-
.mp4 files lag and cause crashes when trying to edit playback
Hello everyone,
I record Xbox360 video game footage through my BlackMagic Intensity Pro in HD 720p 59.94 FPS using the AVI Motion JPEG codec. The problem is that the file sizes for these HD games are very large (2-10GB per game) and so I am trying to cut out short clips from these games in order to use them at a later date.
My question is, can I cut a short segment out of the blackmagic .avi files without having to render the files in a new format like .mp4 or .wmv?
And secondly, if I must render these short clips as new .mp4 or .wmv files, why is Sony Vegas & my Media Player crashing and freezing during playback or editing of these .mp4 files?
Whenever I render these short clips (few minutes max), the majority of the quality is retained however I cannot edit these files via Sony Vegas because it causes major slow downs & crashes.
The best way I can explain it is that I load the .mp4 clip into vegas and when I click in the timeline to edit or preview the clip my computer goes extremely slow and if I try to do too much while this is happening Sony Vegas will even crash. If I allow my computer to process that clip for long enough eventually the preview comes up and I can edit the clip but it takes exponentially longer for me to even get a preview of the .mp4 clips as opposed to the .avi files which have no slowdowns at all.
My computer is relatively fast: AMD Phenom Quad Core 3.4 Ghz, 4GB ddr3 ram, windows 7 64bit, ATI Radeon HD 4800 series video card, but anytime I try to edit or play these .mp4 clips it just kills my computer and things seem to take forever to load.
I talked to my brother about it and he said I might need to increase the “i frames” within the .mp4 file when I render it however I didn’t see any option within Sony Vegas to increase this.
Excuse me for my ignorance, I am new to video recording & editing so any help that you guys can provide to me would be greatly appreciated. I have searched the forums quite a bit about this but I cannot seem to find the solution.
Ideally what I want to do is be able to record footage, take the clips from that footage out that I want and save them for later, then be able to return to those clips at a later time and edit them within sony vegas without any slow downs.
Here are my project properties and .mp4 render settings in Sony Vegas:
Project Properties
Render Settings -
6 Replies
-
Depending on the encode, mp4 files can be very CPU intensive.
You will get the best quality from your MJPEG files but as you noticed, they are large.
Try .mxfDouglas Spotted Eagle
VASSTCertified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor -
Ideally what I want to do is be able to record footage, take the clips from that footage out that I want and save them for later, then be able to return to those clips at a later time and edit them within sony vegas without any slow downs.
Since you are recording M-JPEG I would keep the extracted clips in M-JPEG format. Rendering to M-JPEG should not loose too much quality. You might try using VirtualDub and tell it just to copy the video and it should copy the clips out without re-rendering.
I would avoid editing MP4 at all costs. If you are tight on disc space, buy a larger hard drive; they are cheap. If you want to save in a more compressed format, try Sony MXF format but M-JPEG would be my first choice.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Since you are recording M-JPEG I would keep the extracted clips in M-JPEG format. Rendering to M-JPEG should not loose too much quality. You might try using VirtualDub and tell it just to copy the video and it should copy the clips out without re-rendering.
Hello John,
Thank you for this information I did not realize that I could even render the clips in M-JPEG format. I was just rendering all of the clips in .mp4 format because I was told that it has the best quality when rendering clips to upload to YouTube.
I will also try VirtualDub and see if I can just copy the clips without re-rendering.
Also, I was reading the YouTube help for supported file types and they post:
Here’s the list of some well-known formats which YouTube supports:WebM files (Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codec)
.MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files – (typically supporting h264 and mpeg4 video codecs and AAC audio codec)
.AVI (Many cameras output this format – typically the video codec is MJPEG and audio is PCM)
.MPEGPS (Typically supporting MPEG2 video codec and MP2 audio)
.WMV
.FLV (Adobe – FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio)So I might be able to upload the actual .avi files and keep the video in MJPEG format.
Regards,
Trent -
I was just rendering all of the clips in .mp4 format because I was told that it has the best quality when rendering clips to upload to YouTube.
And you were told correctly. But that’s not the question you asked. You asked what format to save your videos to so that you can work on them later. That’s a very different question from “what’s the best delivery format for YouTube”
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Well thanks again for the information.
So you are saying an .mp4 rendered file uploaded to youtube is going to have better quality than uploading an .avi file rendered with the MJPEG codec?
How can that be since the .avi file was the original file recorded from the BlackMagic Intensity Pro?
Sorry for my ignorance, I am new to video editing.
-
[Trent Bingham] “So you are saying an .mp4 rendered file uploaded to youtube is going to have better quality than uploading an .avi file rendered with the MJPEG codec?”
No I did not say that MP4 will have better quality that MJPEG although for a given bit-rate MP4 can give higher quality than MJPEG. I was just answering “what is the best format to upload to YouTube.” MP4 gets the job done given the file size limits of YouTube (although they have gotten larger lately). You can upload MJPEG or any format you want as long as you stay within the file size limits because MJPEG requires more bits and a larger file size to match the quality of MP4 at a lower bit rate.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up