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When rendering a simple video in FullHD right now (one video track, one audio track), the encoding process takes about one second per frame. Let's say I'd like to render a 5-minute clip in 24fps:

5*60*24 = 7200 frames

1s per frame = 7200/60 = 120 minutes of rendering time.

It seems very slow to me. Is there a way to speed up this process? Mabye use different codec? Or maybe I should render to RAW file and then encode it using an external tool? Right now I'm using x.264 coded with default settings.

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    $\begingroup$ You may want to use an actual video editing program that is designed for that type of work, the VSE will never be as good, and is just something that was added to Blender, as an afterthought. There is quite likely major optimization issues internally. $\endgroup$
    – J Sargent
    Mar 11, 2015 at 14:18
  • $\begingroup$ Try FFMpeg or other external encoder. $\endgroup$
    – user1853
    Mar 11, 2015 at 14:24
  • $\begingroup$ You can see my detailed answer here that I have written for a similar question about speeding up VSE rendering: blender.stackexchange.com/a/44906/20611 $\endgroup$
    – Isti115
    Jan 13, 2016 at 16:00
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    $\begingroup$ @NᴏᴠɪᴄᴇIɴDɪsɢᴜɪsᴇ I've actually found the VSE to be able to render a video edit quicker than something like Premiere. $\endgroup$
    – Ray Mairlot
    Sep 12, 2016 at 20:56

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Using only colored effect strips and a track of music, I rendered 240 frames resulting in the following export times: H264 = 16 secs MP4 = 14 secs xvid = 13 secs

This tests only the encoding engine. I would also suggest checking the dimensions of the media you are editing with. Any scaling (which the VSE will do automatically) impacts on render time. Try to make this 1:1 with the scene dimensions. Further to the issue of scaling you may want to alter the AntiAliasing value in the scene properties as well. Default is 8 samples.

Finally, in User Prefs, increase the 'sequencer cache' value to maximise your memory usage. And check that you are using the Sound Output Device SDL, in the same panel.

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  • $\begingroup$ Were those frames very similar? Was the source material encoded in h264? In my case, the source material was a speed-modeling video recorded at 1 fps so almost every frame was drastically different than the previous one. I also suppose that it was recoded in h264 but I don't have access to this file from here to check it for sure. The dimensions of the output were exactly the same as dimensions of the input, no scaling. The only addition was a watermark layer (again, the same dimensions) alpha overed over the entire video. Here is the final product: youtube.com/watch?v=PdRiQu09qQA $\endgroup$
    – jubi
    Mar 18, 2015 at 13:20
  • $\begingroup$ Yes I did not include video so that the compression engines were not stressed, I was just testing the speed of file writing. It could be that you are having issues with memory, you can also specify a frame buffer per strip in the VSE strip properties panel. Your video is relatively short, so this is odd. Did you apply a speed effect for the timelapse? BTW I really liked the video! $\endgroup$
    – 3pointedit
    Mar 19, 2015 at 3:26
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    $\begingroup$ You were absolutely right about scaling! I DID use scaling, while rendering the final video (from 2560x1440 to 1920x1080). When I set the final dimensions of the video to 2560x1440, the speedup is 2-fold, from 48 to 100 frames rendered per 30 seconds at the start of the video, $\endgroup$
    – jubi
    Mar 24, 2015 at 20:11

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