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Render/Export Time Estimator
Enter footage duration, resolution, a codec/complexity tier and a hardware tier to get a rough export time estimate in minutes and seconds — a planning number, not a guaranteed render time.
How the estimate is built
This tool multiplies a hardware-tier base processing speed (expressed as a multiple of real time) by adjustment factors for resolution and codec/complexity, then divides your footage duration by that combined speed. A result of "2× real-time" means one second of render time processes two seconds of footage; "0.5× real-time" means it takes two seconds of render time per second of footage.
What this can't do
This is a rough planning estimate, not a guarantee. Actual export time depends enormously on your specific editing software, project settings (effects, color grading, noise reduction, number of tracks), storage read/write speed, GPU driver support for hardware encoding, thermal throttling on laptops, and what else is running on the machine at the time. Two people with "the same" hardware tier can see export times differ by 2× or more depending on software alone.
Frequently asked questions
Why is GPU encoding so much faster than CPU-only?
Modern GPUs include dedicated hardware encoder blocks (like NVENC or Quick Sync) purpose-built for video compression, which can run many times faster than a general-purpose CPU doing the same work in software, though sometimes at a slight quality trade-off versus the slowest, highest-quality CPU encode settings.
Why does 4K take so much longer than 1080p to export?
A 4K frame has roughly 4× the pixels of a 1080p frame at the same aspect ratio, so there's proportionally more data to process per frame — resolution is usually the single biggest driver of export time.
Is ProRes really slower to export than H.264?
It depends on the direction: encoding into ProRes from raw footage is often relatively fast since it uses lighter compression, but ProRes source files are large, so reading/writing that much data can still slow down an export pipeline versus a smaller H.264 source — real-world results vary by software and storage speed.
My actual export took much longer than the estimate — why?
The estimate uses simplified per-tier multipliers that ignore your specific effects, plugins, color grading, multicam sources and storage bottlenecks — any of those can slow an export far below the raw hardware ceiling this tool assumes.