Video rendering problems

[djteknovibe]

I'm using Sony Movie Studio Platinum 13 and importing GoPro Hero 3+ 2.7k raw video files that I compile to make one video and I render at 4K resolution, the problem i'm getting is the resulting file sizes are simply massive and the videos stutter, both audio and video stutter when I try to play them back on my computer. They even stutter like crazy and audio keeps dropping out and cutting back in when I put the video files on a USB stick and play them on my tv which has USB inputs. Could this video and audio stutter and drop outs be because of the massive file sizes?



For example one video is 2 minutes 45 seconds long and is 1.92gb and the other is 1 minute 50 seconds and is 1.42gb.

[newpball]

Working with 4K requires powerful hardware.

What's the hardware you are using? OS, bit size, Chipset, CPU, GPU, and what drive speeds do you have?

I can tell you in advance that if it the hardware is insufficient you have only two options:

1. Get better hardware.
2. Do 1 or 2.5k at the most.

For example one video is 2 minutes 45 seconds long and is 1.92gb and the other is 1 minute 50 seconds and is 1.42gb.

And the problem with that is?

[djteknovibe]

I'm using a Lenovo Y50-70 laptop. It's an Intel Core i7 4710HQ 2.5Ghz processor, 16GB RAM, 1TB 7200RPM HDD and is running Windows 7 64 Bit. I've got 819GB free space and have used 111GB so far. I've got it connected to a Panasonic TX58AX802 58" 4K tv via the laptop's 4K HDMI output. The resolution on the internal graphics card is set to the tv's native resolution os 3,840 x 2,160. The video data rate of one of the videos is 98832kbps and total bit rate is 100376kbps. The audio bit rate is 1544kbps.

The chipset is Intel 8 Series Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller. The laptop has two graphics cards, an NVidia GeForce GTX860M and an Intel HD Graphics 4600 but only uses the NVidia for gaming as far as i've read, all other tasks including the laptop's HDMI output use the Intel one. I am in the next few weeks replacing the 1TB HDD drive for a Samsung EVO 850 1TB SSD but i'm readin on how to clone the built in drive so I don't have to do a reocvery and lose all my files and everything when changing the drives.

[pandy]

Many factors can be important (limited USB performance too). Go for HD not 4k.

[djteknovibe]

Yeah but USB performance has nothing to do with whether or not 4K videos that are on my laptop will play correctly, I wanna record, edit and play in 4K, that's why I bought a 4K tv, a 4K laptop and a camera capable of recording in 4K. I didn't spend all that money to record in less quality than my equipment can record in.

[Detmek]

Bitrate/filesize is as expected to be for 4k resolution. Check CPU usage with Task Manager and GPU usage with GPU-Z during playback on your laptop to see if CPU or GPU are bottleneck.

[djteknovibe]

I haven't got a clue what to look for when looking at the CPU usage

[newpball]

Honestly I do not understand why people want to use a laptop for video editing but anyways your specs are a bit thin for 4K but with a lot of patience I suppose you could work with it. Is your hard drive 7200k?

[Detmek]

I haven't got a clue what to look for when looking at the CPU usage

If, during playback your CPU usage is 100% or near it you need better CPU. Or you need to set decoder to use ASIC for decoding, eather QuickSync, DXVA or Nvidia CUDA, whatever works on your system.

Do the same thing for GPU with GPU-Z. You need to find if your hardware is a problem or not. Slow or fragmented HDD can also be the problem. What player and render do you use on laptop?

[_Al_]

The footage is 2.7k as you say, why would you upscale to 4k? Video will not get any better. Just to know how that 4k is handled?

To look at it at video and audio settings, leaving aside hardware ,

audio bitrate seems to be way too much. 1500kbps, start with 256kbps.
Then did you encode with CBR in Vegas? That could be way too much unnecessary video bitrate as well. So 2pass VBR then? In that case you might waste bitrate again. Try to lower the average as low, as you do not get artifacts. I'd encode using CRF outside of Vegas, but that you can do only using dmfs, where CRF only distributes bitrate if necessary, and easy settings for better playability could be set for encoder, but that is advanced. You can start double checking those video settings in Vegas.

[newpball]

The footage is 2.7k as you say, why would you upscale to 4k? Video will not get any better. Just to know how that 4k is handled?

To look at it at video and audio settings, leaving aside hardware ,

audio bitrate seems to be way too much. 1500kbps, start with 256kbps.
Then did you encode with CBR in Vegas? That could be way too much unnecessary video bitrate as well. So 2pass VBR then? In that case you might waste bitrate again. Try to lower the average as low, as you do not get artifacts. I'd encode using CRF outside of Vegas, but that you can do only using dmfs, where CRF only distributes bitrate if necessary, and easy settings for better playability could be set for encoder, but that is advanced. You can start double checking those video settings in Vegas.

_Al_, out of curiosity why do you aim to lower the bitrate to as low as possible without seeing artifacts.

It is filesize that worries you? Do you think that highly compressed video renders easier?
Just trying to understand the motivation.

It seems to me that if someone commits to 4K he should realize that comes with a heavy performance penalty.

[_Al_]

_Al_, out of curiosity why do you aim to lower the bitrate to as low as possible without seeing artifacts.

It is filesize that worries you? Do you think that highly compressed video renders easier?
Just trying to understand the motivation.

It seems to me that if someone commits to 4K he should realize that comes with a heavy performance penalty.

If it was my situation, before going into hardware capabilities I'd try to give hardware only so much data that is needed. He did not come back to tell us if his video is 4k CBR, constant bitrate, which might be too much. Just lots of data that might not be needed.

To reduce bitrate does not mean he has to crank up settings to make it more difficult to decode. Because his encoder just might distribute too much data in the first place using CBR or average that is too high. It is just speculation.

[djteknovibe]

The footage is 2.7k as you say, why would you upscale to 4k? Video will not get any better. Just to know how that 4k is handled?

To look at it at video and audio settings, leaving aside hardware ,

audio bitrate seems to be way too much. 1500kbps, start with 256kbps.
Then did you encode with CBR in Vegas? That could be way too much unnecessary video bitrate as well. So 2pass VBR then? In that case you might waste bitrate again. Try to lower the average as low, as you do not get artifacts. I'd encode using CRF outside of Vegas, but that you can do only using dmfs, where CRF only distributes bitrate if necessary, and easy settings for better playability could be set for encoder, but that is advanced. You can start double checking those video settings in Vegas.

Because Sony Movie Studio Platinum 13 gives you many options and one isn't 2.7k, you either have 1080P or 4K and I chose 4K as it at least keeps a lot more quality than rendering at 1080P. I tried 1080P and the 2.7K video rendered at 4K is much better quality. I had the GoPro Hero Hero 3+ which only recorded in 4K at 15fps so I chose to always record in 2.7K at 30fps. But soon i'm getting a Hero 4 which can record in 4K at 3fps.


newpball,,,

Yes the standard hard drive is 7200rpm but soon i'm upgrading it to a Samsung Evo 850 SSD drive which is also 1TB same as the standard 7200rpm one I have in my laptop at present. Also I use a laptop because it's a 4K laptop and can output video in 4K from it's HDMI port which I have connected to my Panasonic TX58AX802 tv via the tv's 'Display Port' which is one of two 4K inputs on the tv, the other is HDMI4, the rest are 1080P inputs. I needed a new laptop to take with me on the road so I got a powerful Lenovo Y50-70 4K laptop instead of a desktop pc and a 4K capable graphics card. Also saying I should know 4K comes with a performance penalty, yeah I know 4K takes massive system resources, 1080P rendered videos play fine on my laptop, it's only 4K videos that suffer from audio and video stutter. I just am not 100% sure if it's the lack of CPU power (even though my laptop has loads of ram and a powerful i7 processor) or whether it's my hard drive that's not fast enough. I guess when I get the Samsung Evo 850 SSD in my laptop i'll be able to see if it was the hard drive not being fast enough. Oh and yes the video is constant bitrate.

[_Al_]

You do not want to upscale, it is just waste of lots of bitrate and not optimal anyway, just change resolution in that export template to the same resolution as your videos are. Names for those templates are mere suggestions.

And bitrates you can change also, those values can be changed. If not, use the other MainConcept avc or Sony avc exports, template where those presets can be changed.

[djteknovibe]

That's what I used to do use the Sony AVC Main Concept AVC presets and then change the resolution to the same as the videos I recorded and every single time I tried to render Sony Movie Studio Platinum 13 would freeze, the rendering timer was still going but the progress bar froze and it could be hours and it'd not move. I contacted Sony about it and they told me maybe the 2.7K reolution was causing it and they told me to use either the 4K or 1080P and ever since using those two i've not had any problems with Movie Studio Platinum 13 freezing. Oh and I checked the CPU useage last night while playing one of the 4K videos I rendered and the useage was between 68% and 100%, it keept going up, then down, then up and staying at 100% for a few seconds then down to maybe 84% then to 100% and staying there again. So it looks like as powerful as my laptop is, it's not powerful enough to play 4K videos I create using Movie Maker Platinum 13. I will say though that 4K videos I download from youtube work flawlessly. Maybe it's the massive bitrate that the Sony XAVC S 4K preset in Movie Studio uses to render 4K videos.

[_Al_]

Do they freeze both, MainConcept and Sony? Can you post pictures for those settings, and also did you try fix that audio to 256kbps?
Also, do you have set project properties to the same values as your clips are? Better to set it that way.

[djteknovibe]

Yeah I set the audio bitrate at 192kbps when I tried the Sony AVC and Main Concept AVC, the Main Concept will start rendering but hang instantly and the timer keeps going and going but the render process bar doesn't even get to 1% at all, no matter how long I wait. The Sony AVC wouldn't even get to the rendering process window as it instantly threw up an error saying "An invalid argument was specified". Plus as far as I can see you can't customize the Sony XAVC S setting at all except to change the resolution and frame rate, you have no options to cusomise the bitrate. I have the project settings matched to the video settings already. I don't get any problems as far as rendering when rendering in 1080P or 4K, it's only 2.7K which just will not render at all.

[_Al_]

ok, I try to update some batch files later to export those mp4's from Vegas, using Debug mode frame server. I post it later. It looks like Sony had not put that UHD stuff together yet, did not tuned it up in their export modules, where perhaps no custom resolutions are allowed yet, or it is done deliberately because Platinum is not PRO version.

Frame server can get around that. Exporting your project properties. And also x264 encoder would be used set up to CRF encoding, which is going to be critical to choose for those UHD resolutions. It looks like they are not going to implement constant quality encodings into video editors soon. (Unless you use something like AviUtl , )

[djteknovibe]

I'm getting a GoPro Hero 4 soon and will record in only 4k, everytime so when I get one i'll have no rendering problems I shouldn't think, the only problem i'll have then is the audio and video stutter from the sheer massive bitrates of 100376kbps of edited 4K vdeos but that like has been said is probably the fact that the powerful Intel i7 processor in my laptop isn't powerful enough. Someone mentioned to me today about using the NVidia GeForce 860M graphics card in my laptop but I have no idea how to set it to use that one instead of choosing to use the intel one which it does for everything except gaming by default.

[newpball]

I'm getting a GoPro Hero 4 soon and will record in only 4k, everytime so when I get one i'll have no rendering problems I shouldn't think, the only problem i'll have then is the audio and video stutter from the sheer massive bitrates of 100376kbps of edited 4K vdeos but that like has been said is probably the fact that the powerful Intel i7 processor in my laptop isn't powerful enough. Someone mentioned to me today about using the NVidia GeForce 860M graphics card in my laptop but I have no idea how to set it to use that one instead of choosing to use the intel one which it does for everything except gaming by default.

Again, why edit video with a laptop?

[djteknovibe]

I'm getting a GoPro Hero 4 soon and will record in only 4k, everytime so when I get one i'll have no rendering problems I shouldn't think, the only problem i'll have then is the audio and video stutter from the sheer massive bitrates of 100376kbps of edited 4K vdeos but that like has been said is probably the fact that the powerful Intel i7 processor in my laptop isn't powerful enough. Someone mentioned to me today about using the NVidia GeForce 860M graphics card in my laptop but I have no idea how to set it to use that one instead of choosing to use the intel one which it does for everything except gaming by default.

Again, why edit video with a laptop?

I'm not typing all that again just because you didn't bother reading the reply to you asking me the first time, I already told you why in message #14 above, read it and you'll have your answer.

[_Al_]

I uploaded Dmfs avi to mp4.zip, it is about 8.6MB total, I put info there how to use it, it works with frame serving and avi's, it makes mp4 (H264 video and AAC audio). Install this Avisynth and dmfs. There is info how to use it.

You could export from Vegas into whatever resolution you want. I made it more better and flexible. Avisynth script or all command line variables (for x264 or AAC encoder) could be changed in INI file. If you do not resize with Avisynth (no resize line is present), video would have resolution like Vegas project, so Vegas project properties better match with clip properties. You should export dmfs always like that. Those UHD resolutions, need to be exported using CRF otherwise it looks like colossal waste of bandwith. You just have to find your proper CRF number, that works for you. Lower CRF , better quality, but bitrate is higher. Encode some 10seconds and check with bitrate viewer what bitrate was actually distributed, just get to know it first what quality (crf number) is giving what bitrate.

[newpball]

I'm not typing all that again just because you didn't bother reading the reply to you asking me the first time, I already told you why in message #14 above, read it and you'll have your answer.

Yes, you wrote you need it on the road.

So you want to edit 4K on a 15.6 display?

How realistic is that you in your mind?

It seems to me that a 4K screen that is 15.6 inch 'tall' is just a complete waste of money.

And I assume you are not taking your big TV with you on the road either.

Suit yourself but I think doing video editing on the road is nonsense, unless you are doing semi-live editing of sport or live concerts but then you would have mobile studios in trucks or something like that.

Frankly I would not recommend you edit 4K with a monitor under 30 inch, and that's pushing it already.

And using a TV for editing.....?

[_Al_]

Your responses get sillier and sillier man, he records whatever quality , his choice, and we do not record because of what monitor or TV we temporarily own, I recorded HD for years not even having proper HD TV screen. The objective is here how to play it, looking for options, not some other crap.

[newpball]

The objective is here how to play it,

That's not what I understood, to me it was clear he wants to edit 4K video.

Editing 4K video is still very much high end, not to tell the truth to people who want to start doing that and instead comfort them in their wrong choices is doing everybody a great disservice.

How can you honestly not say anything when someone tells you they want to edit 4K on a 15.6 inch screen?

It's like someone who wants to step on the ice you know is too thin, would you consider yourself a nice guy by saying "go ahead good for you" and scold those who say you can't?

[Cornucopia]

Ever heard of proxy editing?!!

I could edit 40k video if I want with proxy editing. So stop with the "it can't be done" BS.

AFA resolution matching goes, very rarely does one need to see each & every individual pixel independently in order to make a decision on an edit. Compositing & FX has greater resolution requirements. Color or 3D grading, even more still. But those can still be accommodated on a smaller screen by "magnifying" the image with a 1:1 pixelmapping feature (either built-in module, or separate utility app). For day to day edit work, however, even SD proxies can and do get the job done, if your system isn't set up for native editing nor DI mezzanine transcoding.

That's being honest (without an agenda).

Scott

[djteknovibe]

The objective is here how to play it,

That's not what I understood, to me it was clear he wants to edit 4K video.

Editing 4K video is still very much high end, not to tell the truth to people who want to start doing that and instead comfort them in their wrong choices is doing everybody a great disservice.

How can you honestly not say anything when someone tells you they want to edit 4K on a 15.6 inch screen?

It's like someone who wants to step on the ice you know is too thin, would you consider yourself a nice guy by saying "go ahead good for you" and scold those who say you can't?

Where exactly did I say I was editing on a 15.6" screen? I already said that I bought a 4K laptop to take on the road and connect it's 4K HDMI output to my 4K tv when I get back from trips on the road, I have also calibrated my tv with a Spears & Munson calibrating blu ray disc which helps too and am thinking about getting an ISF technician in to calibrate it professionally so the image is as accurate as possible. The Panasonic TX58AX802 tv I have is absolutely awesome image quality so it's easily good enough quality to use for video editing. I bought a 4K laptop so I could watch the video in 4K while on the road and also so when I got back I could hook it upto my 4K tv. I couldn't afford a 4K laptop AND a new desktop computer with a 4K capable graphics cards and enough ram and processor power to handle 4K so I chose between a desktop and a laptop and seeing as I didn't have a laptop at all, I chose a 4K laptop so I could view the 4K video on the road. If i'd of gone for a desktop i'd of had to wait until I get home days or weeks later to view the video.


Oh and thank you very much Al for the files, i've downloaded them and will give them a try, and to everyone else, I really do apreciate your help, I AM listening to your advice guys.

[newpball]

Well, good luck with your 4K editing endeavors!

[smrpix]

Nobody edits 4K.* Even Avid, used in TV and feature production does an on-the-fly proxy display downrez for day to day editing tasks. Finishing can be done 4K but that does not have the same realtime playback requirements. (as Scott says)

It's February 23, 2015 as I write this. Expect this information to be outdated fairly soon.

*Yes, there's certainly some guy somewhere doing it now -- but it's not yet a widespread workflow.

[djteknovibe]

smrpix

Hey? No-one edits 4K video? Of course they do, i've talked to q few people who edit 4K video, I edit 4K video because with the GoPro Hero 3+ and Hero 4 which can record in 4K the video quality looks better after you've adjusted the contrast, brightness and colour saturation a little. I've got GoPro Hero 3+ raw video which I shot in 2.7K and although it's ggood, it definately looks better after i've edited the video and adjusted the colour, saturation, white balance etc...


_Al_

I installed the software you linked to and in the documentation it says I need to create a script, I have no idea what a script is or how how to create one, even though it tells me, it might as well be in foreign as I don't understand how to do any of it. It just looks like a load of writing on a text document.