Laggy with multiple video tracks

Adobe Premiere Pro

Laggy with multiple video tracks

Posted by Dale Holman wallace on August 17, 2015 at 2:26 pm

Hi there,

I’m making a 3 minute performance video for an artists.

I’ve got 30 video tracks in the timeline, all synced to the song.

I’m getting a lot of lag! I’ve made proxies that are all 720 x 576 – very very small.

Is this just a natural effect of having 30 video tracks?

What can be done?

Thanks

Alex Udell replied 10 years, 8 months ago 3 Members · 7 Replies
7 Replies

Alex Udell
August 17, 2015 at 3:27 pm

is this a multi-cam setup?

that sounds pretty heavy….

what codec?

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX
David Roth weiss
August 17, 2015 at 4:08 pm

What codec are your proxies?

And, are you using a single hard drive as your media drive?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
Dale Holman wallace
August 17, 2015 at 5:01 pm

This isn’t a multi-cam sequence, just 30 different video tracks.

My proxies are Apple Prores 442 (Proxy).

Yes, the proxies are all running off my internal harddrive.

My system specs:

OS X Yosemite
Version 10.10.2
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
Processor: 4 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 32GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB
Alex Udell
August 17, 2015 at 5:20 pm

OK….so they are synced….

what’s the intent?

comping (layering) or making selects to a master?

30 streams is a lot to ask of a single drive….

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX
David Roth weiss
August 17, 2015 at 5:34 pm

After doing the math, your Pro Res Proxy files (with 2-trks of audio) have a bitrate of about 2MB/sec. With 30-streams, you’re pushing 60MB/sec from a single drive – one drive simply can’t keep up with the data throughout demands required for that number of streams, especially while the same drive is running your applications. You need a dedicated media drive, and that would best be a RAID with at least two drives striped together, minimum. If you intend to do this workflow regularly, and you’d prefer to use Pro Res 422 rather than proxy, a 4-drive RAID will enable seamless playback.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
Dale Holman wallace
August 17, 2015 at 6:59 pm

Thanks both! Really useful info here.

I’m editing a music video of which there are multiple takes/shots (30!) of the same performance.
Alex Udell
August 17, 2015 at 8:03 pm

usually I tell ppl to render out a grid and lay it as the top track for visual ref…

BUT…

with 30 takes…they clips would be so small…I think it wouldn’t be that useful….

technically, multicam is exactly the kind of thing you could use here….

but you would have a hard time playing that back. and again…TINY PIP’s

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX

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