Lagging Video On Premiere Pro & Export

[Ryan Holmes]

Where do you store your media files? External drive? How is it connected (Firewire, USB, eSata)? How full is it?

If you’re storing media on your internal boot drive, that’s a pretty big no-no. Your boot drive should be just that – a boot drive for the OS and your apps. Media, cache files, preview files, etc should live on a separate drive (preferably a RAID).

Keep in mind that you are using a AVCHD based codec with NX5. Provided you havne’t transcoded the footage to something else (DNxHD, ProRes, etc.) then the computer is having to do a lot of decoding and processing to show you that image in realtime. If you start stacking multiple layers on there and effects it’s asking quite a bit from your CPU and GPU all in realtime.

So you have a few routes:
(1) Add a storage array designed to deliver good speeds for video editing (you can look at companies like G-Tech, Lacie, Promise, etc.)
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/newsLetter/Understanding-RAID.jsp
(2) Reduce playback quality in Premiere. Instead of playing back at full-quality, drop it to half or 1/4 while editing. For export, obviously use full-quality. But for just cutting and doing FX you can drop the quality so as to maintain realtime playback
(3) Move away from AVCHD as your codec, instead move towards a Mezzaine codec that works well – DNxHD (since you’re on a PC is probably the best choice). Motion JPEG is also an option.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Jonny Michel]

Hey Ryan,

Thanks so much for your information & tips I shall look into this right away!

I currently run my boot OS, programs & cache on my Intel 120GB SSD, its not the fastest SSD but does the job for now.
All my media is on my 1TB Hard Drive.

Do you recon getting another SSD Drive & using that for either media or cache is a good idea & then export on the 1TB hard drive?

Raid is all very new to me & I know little about it so I shall have to do some looking.

So say I moved onto a camera such as Blackmagic, as the recording format DNxHD or ProRes, are these better formats to work with?

Thanks for your help,
J.

[Ryan Holmes]

[Jonny Michel] “So say I moved onto a camera such as Blackmagic, as the recording format DNxHD or ProRes, are these better formats to work with?”

I would argue that DNxHD (and ProRes) are “better” codecs than AVCHD or h.264. However, for certain job types and demographics AVCHD may be perfectly suitable. There isn’t much that is a hard rule here. I’m just trying to offer a “best-practices” workflow. So in many workflows DNxHD/ProRes is preferable to h.264. In my workflow all the material that we shoot gets transcoded to a standard codec, typically ProRes. That works well between our various editing workstations as well as in multiple programs – Premiere Pro, After Effects, Resolve, Smoke.

If you start shooting any of the Blackmagic cameras you’re going to need to increase your storage size. ProRes (HQ) and CinemaDNG take considerably more space than the AVCHD. So you’re shooting at a 24Mbps data rate with your NX5 currently. If you move to ProRes (HQ) on the Blackmagic camera you’re looking at 220Mbps – a nearly 10X increase. So just do your math and see if you have the capability to handle that. And be aware that ProRes can be read on a PC but not written to (i.e. exported). So you can read the ProRes file but you can’t create a new ProRes file

For playback, you can drop the quality of the video inside of PPro as well (I think CS5 could do this…I know 5.5/6 does). So you can drop it from “Full Quality” to “1/2” or “1/4.” The lower quality takes less system resources and allows you to playback smoother. It’s a small drop down menu in the canvas window.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Jonny Michel]

Very true,
I understand that jumping from a camera that shoots AVCHD at 24Mbps to something like 220 Mbps is a massive step so will need to look more into storage sizes & performance on post.

I managed to download some raw footage from the 2.5k version of the cinema camera, once imported into PP CS5 & played with grading, cutting etc the performance was better than I expected. But of course in time with more grades & effects it started to lag, so as you suggested bringing the playback rez down to either 1/2 or 1/4 is a good idea!

I have been looking at ProRes as I have never used that format before & apparently with the blackmagic you get the full copy of davinci resolve which is suppose to be fantastic for file formatting & grading.

Do you use Davinci yourself?

Cheers & again thanks for the help,
J.

[Ryan Holmes]

[Jonny Michel] “Do you use Davinci yourself? “

Yes. It’s a great program. If you’re looking at getting into it I’d recommend downloading the “Lite” version which is free. Start experimenting on that and learn there. If you need the additional features that the paid version has you can spring for that when necessary.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Jonny Michel]

Great, I didnt know they do a lite version.
Be a good idea to have ago with it see how I get on.

Cheers Ryan,
J.

[Jonny Michel]

Gary, I have download the “Lite” version of davinci & the playback is terribly laggy, any tips?
I know I have to find out more about raid etc but even with lower rez videos it still struggles to play them real time?

Cheers,
J.

[Ryan Holmes]

Resolve is all about the grahpics card(s). One of the limitations of the “lite” version is only being able to use 1 GPU (graphics card). The paid version you can attach 2, 3, or more graphics cards and use it for realtime processing. You’ll need to download the manual and read through their certified configurations. You may need to look at swapping your graphics card out for something more powerful if you’re serious about using Resolve at realtime speeds.

But every system has its limits. And you don’t always need completely realtime color grading playback for every scenario. Unless you’re heavily client driven (i.e. client sits behind you and says yes/no, change this, etc.) you may not need an extremely high-end system. Having something playback at 21fps or 17fps may be alright. Just bear in mind that the more nodes you use the more processing your demanding. Color grading is very processor intensive. So if you want realtime with 10 nodes, it just costs $$$$$$! 😉

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost