:50

Timeline closed, with regular Multiclip- 0:01:01

Timeline closed, with Multiclip collapsed: 0:00:45

2.5 minute sequence

Timeline open, with regular Multiclip- 0:17:40

Timeline closed, with regular Multiclip- 0:00:12

Timeline open, with Multiclip collapsed 0:00:09

Timeline closed, with Multiclip collapsed: 0:00:08