Variable framerate HEVC files working on average laptop, not powerful desktop - why?

[yatahaze]

I'm having an issue rendering and playing back variable framerate QuickTime HEVC files captured with an iPhone X within Premiere. The video will constantly jump back to start, but the audio will continue to play out of sync.

The weird thing is I have a significantly less specced out Intel laptop that can play these clips just fine over LAN, in the same exact project. My Ryzen 6-core desktop cannot.

I don't know where to go from here as many similar threads say that Premiere just doesn't support variable HEVC, but I can see that my laptop does. Both are Win 10 build 1903 with fully up-to-date Premiere Pro CC.

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey · Accepted solution]

Hi yatahaze,

VFR (Variable Frame Rate) media may cause audio sync issues or cause choppy playback. Please refer to this link to understand how to work with VFR media files in Premiere Pro.

FAQ: How to work with Variable Frame Rate (VFR) media in Premiere Pro?

To avoid playback issues and have better editing experience you may transcode the media file from the compressed HEVC codec to an edit-friendly codec like ProRes. Also, Premiere Pro can use Intel Quick Sync feature which utilizes the dedicated media processing capabilities of Intel Graphics Technology to decode/encode (h.264/h.265 codecs) faster. If your laptop has a CPU that supports Intel Quick Sync, then that could be one of the reasons why it processed the h.265 media faster than the AMD CPU.

Thanks,

Sumeet

[Spirit27312804mvkk]

Hello! 

Is there an alternative to to transcoding h.264 VFR footage into prores codec? I usually work with more than 100gb of lengthy, high bitrate, h264 VFR footage and transcoding multiple of these projects into prores is not disk space or time efficient in my case, is there a different codec that I can transcode to that doesn't take up as much space and also is lossless? 

Thank you.

[Ann Bens]

Handbrake will transcode the files to constant framerate.

[Spirit27312804mvkk]

Doesn't that lose quality?

[R Neil Haugen]

Keep the bitrate up, compression down. ShutterEncoder has an easier to use, more 'modern' UI to do the same thing.

Professional workflows typically can use several generations at need. So there's always been a ton of transcoding used. I work with/for/teach a lot of colorists, most of whom have MASSIVE machines, and ... hate long-GOP H.264/5, especially drone media.

They typically t-code all H.264 before ingesting it into Resolve for grading, completely replacing that original media.

In fact, some wil t-code all media in a project to a single format/codec. Just for best workflow while grading.

Neil

[Spirit27312804mvkk]

Thank you for the reply, am I better off buying a bigger HDD and transcoding to prores or editing from an SSD but transcoding the footage into non VFR. I can't justify spending around 5x the money for the same amount of space if prores feels smoother to edit off an hdd than h264 on an ssd

[Ann Bens]

Its one or the other.