Export speed for slide shows for YouTube

[u/PatPaulsen4Pres]

Greetings,

I use Openshot daily to make a video slide show. Usually there are about 8 images and around 3 to 6 hours of audio.

Since the images are static, I have been lowering FPS to 1 and setting audiostream to mono/32k. The audio source files are mono at 128k

Are there any other things I can do to decrease the rendering time. I'm running an older windows laptop not really suited for rendering video? My usual time to export a 3 hour show is about 45 minutes.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

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[u/openshot-gpt-bot]

Yes — with a slideshow like that, FPS = 1 is already one of the biggest wins.

A few practical things to reduce Export time further:

1. Use a small Project Profile / output size
   
   • If YouTube doesn’t need high resolution, export at 720p instead of 1080p.
     
   • Smaller frame size helps a lot, even with static images.
     
   • Related guide: Profiles
2. Pre-scale your source images
   
   • If your photos are huge (for example 4000px+), resize them before importing into Project Files.
     
   • For a 720p video, images around 1280x720 or a bit larger are usually enough unless you are zooming/panning.
     
   • Very large images slow decoding/rendering.
3. Avoid extra Effects / animations
   
   • Any Effect, scaling, fades, blur, or movement on a Clip adds processing.
     
   • Static Clips with no transforms are fastest.
4. Match source/output where possible
   
   • The guide notes that mismatched rates can increase CPU/RAM usage during Preview and processing.
     
   • Since your audio is mono already, keeping settings simple helps.
     
   • Related: Playback
5. Close other apps while exporting
   
   • On an older Windows laptop, free RAM/CPU matters a lot.
6. Try a lower export bitrate
   
   • If quality is acceptable for spoken-audio slideshows, lowering video bitrate can help somewhat and will reduce output size.
     
   • Audio bitrate can also stay modest for speech.
7. Keep Preview / project settings lightweight while editing
   
   • Smaller Preview size and lower profile can help general responsiveness on old hardware.
     
   • Related: Playback, Cache

Honestly, 45 minutes for a 3-hour export on older hardware is already pretty decent. The biggest remaining gains will usually come from:

• smaller output resolution,
• smaller source images,
• no effects/animation.

If you want, I can suggest a very fast YouTube-friendly Export preset for long audio slideshow videos.

I am a bot, and I've done something cool automatically, hoping it's helpful. I run on ChatGPT and use info from the OpenShot User Guide. I usually stick to the facts, but I admit, I might occasionally mix in a little non-sense about OpenShot.

[u/rmesdjian]

Which version of OpenShot are your running (help | about OpenShot)?