Editing JVC GY-LS300 Footage - What Type of Processing Power?

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Hello fellas,

Coming from a HD platform to a 4K platform I have to do a little updating to my processing power.
I have been trying to edit 4K video with my present machine and it has been running slow, laggy, freezing up, and crashing.

Software:
Win 10 pro 64bit
Adobe CC 2017. Mainly in Premiere Pro.

Hardware:
Motherboard - MSI Z97 PC Mate MS-7850
CPU - Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (quad core)
Ram - 32gb
GPU - nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2gb
C Drive - 1Tb Western Digital 7200 RPM
I also have two other Western Digital 2Tb Hard Disks for auxiliary storage.

I recently purchased a Samsung SSD 1tb for my Main C drive. I cloned my WD Main drive and no extra steps was needed. The SSD fired right up as the boot disk and all was well. I have a Nvidia 980Ti coming in a couple of days and hopefully this will make a great improvement. I do notice that the file transfer is much faster with the SSD.

So I'm curious what you guys use to process your editing for the 4k.

[Noa Put]

I have the same system specs as you do but run Edius 8 but have no problems worth mentioning, Do you have more issues when you edit a 4K file in a 4k project or when you edit a 4K file in a 1080p project?

[Lee Powell]

Here's a new-fangled trick I discovered: After cloning Windows to boot from your SSD, keep your original hard disk boot drive connected as drive D:. Then set up your BIOS boot order to boot first from the SSD, second from the original hard disk. If your SSD drive fails to boot at any point in the future, your PC will then automatically boot from the original disk, which will then be labeled drive C:. (The SSD, if it mounts but fails to boot, will be labeled drive D;) In the meantime, you can continue to use your original hard disk as drive D:, just leave the Windows directory and root folder intact.

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

I have the same system specs as you do but run Edius 8 but have no problems worth mentioning, Do you have more issues when you edit a 4K file in a 4k project or when you edit a 4K file in a 1080p project?

Not sure I will have to take a look at that. I try to edit proxies of the 4k files. I have never tried to actually edot the actual 4k file without proxies. I have my JVC set to render MOV files so that it is less compression than the MP4. I will have to make a note when I get home from work today and see when the problem arise.

Just a note I have already installed the SSD. I have not had the chance to edit much with that yet. I copied my files that I want to edit on to the SSD that is serving as my Main. I'm interested to see what the out come is. Then the difference once I get my new GPU in a couple of days.

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Originally Posted by Lee Powell

Here's a new-fangled trick I discovered: After cloning Windows to boot from your SSD, keep your original hard disk boot drive connected as drive D:. Then set up your BIOS boot order to boot first from the SSD, second from the original hard disk. If your SSD drive fails to boot at any point in the future, your PC will then automatically boot from the original disk, which will then be labeled drive C:. (The SSD, if it mounts but fails to boot, will be labeled drive D;) In the meantime, you can continue to use your original hard disk as drive D:, just leave the Windows directory and root folder intact.

Nice tip. But if it fails how will you know? You will probably notice some files are not the same, desktop a little different, and then a difference in boot speed and performance. For me at first I would be bewildered as to what is going on and hopefully then remember that the old boot disk must be booting the PC and something is wrong with my SSD. It may be best for me to keep the old one out. I habe it labeled as the old boot disk and dated when it was swapped. My memory is not what.it use to be and I dont trust tafter a few years that I will remember the swap right away. Your tip is a great tip though nevertheless.

They say the SSD will fail after so many uses. So it is inevitable but the question is how long will it last.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Aaron Jones Sr.

Not sure I will have to take a look at that. I try to edit proxies of the 4k files. I have never tried to actually edot the actual 4k file without proxies. I have my JVC set to render MOV files so that it is less compression than the MP4. I will have to make a note when I get home from work today and see when the problem arise.

But your project settings when you edit 4K files,is that 4K or 1080p?

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Sequence settings are 3840 x 2160 preview 1920 x 1080. When I render I render in 1920 x 1080

So I scale down the 4k size to 1080 for editing and render.

[Noa Put]

Your pc is fast enough, there must be something else going on. Like I said I have the same processor and 32gb of ram, I have no dedicated videocard and my system uses the integrated GPU on the CPU to accelerate rendering. I edit the files straight from the card (after I copied them to a internal drive) and no proxies required, my edit drives are WD RED PRO 7200rpm drives that are not in a raid. Everything, including colorcorrection is realtime.

In Edius I deal with 4K workflow a bit different, I always start with a 1080p project file to edit my 4K files and once the editing is done I export to 1080p and if I want a 4K master I just change the project settings to 4K and render the file. The reason why I start in a 1080p project file is that this takes less effort from the processor, in this way I can edit up to three ls300 4K files in a multicam setting in realtime, my preview in edius is always at full quality and I have a hd spark card (works only with edius) that send whats on the time line to my tv so I always edit with 2 pc screens and one tv.

Exporting is also very fast, one hour of 4K ls300 mov footage to a 25mbs 1080p file take 27 min, one hour to a 100mbs 4K file takes 1hour and 5 min. That's without added effects, minor coloradjustments don't make any difference, it only takes longer when I start to apply luts.

When I make my blu-ray I also have a dedicated card (a WinFast PxVC1100) that aids in rendering and works together with tmpgenc authoringworks, it takes only 35min to render one hour of HD footage for a blu-ray disc.

I just wanted to show that with the "right" soft- and hardware most current codecs are not an issue, premiere has totally different requirement and you need to find out where it's current bottleneck is.

[Lee Powell]

Originally Posted by Aaron Jones Sr.

I copied my files that I want to edit on to the SSD that is serving as my Main. I'm interested to see what the out come is. Then the difference once I get my new GPU in a couple of days.

Don't put video files or personal folders on the SSD C: drive. Reserve that for Windows and installed programs. You must keep at least 10% of each SSD empty to avoid premature aging and sector failure. Redirect your personal "My" folders to external drives and archive finished projects to 50GB Blu-ray discs or cloud storage.

[William Hohauser]

Make sure Premier is using the video board for real-time editing and not the CPU.

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

Make sure Premier is using the video board for real-time editing and not the CPU.

I believe it is by default as it says under Video Rendering and Playback / Renderer: Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA) if iwas not using my card it would say Mercury Playback Engine Software Only.

Originally Posted by Lee Powell

Don't put video files or personal folders on the SSD C: drive. Reserve that for Windows and installed programs. You must keep at least 10% of each SSD empty to avoid premature aging and sector failure. Redirect your personal "My" folders to external drives and archive finished projects to 50GB Blu-ray discs or cloud storage.

I got the 1tb SSD just for this. Mainly to try this out to see if there is a difference using the C drive to edit as oppose to the secondary drives. With the wedding footage on the c drive I have over a third of the drive still free. I will do this wedding ont he main and the next wedding that have this weekend I will do from a secondary drive to see if I notice anything significant.

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Your pc is fast enough, there must be something else going on. Like I said I have the same processor and 32gb of ram, I have no dedicated videocard and my system uses the integrated GPU on the CPU to accelerate rendering. I edit the files straight from the card (after I copied them to a internal drive) and no proxies required, my edit drives are WD RED PRO 7200rpm drives that are not in a raid. Everything, including colorcorrection is realtime.

In Edius I deal with 4K workflow a bit different, I always start with a 1080p project file to edit my 4K files and once the editing is done I export to 1080p and if I want a 4K master I just change the project settings to 4K and render the file. The reason why I start in a 1080p project file is that this takes less effort from the processor, in this way I can edit up to three ls300 4K files in a multicam setting in realtime, my preview in edius is always at full quality and I have a hd spark card (works only with edius) that send whats on the time line to my tv so I always edit with 2 pc screens and one tv.

Exporting is also very fast, one hour of 4K ls300 mov footage to a 25mbs 1080p file take 27 min, one hour to a 100mbs 4K file takes 1hour and 5 min. That's without added effects, minor coloradjustments don't make any difference, it only takes longer when I start to apply luts.

When I make my blu-ray I also have a dedicated card (a WinFast PxVC1100) that aids in rendering and works together with tmpgenc authoringworks, it takes only 35min to render one hour of HD footage for a blu-ray disc.

I just wanted to show that with the "right" soft- and hardware most current codecs are not an issue, premiere has totally different requirement and you need to find out where it's current bottleneck is.

I believe this whole heartedly but for the life of me I could not think of what the bottle neck could be. So I began to think back about how I built this machine something came to mind. about 4 years ago when I had a dumb idea to build a Hackintosh (basically run apple software platform on PC hardware) I quickly gave up on this endeavor because of all the continual updates and work arounds you had to do and that was no way to run your main editing machine. So that got old fast. I elected to transform this pile into a PC. I had a little problem because my hard drives were formatted with the apple software and the PC OP would not read it or even notice that they were mounted. SO I came up with this bright idea to use a software called Paragon HFS+ for Windows, which allows windows to read apple software for a lack of a better way to explain it. After installing this all my hard drives were seen by the platform and all mounted as they were suppose to. Well I have had this running every sense and I'm wondering if it was part of my problem. I went through my control panel programs files looking for what does not belong and I ran across it. I uninstalled it along with some C++ file I have to reinstall later crossed my fingers and rebooted the machine. All is well. All my drives are still visible. I think sense that time I have replace those original drives with new storage drives so the problem is no longer plaguing me. This could have been the problem because it is a link to all drives and file on the drives.

One thing is for sure sens the SSD my Win OP loads super fast and files are transferred with a lot more speed than before. I now can open PP and actually ingest the 4k footage without proxies and play them back. I will do a little editing tot he files and see what transpires but, all in all it seems to be more responsive and no lag time or hesitations. I'm still organizing my footage and sequences and will start the multi cam editing soon and I will be able to tell right away if there is a difference for sure.

I'm looking forward to my 980ti showing up as well on Wed.

[Stein Onshus]

I am not working professionally with my filming, so losing library is worse than lack of speed for me at the moment.

Processing - iMac with 1TB SSD internal
(replaced to SSD due to crash a year ago- SSD mostly for documents and non-media.)

external disks:
Lacie Raid 4tb (2x4TB) - only media to be managed by CatDV
Lacie 4tb Raid Backup
Lacie 4tb backup of SSD
Out of house security - Cloud based backup of Raid Backup (will be extended to include SSD backup).

When editing(fcpx) 4k I use proxy to speed up even though it is not always required.

I might be a little too cautious, but have had a few disks crashing over the years.

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Well fellas, after getting my Nvidia 980ti card installed and running:

I notice that when I'm rendering my CPU is now averaging 65% instead of the 100% before hand. With the SSD as my main I notice that the PC boots and loads programs considerably faster. There is no doubt in my mind that those two adjustments to my system gave me more processing power. However, I tried to load a project in the 3840 x 2160 resolution without proxies and then perform a muti-cam function with two LS3, and a 1080 FS100. I got glitching to the point I had to stop. This is a definite improvement from before but still can not edit without proxies as I need to. I am now creating proxies as I write this and then will go back and try the same multi-cam edit and see what happens and I will update as to what the result is.

[Nick Haman]

What are your editing settings?

Not my daily machine, but I can cut smoothly on a 2.5ghz i7 16gb 15inch Macbook in a 3840 x 2160 timeline. I do have to have 'Playback Resolution' set on 1/2 and make sure that 'High Quality Playback' is turned off (I can't see what this even does anyway.)

That said, I never cut multi-cam stuff, and I'm certain that's slowing things down. After all, even though you may not be seeing cams 2 and 3, they're still being processed on playback.

From there, here are my sequence settings and they work well.

Note: I cut in ProRes because that's the format of the masterfile I'll be exporting at the end. It makes the final export quicker once all effects/grades are rendered and I can make all other distribution versions from that master.

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Yes I see you preview in the UHD as well. My setting was 3840 x 2160 and preview in 1920 x 1080. I had my monitor on "full". I like to see the full quality when I'm editing because this gives me a different perspective to be creative in post.

Yes you have mac which is a different dynamic. I believe PP & AF demands resources to run smooth. From a PC perspective you will need to up the anti a bit to get a good work flow with the 4K footage.

I made the proxies and all is well. the multi cam is smooth as a baby butt on "Full". Now I have no excuses not to finish up this wedding edit, LOL!