Help with 4K in premiere

Troiano27 · Jan 3, 2016

Ok, I need to ask. Been googling, reading some blogs, and checking out some YouTube tutorials.

I am new to working with 4K video. I downloaded the 4K GoPro footage off the ad card. I used mpeg steamclip to convert the GoPro footage to prores 422 (working on a Mac). I thought then I could just edit on a 4K timeline in premier pro. I import the footage, put on timeline and I match sequence setting to footage. But everything bogs down. Clips will play for 3 seconds, then stop.

I take the same footage into my much older Final Cut Pro 7 and seems to edit just fine, but no warp stabalizer, and other things. No link to after effects.

I'm wondering if I have something setup wrong? How are others editing in premier?

Thanks
Jeff

SteveReno · Jan 3, 2016

I use a PC, Custom I5 4500 Mhz & 16 gig memory & when using Premiere CC with 4K video from my Gopro, it also slows down.

You didn't post what type of system your using, but memory & a Fast hard drive will help.
I just started using 2.7k Med FOV & my system works good.
Hope this info. helps.

Troiano27 · Jan 4, 2016

I have a 2009 Mac Pro, 8 core, with the 2.4ghz processors. My main drive (program drive) is a 250gig ssd drive. Then I have a 2nd 250gig ssd drive that I use for saving projects too. Then my media drive is a 4tb drive raid drive (made up of two 7200rpm 2tb drives). Then I have a render drive and a cache drive. It also has 24gigs of ram, and a quadro 4000 for Mac video card (for cuda processing). While the processors are older, the rest of the system is pretty good.

I'm just baffled why I can take my 4K prores files and they play smooth as can be in Final Cut Pro 7 (version before final cut x came out). But when I put them in premiere they can play for 2 seconds then bogs down. I thought premiere liked to play nice with prores? Doing some research, I might have to try converting to GoPro cinform (I think that's what it's called).

If that doesn't work, I'll probably convert to prores, bring into davinci resolve, then create lower res proxies (maybe 720p files). Take and edit the proxies in premiere. Then bring the timeline back into resolve and color grade. It just takes time.

The only step I can't figure out, is how do I warp stabilize? Can I stabalize the proxies and apply it to the final full res footage? Or once I have a final edit, and color graded, take the full res timeline into after effects, and stabilize there?

Acroduster · Jan 4, 2016

I'm certainly out of my league here, but one thing that came to mind that helped me out with my lower cost program (PowerDirector): can you reduce the resolution of the playback view? On mine, you do have the option to set the preview window to full res, but going with a reduced res makes everything run faster.

pyrate · Jan 4, 2016

Apple is different, my guess is that conversion to prores is where it is coming apart
In windows I edit gopro raw 4K direct on the timeline.
It is at the same bitrate as 2.7K works just fine

Ian [P13] · Jan 4, 2016

That Mac is powerful enough although you could speed it up a lot more with the right hardware. The Quadro 4000 is now a fairly old card that a consumer card would beat, however, it should be fine for standard editing. You could get PCI SSD which would be 2-3x faster that connecting via SATA.

I've got a Mac Pro 2009 which I upgraded to 2010 spec. and I can edit GoPro video in the timeline without even transcoding.

Troiano27 · Jan 4, 2016

I'm just confused why my much older final cut program hands then4kmfootage without issue. But premier pro can even play 3 seconds of it. I keep wondering if I have a setting wrong someplace?

Troiano27 · Jan 4, 2016

Ian [P13] said:
That Mac is powerful enough although you could speed it up a lot more with the right hardware. The Quadro 4000 is now a fairly old card that a consumer card would beat, however, it should be fine for standard editing. You could get PCI SSD which would be 2-3x faster that connecting via SATA.

I've got a Mac Pro 2009 which I upgraded to 2010 spec. and I can edit GoPro video in the timeline without even transcoding.

I have also done the 2010 upgrade and was considering getting 6 core processors. Again it's baffling the my why premiere is having suck a hard time?

Ian [P13] · Jan 4, 2016

Troiano27 said:
I'm just confused why my much older final cut program hands then4kmfootage without issue. But premier pro can even play 3 seconds of it. I keep wondering if I have a setting wrong someplace?

There's settings for the drive used for the caches so look at those.

TBH I moved my Mac on Windows 10 and use Adobe on Windows as I was fed up with iOS being so tailored to suit Nvidia one minute, then ATI...

I could work in 4K fine before my upgrade but I've now gone to 6 core processors and 64GB RAM.

EyeWingsuit · Jan 4, 2016

Troiano27 said:
I have a 2009 Mac Pro, 8 core, with the 2.4ghz processors. My main drive (program drive) is a 250gig ssd drive. Then I have a 2nd 250gig ssd drive that I use for saving projects too. Then my media drive is a 4tb drive raid drive (made up of two 7200rpm 2tb drives). Then I have a render drive and a cache drive. It also has 24gigs of ram, and a quadro 4000 for Mac video card (for cuda processing). While the processors are older, the rest of the system is pretty good.

I'm just baffled why I can take my 4K prores files and they play smooth as can be in Final Cut Pro 7 (version before final cut x came out). But when I put them in premiere they can play for 2 seconds then bogs down. I thought premiere liked to play nice with prores? Doing some research, I might have to try converting to GoPro cinform (I think that's what it's called).

If that doesn't work, I'll probably convert to prores, bring into davinci resolve, then create lower res proxies (maybe 720p files). Take and edit the proxies in premiere. Then bring the timeline back into resolve and color grade. It just takes time.

The only step I can't figure out, is how do I warp stabilize? Can I stabalize the proxies and apply it to the final full res footage? Or once I have a final edit, and color graded, take the full res timeline into after effects, and stabilize there?

ProRes is designed for and by, Apple. It is the core of their decode system. GoPro uses ProTune and MainConcept MPEG for their files. Apple does not deal well with any mpg file format, and never has. Until recently, Apple refused to even decode mpeg.
If you have bootcamp, load Premiere on the windows side and watch your files zip right along.
GoPro's ProTune IS Cineform.

You have a few choices;
-Convert ProTune to ProRes
-Edit in Premiere on the Windows side
-Edit proxies in FCPX/import full res for color timing
-Deal with the pain.

Troiano27 · Jan 4, 2016

EyeWingsuit said:
ProRes is designed for and by, Apple. It is the core of their decode system. GoPro uses ProTune and MainConcept MPEG for their files. Apple does not deal well with any mpg file format, and never has. Until recently, Apple refused to even decode mpeg.
If you have bootcamp, load Premiere on the windows side and watch your files zip right along.
GoPro's ProTune IS Cineform.

You have a few choices;
-Convert ProTune to ProRes
-Edit in Premiere on the Windows side
-Edit proxies in FCPX/import full res for color timing
-Deal with the pain.

Thanks advice. I have converted my protune files to prores. Those files edit and play just fine in final cut 7. I'm just confused my it doesn't play just as fine in premiere. I will explore my settings in premiere. If I can't get it right, I'll probably create proxies and edit. Thanks again

SteveReno · Jan 4, 2016

"Premiere on the windows 10 Pro" Video from GoPro is 4k. Open file in GoPro Studio, Saved out as: Film1 Cineform.
Works well in Premiere Pro CC. Viewer set to "1/2"

I don't have half the ram or Drive setup as you do, & i can do what's got to be done & finish.
Try saving out to Cinform, then import to PP.
Film1 setting is next to the highest quality available from a using Cinform.
Also try saving in AVI or MOV, if GoPro Studio allows.

Hope this helps

EyeWingsuit · Jan 4, 2016

I'd do my conform in Resolve, Premiere, or Color.
If you have a BMD 4K card, you can preview in 4K with FCP7.

The format will not play as well in Premiere because it's not a native codec to Premiere. ProTune should play reasonably well, and Premiere can be scaled for preview. Wouldn't that be more effective.

1264_Solo · Jan 7, 2016

Troiano27 said:
The only step I can't figure out, is how do I warp stabilize? Can I stabalize the proxies and apply it to the final full res footage? Or once I have a final edit, and color graded, take the full res timeline into after effects, and stabilize there?

If you're talking about premiere then hopefully I can help.
First off if your footage does not match the project settings ( 4k but settings are 1080p ) you have to NEST your footage. Just right click and on the clip itself and it'll say "nest". It can be found right above "make subsequence"

Once you do that it'll turn a different color and in the upper area of the time line it should say "sequence 1" or whatever you have it set to. When you nest your footage and double click on it a new tab will appear and show the clip all by itself as a standard clip. You're not really going to use anything in here but IF you need to add keyframes to your motion, opacity, etc will be done here.
But the warp stabilizer itself can be added directly onto the clip itself in the regular sequence timeline once its been nested.

As for your question about premiere kind of chugging.
Premiere itself is a resource hog and unless you have a videocard that allows you to use the Mercury Playback Engine GPU acceleration option when you start a new project, then you're kind of out luck and stuck with the generic Mercury Playback Engine Software Only. I run a nVidia GTX 980 and is great from premiere.

I work in the movie industry as a VFX artist and we work with a lot of 4k+ footage and our machines have minimum 32gb of ram. Editing 4k is no joke. A lot of people want to shoot in 4k but dont realize you really need a beastly setup to genuinely be able to edit 4k effectively.

Now if you dont have that good of a computer the only thing I can tell you is to change your playback resolution to the lowest you can set it. Which I think is 1/4 resolution. You can find this by right clicking on your main editing display and going to "playback resolution".

Sorry if im not clear, its 2am and I had a really long day.