Seeking advice to improve workflow & new hardware

[WilliamB830]

Hello everyone. I am looking for advice on improving my workflow and hardware of a new PC. Hopefully the many experts here can set me in the right direction. Thank you in advance.

I use Premiere Elements 2021 to process videos of my kid's soccer games. The videos are just for parents (“Look at Jenny’s goal” that sort of things). Also my daughter goes through them to see how she can improve.

Games are recorded on my phone. I set it up at one corner of the field at about 7.5 feet high, pointing slightly downward. The recording settings are UHD 4K, 30 FPS, wide angle (0.6x), and HEVC/H.265 encoding. I need to use wide angle to get the entire field. The position of the phone/camera is basically a rough guess because I can’t easily see the screen or make fine adjustments once it’s up there. But the wide angle gives me plenty of margin.

I use only a few effects in Premiere Elements 2021 on the videos.

Corner pin: Because of the downward pointing camera, vertical lines aren’t vertical. Sometimes this is really bad. I move the upper corners of the video toward center to make things straighter.

Rotation: To make the horizon horizontal. The video can be tilted quite a bit.

Zoom and pan/Motion keyframes: To make details easier to see. For example, I will zoom and pan left as the ball moves left, stop there, and a few seconds later zoom in more as the actions moves farther from the camera. I set keyframes directly, and usually “Ease out” from one and “Ease In” to next.

Sharpen: to highlight details.

I also cut out segments before and after the game, and half time.

Once I finish editing/processing, the video is export to H.264, 1920x1080, 30 FPS.

I am using a laptop (Intel i7-8550U, 1.8 GHz) that is way underpowered for this work. It takes about 6-8 hours to export a 1-hour video. Fortunately, I am in the market for a new desktop.

My questions are:

1. How can my workflow be improved? Are there different effects I should use? Pre-process the video in another program? I don’t know much about video editing, so any advice is appreciated.
2. How much difference does the GPU make in export time? According to Adobe, 3 of the effects I use (rotation, zoom/pan, sharpen) can be GPU accelerated. Dell wants $500 for nVidia RTX 3060, $1500 for 3080ti (plus community member Ann B.’s suggested hack). If a GPU can reduce the export time from 2 or 1 hour, I just might get it.
3. Will using Premiere Pro make my work easier? Especially zoom/pan? For every game I have to zoom/pan 20 or 30 times, needing lots of keyframes. I find the Elements GUI clumsy, so I always enter the keyframe values directly.
4. Off-topic, but I really would like to know: Is there any way to raise my phone up high and still accurately point it? If the source video is better, Premiere Elements won’t have to work as hard.

Thank you.

Bill

[Steve Grisetti]

You have plenty of computer power. Upgrading to Pro or using a faster computer won't likely speed things up. A more expensive graphics card would likely do nothing to speed things up. Certainly not in Premiere Elements. It's your overall production that needs to be re-thought.

Investing a few hundred dollars in an AVCHD camcorder with a zoom lens and then actually having someone run the camera would likely make all the difference in the world. Right now you're just shooting phone video and trying to make a decent movie out of it in post-production -- which is costing you hours in unnecessary processing time.

That's my feeling anyway. If you want to get good, usable video, you ought to focus on shooting the good, usable video.

[Bill Sprague]

Another thing to try is to set your phone to record in H.264.  The files will be larger, the quality as good but the computer won't have to work as hard.  Your processing should speed up. 

[WilliamB830]

Hi, Bill. I started by recording in H.264. Then I realized how big the files are. A one-hour game video takes about 25 GB of space on my phone. When my daughter goes to a tournament, she plays four games in two days. It became a hassle to download the videos between games. H.265 videos takes only 8-9 GB.

I didn't see much difference in exporting time between H.264 and H.265 though. But then again, I didn't work on enough videos to really know.

Billl

[WilliamB830]

Thanks, Steve. If Premiere Pro or GPU won't help much, that'll save me some money. (I will get the new desktop still because it's for meant something else.) I can't believe GPUs costs as much as entire computers, just for gaming.

You're absolute right about the overall production. Having a real camera and someone to run it will greatly simplify everything, but not possible. Most of the recordings have very little value. I go through them only if there is something worth sharing, like someone scoring a last minute goal. So pulling a parent away from actual games to run the camera is not a worthwhile trade-off.

By the way, how do you control a camera way up there? I searched quickly, and all I found were specialized equipments with lens on top of poles and LCD at waist level. They cost thousands.

Bill

[Bill Sprague]

By the way, how do you control a camera way up there? I searched quickly, and all I found were specialized equipments with lens on top of poles and LCD at waist level. They cost thousands.

Try a DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo.  It will mount on the top of any long pole and can be fully controlled wirelessly by smart phone.  Shoots 4K too.  $500.  A bonus is a wireless mic where you could record a narrative as the game plays!

[Ann Bens]

Rotation: To make the horizon horizontal. The video can be tilted quite a bit.

If you make sure your phone is setup straight you dont have to do this in post.

If camera is set up high facing downwards there will always be a perspective.

Zoom and pan/Motion keyframes:

If your project is 4K then panning and zooming will cause image quality loss.

Set up a 1920x1080 project then you can pan/zoom up to 50% without loss.

Sharpen: to highlight details.

Usually a bad idea. It will do the opposite.

1. Using effects wont improve your video. Good images start with the recording. Imo a phone is not optimal. (fixed image).

Nor is wide angle and H.265. As Steve pointed out: get a regular camera and a tripod.

2. A new desktop will speed up things significant. You dont need a very expensive gpu card.

Beware Corner Pin is a non gpu accelerated effect so it will never take advantage of the gpu.

3. Will using Premiere Pro make my work easier?

for your kind of videos I dont think so.

Try and drag the image in the monitor around instead of entering numbers for position.

Use the blue wireframe to scale. (lower the magnification).

[WilliamB830]

Rotation: To make the horizon horizontal. The video can be tilted quite a bit.

If you make sure your phone is setup straight you dont have to do this in post.

If camera is set up high facing downwards there will always be a perspective.

Hi, Ann.

I understand your point. Maybe what I need is a step ladder. Cheap and simple. 

Zoom and pan/Motion keyframes:

If your project is 4K then panning and zooming will cause image quality loss.

Set up a 1920x1080 project then you can pan/zoom up to 50% without loss.

Yes, you're right. So when I export the video, I select the resolution to be 1920x1080. Do I still need to start with a 1920x1080 project?

Sharpen: to highlight details.

Usually a bad idea. It will do the opposite.

Thanks for the tip. I find it really hard to select the right parameters for sharpening. 

1. Using effects wont improve your video. Good images start with the recording. Imo a phone is not optimal. (fixed image).

Nor is wide angle and H.265. As Steve pointed out: get a regular camera and a tripod.

You and Steve are both right. It's just that the labor needed for a good source video is not available. That's the reason for wide angle, so the phone can be left unattneded on the tripod.

2. A new desktop will speed up things significant. You dont need a very expensive gpu card.

Beware Corner Pin is a non gpu accelerated effect so it will never take advantage of the gpu.

3. Will using Premiere Pro make my work easier?

for your kind of videos I dont think so.

Thank you. If an expensive GPU isn't needed, that will save me some money.

Bill

[Ann Bens]

Yes you still need to start with a 1920x1080 project.

A real good camera is not necessary. It's the person behind the camera that makes the video. The operator needs to know the ins and outs of the camera in order to use it correctly and get the best result.

You often hear: Oh we fix that in post. But that is not the way to go.

[chaosdsmFL · Accepted solution]

Seeing so much inaccuracy here....  

Here are my testing results from December 2020 using a 1660 Ti card through the BETA program (wasn't supported officially at the time).  I setup my camera on a new tripod, and shot two 3 minute clips at 4K 30fps ~60Mbps.  In Premiere Elements 2021, I added the 2 clips into the timeline, did a crop effect to the first clip, added a 4 second swirl transition between clips, and on the 2nd clip, inverted the colors and added "find edges" effect.
 
I saved my project, then chose to export at maximum quality in 4K 60fps at 100Mbps bit rate. Computer was shutdown and BIOS Intel Graphics option changed in between each run.
 
 Here are the individual results from the exports:
 i7-8700 with Intel Graphics disabled in BIOS: 32min 18sec 

i7-8700 with Intel Graphics enabled in BIOS: 26min 36sec
i7-8700 with Intel Graphics disabled in BIOS with GTX-1660 Ti enabled in Elements: 22min 31sec  not bad!

i9-9900K with Intel Graphics disabled in BIOS: 24min 29sec
i9-9900K with Intel Graphics enabled in BIOS: 22min 9sec
i9-9900K with Intel Graphics disabled in BIOS with GTX-1660 Ti enabled in Elements: 16min 3sec a little better than double the speed of the i7-8700 only 

As you can see, even a very minor CPU (compared to say your laptop CPU vs a modern i5 or i7 desktop CPU) upgrade had a pretty significant impact.  

Even though it wasn't officially supported, and some of what I did was not even processed by the GPU...  going from the supported Intel IGP, to the unsupported 1660 Ti had a substantial impact as well.  

A good CPU will shorten the time needed overall, even while the GPU is helping, and will be especially helpful on effects, transitions, etc that are not handled at all by the GPU.  

A good GPU will cut time by 25 - 50% where it's actually used within the program.  

I would recommend a minimum:

Intel i7-12700K CPU or better

32GB RAM or better 

RTX 3060 or 2070 or better

NVMe Gen 4 SSD for OS drive

Pro is nice, but.... generally speaking, it's not worth the extra $$$ unless you're getting paid for video editing.  

[WilliamB830]

 Here are the individual results from the exports:
 i7-8700 with Intel Graphics disabled in BIOS: 32min 18sec 

i7-8700 with Intel Graphics enabled in BIOS: 26min 36sec
i7-8700 with Intel Graphics disabled in BIOS with GTX-1660 Ti enabled in Elements: 22min 31sec  not bad!

i9-9900K with Intel Graphics disabled in BIOS: 24min 29sec
i9-9900K with Intel Graphics enabled in BIOS: 22min 9sec
i9-9900K with Intel Graphics disabled in BIOS with GTX-1660 Ti enabled in Elements: 16min 3sec a little better than double the speed of the i7-8700 only 

Thank you very much for this information. It is very helpful. It tells me the contribution of a GPU becomes smaller as the CPU becomes better. On the 8700, the GPU sped up the work by ~10 min/30%. On the 9900K, the difference is ~8.5 min/25%. This general trend also agrees with what othes are recommending.

Bill