Mavic 2 Drone Footage - Very choppy in timeline and export - Urgently looking for fix.

[#1]

Hey,

I am currently working on a project for a friend that includes 4k & 2.7k drone footage from the Mavic 2. When I open the footage in VLC it looks great and smooth. However, whenever I import it into Adobe I start to skip a large amount of frames and I understand that this is normal. However, it also skips frames when I export the footage.

I have tried:

- Playback resolution 1/4 and 1/8

-  Rendering in to out inside Adobe.

- Creating Proxies - I can scrub the footage perfectly in Adobe however, when I export I start to skip a large amount of frames again.

For some reason the footage actually plays back smoother inside Adobe when I do not render the footage "in to out".

I recorded the footage with a:
SanDisk Extreme 256 GB microSDXC Memory Card

- 160MB/s read, and 90 MB/s write

- UHS Speed Class 3 rating and video class speed of V30 labelled as “4K UHD-ready” which makes it an ideal choice for 4K footage.

My laptop specs:

- 16gb RAM

- GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q Design (with latest driver)

- Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz

Any help is greatly appreciated,

Noah

[#2]

You need at least 32 gig of ram to edit 4K footage.

What kind of proxies did you make.

Render in to out as in making preview files or exporting.

Post screenshot export settings.

[#3]

You need at least 32 gig of ram to edit 4K footage.

Does that mean I cannot export 4k footage smoothly without having 32gb of RAM?

What kind of proxies did you make.

I downloaded proxy templates from Matt Johnson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b8VtZX62XA)

1280x720 - Cineform (if that makes any sense?)

Sorry I dont know too much about proxies yet.

Render in to out as in making preview files or exporting.

Preview files.

Post screenshot export settings.

I can do this later, do you have any suggested export settings that I can try out?

The video will be exported at 1080p in the final stage.

[#4]

Did you copy the contents of the card to an internal hard drive or are you trying to edit from the card? You can't edit well if you are trying to edit from the card.

What are the complete computer specs, including hard drives (how many, what kind, what is on each, and how full)?

[#5]

Did you copy the contents of the card to an internal hard drive or are you trying to edit from the card?

I copied the contents on my internal SSD.

My SSD is a - Samsung MZ-V7S1T0BW SSD 970 EVO Plus 1 TB M.2 Internal NVMe SSD (up to 3.500 MB/s) 

What are the complete computer specs, including hard drives (how many, what kind, what is on each, and how full)?

computer specs:

- 16gb RAM

- GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q Design (with latest driver)

- Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz

hard drives:

2 SSD's - Samsung MZ-V7S1T0BW SSD 970 EVO Plus 1 TB M.2 Internal NVMe SSD

1. 50gb free (the project is on this one)

2. 807gb free - freshly installed it yesterday.

I will try clear some spaces on my 1. SSD and put the project on 2. SSD and try to export it from there.

[#6]

Hey,

I have tried freeing up space on all SSD's and while it has improved the speed of my Laptop it has not solved the problem with my footage skipping large amounts of frames when exported.

I tried using the export setting presets in Adobe Premiere such as "YouTube 1080p Full HD" and also made some custom ones with higher bitrates.

What steps should I take next?

[#7]

I am also having this issue and my computer is an absolute beast.. it is not the computer like people are saying.. something fishy is going on with premiere and these mavic clips.. The rest of my video I shot is running perfectly smooth otherwise.

[#8]

H264/5 is never good for editing, but in all the time that I've been editing video, anything that comes from a DJI product has absolutely monstrous playback. And that's on any number of high end systems at half a dozen different production companies, my own computers, etc. DJI has some secret sauce to their h264/5 encoding. That being said, I'm surprised that the OP has had issues with Cineform proxies, and regardless of playback in Premiere the final product shouldn't inherit any of those issues.

[#9]

I agree!!!

It's a nightmare everytime I have to work with any footage from DJI. There's no way around it except for making proxies or transcoding the original media.

I have yet to use a system that can edit DJI's files smoothly!

[#10]

Export using Adobe Media Encoder

I'm having the same issue. Plays fine within adobe but unable to export smoothly. I've never had these issues before on this same computer.....perhaps it's an issue with a recent update. I'm sure it has to do with the frame rate of the drone clip differing from the  timeline. In my project I have a drone clip shot at 23.976 fps which renders fine but the drone clips at 29.97 do not. I've tried setting to 80%, using frame blending and optical flow as opposed to frame sampling....but to no avail.

Finally I tried exporting using Adobe Media Encoder with no issue!

[#11]

I'm having the same issue as Noah and exporting via media encoder didn't work for me unfortunately. My project is a mixture of go pro clips, & 4k footage off the mavic 2 pro. The go pro footage is great, the mavic footage doesn't play even after export and render

[#12]

I'm also experiencing the same issue.  Footage was actually working fine earlier, and it's only been seen the last couple of updates of premiere that suddenly it's stopped functioning properly.  Editing on a PC, but I have a Macbook as well, an old one, and oddly if I open the project on that, the drone footage plays and exports fine, even though it has worse specs.  

[#13]

For the first time I've had the same issue with footage from a DJI Mavic 2 Pro when it comes to exporting footage, but exporting the video using Media Encoder solved the issue!

[#14]

Using media encoder didn't seem to make any difference for me. Wondering if it was a graphics card update that caused it...