4k 60fps files with d-log are huge -> playback stutter! Is my solution ok or is there a better way?

[embulka]

Not a very experienced PP editor here...

I'm shooting in 60fps all the time so that I have the option of going slow-mo later in edit.

But the files are huge and I have unacceptable stutter in playback, especially when shooting with d-log.

Here is my cludge solution:

1. Export my 60fps clips (those which I don't need for slo-mo) as 29.97fps mp4 clips

2. Re-import them and now everything is running well.  (btw, I don't see any quality degredation in the slower fps clips.  I hope I'm right...)

However, it makes for a duplicate set of clips on my hard drive and costing a ton of storage.

Q. Is there a better solution?

Thank you for any help here..

- Elie

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Elie,

Sorry about all the problems you are having with media management. Video files are large. If these were ProRes 422 files, they would be way larger. So, your format is already saving a "ton of storage." :-). You need to budget for storage in your overall workflow. Can you buy more hard drives any time soon? It sounds like you might need to.

We can all relate to the poor performance of H.264 files, especially this 10-bit 4:2:2 material. Most of us do just what you are already doing: transcoding the files or creating proxies. You may find that creating proxies might work better in your workflow as you do not need to keep them as part of your project archive. You delete them after your project is complete, so you get that space back. I hope that makes sense.

Hope we can assist in finding the best solutions for you.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Mohammad.Harb · Accepted solution]

set the playback resolution from Full  to 1/8 and uncheck High quality playback

[embulka]

Thanks Mo!

[Andy 1968]

You can find out if your hard drive, CPU or GPU is the weakest link as seen in the video below. Having said that you can try selecting no input for microphone are even try ASIO4ALL drivers. 

[embulka]

Thanks Andy.  I will look into these

[Andy 1968]

You are welcome. If you edit or render H.264/265 you can check to see if hardware encoding and decoding is being used. Nvenc and Quick Sync can be awesome as seen in the video below. 

[embulka]

Thanks Kevin for good feedback.  Coming from the Lightroom world mostly, I was looking for the equivalent of a "Preview" (the low res version of a high res photo) that is easy on the computer.  I was hoping PP has a similar concept but it wasn't obvious enough for me to find.  (told ya' I'm a newbe)  Now that you mentioned "Proxies" it clicked.  I think it will work for me.  Will try soon.

Q about transcoding... if I transcode an mp4 60fps to a smaller 30fps, which lossless format is recommended?

Thanks again!

-e

[Phillip Harvey]

Like @Kevin-Monahan I would also recommend a proxy workflow. You will never have higher quality media than your source, so you keep that and don't have to worry about having a large footprint of transcoding to another source codec that will retain the quality. You just create low res, low bitrate proxies of your source media and edit using those. It's super easy, and you can get rid of the proxies at the end of the project. I use proxies almost 100% of the time.  

It's not really an answer to your question about transcoding to a lower FPS as an H264, because I wouldn't recommend doing either of those. It's simply not necessary. And "Lossless" is a word that sometimes gets asked about but it's not really practical to have actually lossless media. It would be absolutely massive. You'd already probably be suprised at the size of the high quality intermediate codecs like some of the higher flavors of Pro Res, even though they do have some compression on them. Those are designed to retain quality and withstand multiple encodings throughout the post production process without any noticeable quality loss. They are "visually lossless," rather than actually lossless.