PS CC and timeline.

[mal25]

Hi I am running PS CC on W10 and I am shooting video with a Nikon D750,. I am new to video,  I have been shooting video segments at various frame rates and shutter speeds to test for smoothness etc. but I'm having some trouble with playback. I am shooting at 30, 50 & 60 fps 1920x1080 px & 100 iso, the timeline drops it's playback fps to 21 and as low as 11.  I have been online looking for a solution and found that normally it is running at 21 fps in slow motion, I checked Allow Frame Skipping and it runs correctly in real time but it's very choppy at 11 fps, it was suggested that there's too much data for the computer, this seems unlikely.  I exported the video as a mp4  and it ran the same way, so I tried the mp4 with VLC & WMP and it ran fine then I ran the original .MOV and it too ran fine on both VLC & WMP.  So my question would be... what's up with PS?

Thanks

Chris

[davescm · Accepted solution]

Have you tried letting it play through more than once. The jitter from frame skipping is usually less second time through (you can see the green bar filling in above the timeline clips).

Smooth playback will depend on your PC specs but the bottom line is that Photoshop is not a video editor. It is a stills editor with some limited video added on. 

Dave

[mal25]

Hi Dave,

My PC is pretty good and the fact that it runs okay on VLC & WMP makes me think you're right, video isn't what PS is about.  This is a secondary thing for me and I don't need much more than what I have, Premier Pro @ $20.00 a month is a bit much.  Do you know anything about Premiere Elements, would it be able to run video smoothly?

Thanks again

Chris

[Ekuseni Video]

21fps is not slow motion. Slow motion is created by high frame rates - eg 60, 100 etc. The reason 11fps looks choppy is that it is less than half the required frame rate to produce what the human brain sees as fluid motion. In the USA cameras record at 23.98fps or 29.97 fps and TV broadcasts are made at 30fps whilst in PAL countries the frame rate is 25. The different frame rates are due to the different electrical frequencies used (60kHZ in the USA and 50kHz elsewhere.)

If you want to see great slow motion footage, then watch MotoGP motorcycle racing where they have cameras shooting at 2500 fps and these create magnificent slow motion pictures.

As Dave has said Photoshop is not a video editor, and for serious video work you need to be using a dedicated NLE.