Inspiring

Question

Choppy H264 playback - hard drive speed or connection?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
January 2, 2022
4 replies
3227 views

1.) I edit on a MacBook Early 2015 with a 2.7 GHz Intel i5. H264 files sometimes play back choppy.

In buying a new external hard drive, would any of these factors help with the choppy playback:

A.) Thunderbolt 2?

B.) 7200 rpm vs 5400 rpm?

Or is the issue primarily with my GPU? Would the best solution be an external GPU or a new computer?

2.) When I import HLS H264 video, it's definitely choppy. Do newer computers play back HLS smoothly? Or is the only solution to convert in Shutter Encoder or Handbrake?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Regarding question 2, since you're on a Mac right-click the clip(s) in the Finder and choose Encode Selected Video(s). In the options dialog box, choose ProRes.

B

Baffy19

Legend

I use Win. Most of the problems are on the iMac. At least, that's what I said, because I follow user posts.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

It's i5, i7, and i9 one way or the other. Wouldn't it be something if our Windows workstations were magically trouble free?

If you're looking for a great machine to just take out of the box and turn on and run any of the Adobe Creative Cloud applications, it's hard to beat an iMac.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Transcode to Apple ProRes 422 Proxy.

Create new Sequences from one of the Apple ProRes 422 Proxy clips.

Make sure the Sequence Video Previews are also set to QuickTime Apple ProRes 422 Proxy.

Expoert to QuickTime Apple ProRes 422 Proxy.

Transcode the ProRes 422 Proxy to H264 or HEVC H265 Adobe Media Encoder.

Or...

Use the Premiere Pro Proxy workflow and create 1280-by-720 Apple ProRes 422 Proxy clips. Full Resolution exports will be slow, but editing in Proxy mode will be faster.

B

Baffy19

Legend

I'm sorry, do you understand how many incompetent actions a user must perform in order to correctly reproduce his material in a professional product? You understand what you are talking about and your actions scare away users. Imagine the situation, you have a big project. People have chosen your advertised product and are aiming to deliver the project on time. But not here. You need to do the actions described by you first, and only after hours or days, depending on the complexity of the project, a person exhausted by the fate of the product thinks how much more time he will need. Media playback on the timeline is the basis from which to start and solve in the near future. Users should not feel uncomfortable playing their material on the timeline. They trusted you. Please do it

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

For the entire history of digital video, there have been acquisition CODECs, editing CODECs and delivery CODECs.

H264 and H265 have never been editing CODECs.

Any of the CODECs that are supported for Premiere Pro's Smart Rendering are editing CODECs.

For example, ProRes is a Smart Rendering CODEC. If you shoot ProRes and edit ProRes, you're working really, really quickly.

One of the reasons Avid Media Composer is the most used NLE in feature film work and broadcast is that it forces any footage imported to be Avid DNx upon import if it isn't already. Media Composer does have an option to bypass this (Avid Media Acces), but almost no one uses it becsuse it means a potential loss of speed and efficiency. While Premiere Pro doesn't force that, the same speed and efficiency can be utilized simply if the user chooses to do it. You may notice that DNx is also a Smart Rendering CODEC.

Premiere Pro could use a "Pro Mode" where we check either ProRes or DNx and it handles making sure everything is ProRes or DNx for us - it would be very Avid like.

You can switch to something else like Avid, Final Cut Pro, Resolve; however, you'll have to pick a CODEC that's good for editing (we're back to ProRes, DNx, or Blackmagic) for the Timeline even if you have imported H264 or H265.

Computers and mobile devices (in particular, iPads and iPhones) are getting extremely powerful and have decated featues to make processing delivery CODECs much, much faster (both for compression and decompression). That does not magically turn a delivery CODEC into an editing CODEC.

A

Andy 1968

Inspiring

On the Mac side you should be able to download iStats to see if the CPU or hard drive is getting pegged at 100%. That being said H.264 does not require much throughput from the hard drive. My guess is the CPU is being pegged at 100%. Can you try playing back the video at 1/4 resolution?

K

KazuTaAuthor

Inspiring

So, in buying a new external hard drive, the connection (Thunderbolt 2 vs USB 3.0) shouldn't make a difference in H264 choppy playback, should it?

A

Andy 1968

Inspiring

A new hard drive will probably not help. If it were Pro Res, BRAW or uncompressed the hard drive might get pegged at 100% but I doubt your H.264 is maxing out the HD. As I stated you can get iStats to checkout your systems performance. Maybe your hard drive is the weakest link but my guess would be the CPU.

Ann Bens

Community Expert

Your solution is to transcode to an edit friendly codec.

K

KazuTaAuthor

Inspiring

It's for personal use, not for professional work, and the files are over 40 mins long; so it's much easier (and takes up far less disk space) to link to the original H264 rather than to transcode.

Since I'm buying a new, non-SSD external hard drive, would the connection to the hard drive (ex. Thunderbolt 2 rather than USB 3.0) play a significant factor in my computer being able to read these files more quickly? I'm guessing these factors would be negligable, compared to CPU, GPU, and RAM, or using an SSD drive?

Kevin-Monahan

Community Manager

Hi KazuTa,

Sorry. Are these files from a camera? If not, you probably need to transcode them if they are containing a variable frame rate. These "VFR" clips are most likely the case if you downloaded them or if they came from a program like OBS.

If you can verify that these are constant frame rate files using shareware MediaInfo (tree view), then we can troubleshoot further. If not, try transcoding to H.264 or an editing codec in Shutter Encoder. You can always delete the files later.

Macs from 2015 probably are not meeting system requirements in the CPU and GPU department, so transcoding is a pretty normal thing to do anyway. I don't think the hard drive setup will help nearly as much. Good system maintenance can also help. Be sure to delete media cache from the Libary on the Mac between major updates.

Thanks,

Kevin

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community & Engagement Strategist – Pro Video and Audio

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