Video Preview Choppy

[yahtzeefish]

I notice the video preview is very choppy. Is my CPU just not capable of running it or is there something I can do to fix this?

PC Specs

Windows 10
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor 3.20 GHz
16.0GB of RAM


Thanks in advanced!

Edit: I made the preview smaller which worked... but any other tips would be much appreciated.

[jagabo]

Preview of what? 352x240 VCD? 8K AV1 video? What video and audio codecs? Using what software?

[johnmeyer]

Too little information.

What software are you using to preview the video? Are you simply playing it in some sort of media play? If so, which one? Or, are you talking about the performance on the timeline of your NLE? If so, which NLE?

The other absolutely essential thing you did not provide is the specification of the video. Is this SD, HD, 4K, or something else? What are the specifications of the video (use Mediainfo to provide the information)?

The solution to your problem depends on this information because sometimes all you have to do is switch to a different piece of software. Other times you have to build a proxy for the media (when editing). Certain video formats are difficult to play, and so that may be part of the answer.

[yahtzeefish]

Oh sorry, I meant to post this in openshot video editor forum. Can somebody move it there?

[davexnet]

You can post it here, just need to provide requested details

[yahtzeefish]

I am using an MP4 file with openshot video editor. I don't think it is HD...

[johnmeyer]

Not to be tiresome, but you still aren't providing the needed information, although we're at least getting closer.

MP4 is a container. What is needed -- and what Mediainfo will provide -- is what codec was used to compress the video into that container. H.264 should not cause most software programs any problems, but H.265 can be tougher. It also matters whether it was encoded with one of the High profiles. These require more CPU power to decode.

Finally -- and perhaps most importantly -- we need to know the video's resolution. Most programs start to choke when fed 4K video (3840 x 2160 pixels) even though they don't stutter or get choppy with standard HD video (1920x1080). Having said that, HD progressive video at 60 fps (frames per second) can be just a little too much for some computers.

Finally, since you are playing this in a video editor, that means that you may possibly be altering that video. As soon as you make changes to a video in a NLE (Non-Linear Editor), the software program has to make a huge number of additional calculations for each frame. The only way you can test whether Openshot can handle your video is to put a clip on the timeline and, without doing one single thing to it, play the video. As soon as you make any changes, the timeline performance will slow down.