Anyone Able To Scrub 4k H.264?

[thomasm88119238]

So I ran across this video as I was looking to upgrade my PC: 8K Video Editing BEAST! - 16 Core ThreadRipper for Premiere Pro and Resolve - YouTube

The impression I received from the video was you would be able to playback and scrub 4k, h.264 media, without needing to transcode or proxy anymore.  So I built a very similar machine, but was very sad to find that though playback was solid, scrubbing still chugs badly.  I know that h.264 is very poor for editing in general, but I was hoping to make proxies or transcoding a thing of the past.

Diving into deeper research, I saw that Threadripper isn't actually the best choice for premiere, I would been wiser to get an Intel 9900k, based on Pudget's tests.

My question is, are any of you able to edit 4k h.264 (like from a GH4, Sony A7SII etc) with smooth playback and scrubbing without proxies or transcoding?  If so, what kind of hardware are you running for it?  Furthermore, which hardware components have the greatest effect on scrubbing performance?

My specs in case anyone is interested:

CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core (32 threads)

GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SC GAMING Black Edition

RAM: Ballistix 64GB Sport LT Series DDR4 2666 MHz

Boot Drive: Samsung 250GB 970 EVO NVMe M.2 Internal SSD

Scratch Drive: Samsung 250GB 970 EVO NVMe M.2 Internal SSD

Media Drive: Samsung 1TB 970 EVO NVMe M.2 Internal SSD

[jasonvp]

thomasm88119238  wrote

My question is, are any of you able to edit 4k h.264 (like from a GH4, Sony A7SII etc) with smooth playback and scrubbing without proxies or transcoding?  If so, what kind of hardware are you running for it?  Furthermore, which hardware components have the greatest effect on scrubbing performance?

I don't have any footage from either of the cameras you mentioned.  I do have 4K/60 h.264 (75Mbit/sec) and some 4K/60 h.265 (25Mbit/sec) footage from various video game recordings.  My system has very little trouble scrubbing, playing back, etc.

I can't really address your AMD CPU and whether or not it's good enough for this kind of role.  My system starts with Asus Rampge VI Extreme motherboard, and to that I added a de-lidded, overclocked (4.7GHz) Intel 7900X.  I've also OC'd my 64GB of DDR4 to 4GHz.  GPUs: 2 x 2080Ti GPUs, in SLI; they're also OC'd lightly.  But they really don't come into play much unless I add accelerated effects.

My gut tells me you may be throwing too many cores at the problem and not enough raw CPU clock speed.  Premiere likes a good balance of threads and speed, leaning more towards speed.  You have 12 more threads than I do (7900X is a 10-core/20-thread), but I've got the CPU speed.

[thomasm88119238]

Thanks for the reply about your experience Jason, I appreciate it!  From additional research I've done it sounds like clock speed is valued more by premiere than a large number of cores (up to certain point of course).  I'm considering getting an Intel 9900k and overclocking it, it performed very well in pudget's tests.  I'll definitely need to do more research, I don't have much experience overclocking. 

[jasonvp]

thomasm88119238  wrote

I'm considering getting an Intel 9900k and overclocking it, it performed very well in pudget's tests.  I'll definitely need to do more research, I don't have much experience overclocking. 

I don't think you'll go wrong with the 9900K, specially if you can kick its clock speed up.  It can take it.  There are lots of examples/guides/etc out there on how to do it.  The key things to remember are:

• Cooling
• Power(!)

Increasing the second will keep the chip stable under load, but it'll also significantly increase the chip's heat production and output.  Therefore, good cooling is incredibly important; otherwise the chip will get into its "I'm not very happy" temperature zone and start throttling itself for protection.  Keep it coooooooool and it should crunch away with no problems.

[kongc]

I am just interested ... whats the arguments for not using proxies ?? It makes scrubbing so much effortless with right click, create proxies.

[ElJayBronx]

I've added proxy creation (ProRes in current recommended format) to my workflow on ingest and it seems to make all the difference.

I recently upgraded my system to i7-8700/32GB DDR4/RTX 2070. This last (an upgrade from GTX 1050Ti) has made a huge difference in my standard workflow which involves multiple streams of h264 4K (Sony XAVC-S). Even with this firepower, it won't scrub well when all cameras are exposed in a multi-camera array. I have that button to use proxies available and I use it when I need it (i.e. to scrub), it takes less than a second to press or use a shortcut to toggle proxies on or off. I can't imagine investing in even more firepower to scrub better when I have the proxy option available. Even if I have to buy more hard drive space, I'm better off than trying to even further enhance my computing environment (or so I think). I'd be happy to hear anyone else's take on this...

Taking the devil's advocate position in direct answer to your question: I think the only clear downside to using proxies is the drive space they take up. Of course, they can go as soon as you've finished editing the project.

[MobyGamer]

IIRC, PPRo 12 and up use the Intel QuickSync CPU extensions to accelerate playback of h.264.  So an Intel chip with a high clock speed is probably preferable.  When I built my most recent rig, I chose an i7-8700k.  When I media-encode a timeline, I can see both of my GPUs as well as the internal Intel GPU getting a lot of use while my CPU is only about 50% utilized.  So it's definitely using them.