Who's editing 4k? And how?

[Tommygun45]

Last year I built a PC and tried to max out the specs within a reasonable budget. This year I upgraded to add more SSDs in an effort to smooth out editing in Premier Pro. I edit 4K footage from my A6500 and it works wonderfully. No stuttering even with the addition of some effects.

Editing footage from my Phantom 4 Pro+ however is a nightmare. Simply adding footage and then trying to move clips around, or replay them even at 1/8 quality is virtually impossible. I know you need a powerful PC to edit 4k footage, obviously, but I do not understand why my A6500 footage is so easy to edit while the Phantom 4 stuff is so difficult. For comparison I record my A6500 footage at XAVC S 4K: 3840 x 2160 (30p, 100 M), and my Phantom stuff at H.265
C4K:4096×2160 24/25/30p @100Mbps. I know the output of the Phantom is a little better, but even if I lower the pixel sizes down a bit I get the same issues.

My PC is
Intel I7-6700k 4ghz Quad Core
Asus Z170
GSkill RipJaws 32gb DDR4-2400
Samsung 950 PRO 512gb m.2 SSD (OS and applications)
Samsung 850 PRO 256gb SSD Cache and Scratch
OWC 256gb SSD for Project Files
EVGA GeForce GTX970 4GB

What am I doing wrong? Or is my system simply not fast enough to do this? Where is the bottleneck?

 

[sswingle]

I use proxies. You can find how on YouTube. Basically when I import 4K footage to premiere it automatically sends the file over to media encoder and creates a 1920x1080 encode which is used to edit from. Then when you encode your project it uses the 4K source file. There is a button to toggle the proxy on and off at any time if you want to see the 4K when editing.

 

[KevMo Photog]

Like sswingle said! I have a smoking machine as well. But Proxies are a must when in your editor. My machine plays the files fine in Windows. But not in Premier Pro. Youtube is your friend on this.

 

[Tommygun45]

Awesome thanks guys. I had seen that proxy stuff mentioned but thought it was a FCPX thing. Ill check it out!

 

[JarrodF]

I edit native 4K P4P footage on my MacBook Pro (2016) using FCPX. Super easy and you don't have to use proxies for simple edits.

 

[watermancpt]

I have a 5k iMac 27". i'm having trouble with 4k in 60fps, not very happy about it! Anyone else?? Even playing back 60fps 4k is a problem on my new shiny 2015 5K iMac 27". I was thinking it was my SD card that's too slow, but I'm using the Sandisk Extreme Plus 64gb which is rated 10, and should be fast enough.

Anyone else having issues playing back 4K 60fps on iMac 5K ?

 

[JarrodF]

First you should transfer your footage to a fast, external drive to playback. Thunderbolt or USB3 would be best. I use a Samsung T3 SSD when I'm editing remotely (a gigabit server when I'm in the office). The footage can then be put in your editing software of choice. In FCPX, you make sure you're set to smooth playback. It lowers the resolution during playback to play smoothly. Then when you export a 4K H.264 file it plays beautifully in 4K.

 

[watermancpt]

First you should transfer your footage to a fast, external drive to playback. Thunderbolt or USB3 would be best. I use a Samsung T3 SSD when I'm editing remotely (a gigabit server when I'm in the office). The footage can then be put in your editing software of choice. In FCPX, you make sure you're set to smooth playback. It lowers the resolution during playback to play smoothly. Then when you export a 4K H.264 file it plays beautifully in 4K.

Hi Jarrod, thanks for your reply. I'm having issues just playing 4k 60fps on my iMac. Is it true that my machine is too slow to play it back? I have the footage saved on my 3TB USB external, it's not an SSD though. I've tried playing back directly from the Sandisk Extreme Plus 64gb micro sd also. I just find it painful to believe that this expensive 5K machine is having issues playing back 4k 60fps, never mind editing.
To get smoother playback in Adobe Premiere Pro (my editor of choice), I set it to use proxies, and also the preview window size to 1/8, but still it's jerky, even for 4k 30fps without any filters. Until I render in/out. Very disappointing. I've heard that FCPX is the way to go on a Mac, but there's so much more you can do with Adobe Premiere Pro

 

[JarrodF]

Since I don't have that exact Mac, I can't comment on it's speed for just playing back the files on their own. USB3 drives do vary in speed so you might try a faster one if you have the option. I generally only view my footage in a NLE or Resolve (for coloring) so I don't know if it's possible to get smooth playback just off your drive. 4K 60fps files are pretty massive. Also, for what it's worth we use both FCPX and Premiere Pro at our place and I have yet to hear of anything PPro can do that FCPX can't do. We use Premiere mainly when After Effect integration is critical for a particular project. FCPX does seem to require less computing power than Premiere in the Mac environment. We primarily use Premier on a Mac Pro for that reason (and for AE speed of course).

 

[DroneTurismo]

How do you output 4k to MP4? Is anyone needing to use a converter? Please list an exact product name you like (need one to transform. MXF to .MP4) because i need to get one too.

 

[JarrodF]

Handbrake is solid, free and gives you a lot of options (as far as bitrate, etc).

 

[KevMo Photog]

How do you output 4k to MP4? Is anyone needing to use a converter? Please list an exact product name you like (need one to transform. MXF to .MP4) because i need to get one too.

I use Premier Pro. Export or Render what you need as output.

 

[John Locke]

For comparison I record my A6500 footage at XAVC S 4K: 3840 x 2160 (30p, 100 M), and my Phantom stuff at H.265

Many GPU's and applications don't support H.265 very good yet. Although this codec is more efficient with space, the video decompression step apparently take a lot more power, and this is usually only efficient if there is a good hardware solution to decompress H.265 video in real time, like you wish to have. Some of the newer GPU's with Nvidia chipsets do support H.265, like the GTX1080. However, if you don't have a newer GPU it may not support H.265 very good.

Try to record your 3840X2160 @60fps with H.264. If no joy, try 30fps for comparison. Your hardware should support that OK if you have a GTX970 GPU. Without a capable GPU, you won't be happy. Even with a 6th Gen i7 quad core CPU and GTX970, it may have marginal support for H.265 since it's older.

 

[watermancpt]

I have no problem viewing 4k 30fps h.264, only when it comes to editing a bit sluggish with my iMac 5K. I think I'm going to try editing with Da Vinci Resolve 14 beta, I heard it performs a lot better with Macs than Premiere

 

[chrisking]

How do you output 4k to MP4? Is anyone needing to use a converter? Please list an exact product name you like (need one to transform. MXF to .MP4) because i need to get one too.

Ever tried Brorsoft Video Converter ?

 

[Ripper7620]

Davinci Resolve BMD Bete 2
CPU: Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16 Core
GPU: nVidia Quadro P5000 16Gb

RAM: 64Gb G. Skill Trident Z 3600Mhz
Boot Drive: Sumsung Pro 960 2TB
Monitor: LG 42.5" 4K Display

 

[DroneTurismo]

I have not heard of Brosoft. I will check it out thanks

 

[Basspig]

Last year I built a PC and tried to max out the specs within a reasonable budget. This year I upgraded to add more SSDs in an effort to smooth out editing in Premier Pro. I edit 4K footage from my A6500 and it works wonderfully. No stuttering even with the addition of some effects.

Editing footage from my Phantom 4 Pro+ however is a nightmare. Simply adding footage and then trying to move clips around, or replay them even at 1/8 quality is virtually impossible. I know you need a powerful PC to edit 4k footage, obviously, but I do not understand why my A6500 footage is so easy to edit while the Phantom 4 stuff is so difficult. For comparison I record my A6500 footage at XAVC S 4K: 3840 x 2160 (30p, 100 M), and my Phantom stuff at H.265
C4K:4096×2160 24/25/30p @100Mbps. I know the output of the Phantom is a little better, but even if I lower the pixel sizes down a bit I get the same issues.

My PC is
Intel I7-6700k 4ghz Quad Core
Asus Z170
GSkill RipJaws 32gb DDR4-2400
Samsung 950 PRO 512gb m.2 SSD (OS and applications)
Samsung 850 PRO 256gb SSD Cache and Scratch
OWC 256gb SSD for Project Files
EVGA GeForce GTX970 4GB

What am I doing wrong? Or is my system simply not fast enough to do this? Where is the bottleneck?

I'm using Adobe CS6 on a dual Xeon E5-2667 with Quadro M6000 GPU and 128GB RAM, all SSD drives.

Still very difficult playback of 4K 24 footage.

 

[roosta]

Does everyone use CS6 for video editing of p4p?