Engadget’s view on Pr vs Res

[Oliver Peters]

When a reviewer says upfront that Premiere gets “buggier” with each release, then it would be nice to back that up with examples. But overall this is a pretty balanced overview. Naturally every experience is based on many variables – especially media – and his seems to be based on the codec from the Lumix DSLR. This is a tough codec to work with. And yes, Resolve handles it well – for that matter, better than FCPX. But that tends to be a limited use case. Nevertheless, he covers some good pros and cons.

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Eric Santiago]

[Oliver Peters] “based on the codec from the Lumix DSLR. This is a tough codec to work with. “

I had a GH4 for years as b-cam to my RED.
FCPX worked well with that codec.
No experience with the GH5, have they changed much as far as codec goes?

[Oliver Peters]

I believe that camera uses two codecs like the EVA1. Normal and higher bitrates. One tougher than the other.

EDIT – Panasonic’s specs:
https://www.panasonic.com/uk/consumer/cameras-camcorders/lumix-mirrorless-cameras/lumix-s-full-frame-cameras/dc-s1h.specs.html

4K is H264, 6K is H265.

Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Joe Marler]

[Oliver Peters] “seems to be based on the codec from the Lumix DSLR. This is a tough codec to work with. And yes, Resolve handles it well – for that matter, better than FCPX. But that tends to be a limited use case.”

Exactly correct. The codec is Panasonic’s 4k 10-bit 4:2:2 All-Intra H264 at 400 mbps. It has always been a difficult codec on any NLE I’ve used.

I compared a clip on the latest versions of FCPX 10.4.8, Premiere 14.2.0 and Resolve Studio on a 10-core Vega 64 iMac Pro and FCPX and Resolve on a top-spec 2019 MacBook Pro 16, both running Catalina 10.15.4.

Playback performance on iMac Pro: Re viewer update rate and lag time to JKL input, Premiere was by far the worst, even at 1/4 res. However FCPX was also somewhat sluggish, even with viewer at “better performance”. The latest version of Resolve 16.2.2.012 was much smoother and more responsive, and seems improved over Resolve 16.1.

Playback performance on MacBook Pro 16: FCPX was better on this hardware than the iMP, maybe due to using Quick Sync. But the codec itself is all-intra, which normally would not benefit from hardware optimized for Long GOP acceleration. So I don’t understand that. I didn’t test Premiere on this machine, but Resolve 16.2.2.012 was still much smoother than FCPX.

I’ve tested the similar high-bitrate all-intra 4k codec from a Canon XC15, and it was very fast on FCPX. I don’t know why the Panasonic codec is so slow but it has always been this way.

The fact that Resolve handles it smoothly on the exact same Mac hardware proves the problem is not unsolvable. The Engadget reviewer was using Windows so that shows it’s not Mac vs PC or MacOS vs Windows. It is an application software issue.

DaVinci did a good job on this and both Apple and Adobe have work to do. It is even worse for Apple because FCPX is single-platform and that presumed benefit didn’t help in this case. If you stand still long enough even the slowest competitors will eventually pass you and Blackmagic is not slow.

[Oliver Peters]

[Joe Marler] “DaVinci did a good job on this and both Apple and Adobe have work to do. It is even worse for Apple because FCPX is single-platform and that presumed benefit didn’t help in this case. If you stand still long enough even the slowest competitors will eventually pass you and Blackmagic is not slow.”

I totally agree. For whatever reason the Panasonic high-bit-rate codecs (regardless of camera) seem to be slow. I’ve seen that on both Macs and PCs. Indeed, Resolve seems to deal with it much better. It’s one of the camera formats that I generally always transcode before editing, given the time to do that.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com