XAVC 4K Editing

[David Roth weiss]

Before you shoot anything get at least one clip somewhere to test, because XAVC is not an easy codec to edit. It’s possible Adobe has optimized Premiere to better support it, but for a long time that was not the case and it was a real bear. You’ll know almost instantly if your computer can handle it, just change the opacity and/or reposition two layers of the same clip – if you drop frames at 1/4 resolution you’ll know immediately that you’ll need to transcode it to ProRes.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Peter Garaway]

Hi Michael,

As David mentioned, XAVC is not kind on your CPU. I have your same laptop as you, I’ll see if I can locate a few clips to test with. If you have a sample file you’d like to share, I can try those as well.

Do you know the FPS your assets will be? 4k60p is something Premiere is struggling with. We’re working on improving this.

Best,

Peter Garaway
Adobe
Premiere Pro

[Michael Harrington]

I couldn’t of asked for more qualified answers, thank you.

Yes, I’ll test, I’m concerned I won’t have time for a thorough test. This project is single camera short-form while future projects are long-form whereas I shoot multi-cam motorsports events resulting in 60-75 hours footage to be edited in to 5 15-minute segments. I agree with Davids quick test procedure, should I expect PPro on this laptop to bog down depending on amount of footage, length of timeline, layers of videos, etc?

Peter, let me know what you discover. I’ve searched the web and so far can not find a XVAC file to test with. I’ll shoot either XAVC QFHD (3840 x 2160) @29.97p or 23.98p 100Mbps/60Mbps. Can you tell me which frame rate plays nice with Pro.

I’m also considering a workflow that includes shooting HD 1920×1080 and XVAC 4K editing both in PPro project HD 1929×1080. Shooting XVAC 4K for interviews and product shots to save production time and enable editor to punch in or create moves with motion and key framing.

Any thoughts?

Michael Harrington
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)
2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2048 MB

Apple Cine Display 30\”
Thunderbolt 2 Dock
GTech GSafe, GTech Drives

Adobe CC2017

[Peter Garaway]

Hi Michael,

I don’t expect you to have any issues with 29.97p and 23.97p footage. Of course this is dependent on how many layers you have and the type of effects used. In general you should be fine though. As David mentioned, XAVC is not the most friendly editing format. If you get into a case where performance is not what you need, you can always go into a proxy workflow using Cineform or ProRes.

If you haven’t seen the proxy workflow check it out here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/how-to/proxy-media.html

There’s lots of other tutorials online you can find as well.

If you need any help along the way, feel free to reach out.

Peter Garaway
Adobe
Premiere Pro