We made exports 6x faster
TL;DR - Since version 2.9, exports are about 6x faster. A 60-second recording that used to take 2 minutes to export now finishes in around 20 seconds.
Exports were too slow
For the first several months of Tight Studio, exporting a recording meant waiting. A one-minute video could take two minutes or more to render out. If you were iterating on a recording - tweaking captions, adjusting zoom timing, trying different backgrounds - that wait added up fast.
We heard about it from users, and we felt it ourselves every day. So we spent a big chunk of the 2.9 release cycle focused on one thing: making exports faster.
The numbers
We track export performance in our analytics. Every time you export a video, we measure how long the export pipeline takes per second of video content. Here’s the before and after, averaged across all real user exports:
| Avg export time per 1s of video | |
|---|---|
| Before 2.9 (v2.5-2.6) | ~2,200ms |
| After 2.9 (v2.9.14+) | ~320ms |
It used to take over 2 seconds of processing for every 1 second of video. Now it takes about 300 milliseconds. That’s roughly 6x faster.
In practical terms: a 60-second recording with zoom effects, captions, and a camera overlay used to take about 2 minutes to export at 1080p. Now it takes around 20 seconds.
What we changed
We rebuilt the export pipeline in three main areas:
- GPU rendering - Frames render more efficiently, with less time spent waiting between each one.
- Audio processing - Audio encoding now happens in parallel instead of blocking video rendering.
- Pipeline coordination - The export flow was restructured to eliminate unnecessary pauses between stages.
None of these are things you need to think about. You just hit Export and it finishes faster.
What you’ll notice
The progress bar moves. Like, noticeably. If you haven’t exported in a while, you might think something is wrong because it finishes so quickly.
Complex recordings - multiple clips, zoom segments, captions, camera overlay - export just as fast as simple ones. The improvements apply across the board regardless of what features you’re using.
Still improving
Export speed is something we’ll keep pushing on. If you’re seeing slow exports on a specific type of recording, reach out at [email protected] - we’d like to hear about it.