anyone using a DJI Phantom 4 Pro???

[Steady Hand]

Originally Posted by Peterjames

(...)Also the GoPro codec could be another area to check.(...)

Is DJI really using the GoPro Codec?

[Peterjames]

I am having difficulty in timeline playback of UHD P4P drone mp4 100Mbps clips even without any filters and at 1/2 resolution. I have tried using an HD project but still slow playback, in 1 minute time only 43secs is played by Edius 8.53 WG. I do not have any problems editing UHD GH4 and Sony FS7 clips etc. My P4P clips with colour correction applied play back without any problems in Resolve (and other media players) so assume this is a known problem with E8 as discussed in previous posts. I have checked my system settings as mention in earlier posts in this thread.

The drone clips are being intercut with other UHD ground based clips in an Rec709 UHD project so would prefer using Edius to keep things simple. Presently I am using Resolve which I normally only use for UHD HDR10 projects without any problems so cannot understand why Edius is having problems.

My system is an i9-7900x OC, 32GB Ram, GTX1080Ti 11GB with Win 10 pro and Edius 8.53 WG etc

Has any changes/improvements been made in Edius 9 so that native UHD P4P MP4 clips can now be played back in real time and edited without using proxy mode or conversion to HQX avi files?

thanks Peter

[spurfilm]

This is of great concern to me too. I will soon be shooting a very large quantity of material on a P4P in 3840×2160 at 50p 100Mbps. This will be H.264 MP4. All this material will be intercut with UHD ground-based material in a Rec709 UHD project. Obviously I will be editing on EDIUS, but most likely in proxy mode at 1920x1080. Seems like we might be pushing the envelope here, or dealing with a problematic codec, so I too am looking forward to learning about the experiences of others. Please.

[Peterjames]

Originally Posted by Peterjames

My system is an i9-7900x OC, 32GB Ram, GTX1080Ti 11GB with Win 10 pro and Edius 8.53 WG etc

Has any changes/improvements been made in Edius 9 so that native UHD P4P MP4 clips can now be played back in real time and edited without using proxy mode or conversion to HQX avi files?

thanks Peter

As there has not been any comments from users of P4P drone files in E9 or GV I am therefore left to assume there is no improvements over E8 for handling P4P 3840×2160 50p 100Mbps H.264 MP4 clips. Glad I have not spent the money on upgrading to E9 and spent it instead on another edit/grading prog. that handles native P4P clips without having to transcode etc. Disappointed I had to do this as I find Edius easy to use, but it seems that development of Edius is not keeping up with the competition. Peter

[spurfilm]

Peter I cannot answer your question because my needs are slightly different from yours. I am interested in H.265. So I am testing M2P UHD H.265 files on E9. I am currently away from base and will reply more fully in a day or two.

[Peterjames]

Thanks Rick, look forward to hearing how you get on. Peter

[spurfilm]

Peter, OK. Here are my thoughts and experiences.

I built a new Win7 Pro computer just over 3 years ago, with an i7-5820K CPU and 32GB RAM. The Graphics card is an NVIDIA NVS 510 with just 2GB. At the time it was quite expensive, so I expect to still get another year or so out of this machine. It has been perfect for editing 1920x1080 HD in EDIUS v7. In 2016 I upgraded to Workgroup v8, and continued editing 1920x1080 HD.

Now I am about to upgrade to 3840×2160 UHD, but as I said, I will continue with my existing computer for around 18 months. It is tempting to upgrade to a faster CPU but I am going to wait.

The next big job I do will contain a lot of material filmed on a Mavic 2 Pro. So I have been doing some tests. I am setting up the drone to film HEVC H.265 10-bit MP4 3840×2160 UHD @ 25p DLog-M.

So how does 3840×2160 UHD in H.265 work on my EDIUS PC running Workgroup v8.53b3262 ???

Well, my C-Drive is a Samsung SSD 850 PRO. I have copied the original Mavic 2 Pro media onto a striped pair of conventional hard drives.

I have setup an EDIUS v8 project as follows...
Frame Size: 3840×2160
Frame Rate: 25p
Quantization Bit Rate: 10Bit

After loading the media onto the timeline it plays fine. But try to scrub, and the situation is hopeless. Reduce the preview quality to even 1/4, and it is impossible to scrub properly. Any editing will be utterly frustrating. And this is before I apply any PCC using the DJI Dlog-M to Rec709 LUT. [BTW in the PCC window, I and others feel the Source and Destination/LUT fields are the wrong way around. Any thoughts on that?].

If I change the project settings to 1920x1080 the results are very similar, even at 1/4 preview quality.

So what to do?

David Harry has demonstrated the clear advantage of rendering 4K material to HQX. And of course it works fine. In fact it is a terrific format and plays faultlessly - perfect for editing. But for me, it's only useful for medium to small jobs, since I generally work with long-form documentaries of between 40 to 60 minutes, which are edited from as much as 24hrs of original camera footage filmed over 6 months.

Here's the problem. One of my typical files, 44secs of UHD, is 544MB. In actual fact H.265 files are 50% smaller that H.264. So if I acquire 24hrs of this resolution I will need storage for just over 1TB of video. Which is easily manageable.

If I bump this up to Superfine HQX, what happens? Well the 44secs of UHD, which was 544MB, now becomes 6605MB. That is 12 times larger. In which case my 24hrs of material in HQX will require an extra 12TB.

However, if I keep the project at 3840×2160 and create "large" proxies (which are 1920x1080), my original 44sec file reduces from 544MB to just 64MB - that is 9 times smaller. And the 24hrs of proxies will only require an extra 100GB.

Having done the test, I can honestly say the proxies look great, and are ideal for editing. They run beautifully, just as 1920x1080 has always done on my computer. And when I add PCC with the DJI Dlog-M to Rec709 LUT the images come alive and there is no degradation in the operations on the timeline - scrubbing to and fro is as smooth as you like.

What more can I say?

[Peterjames]

Thanks Rick for your all your detailed testing and findings. I am under pressure work wise but will respond and comment at the weekend. Peter

[spurfilm]

I am very interested in the new Canon XF-705. Uniquely, it shoots UHD, 50p, 4:2:2, 10-bit, HLG, Canon Log-3 in H.265 to SD cards. This is possible because H.265 files are 50% smaller than H.264. So the data-rate is more manageable for SD. If I buy this camcorder I would obviously like EDIUS to handle the video natively. My tests of UHD H.265 with a demo version of EDIUS Workgroup v9 shows that it plays fine - but it is not very usable for editing on my current Win7 computer.

At the end of the day, for UHD H.265, it all comes down to processing power. Video editing has always been expanding the envelope of technological advancement. As I said, my computer is a few months over 3 years old. I built it myself from affordable hand-picked components. The computer Passmark Rating (using downloadable test software from www.passmark.com) for Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Graphics, Drives is...

3891

Passmark state that as of 19th July 2018....
The bottom 25% of machines are in the range of 0-1260
The middle 50% of machines are in the range of 1260-3500
The top 25% of machines are in the range of 3500-6800
A tiny percentage are even higher.

So, in my opinion, there is still some life in my 3-year-old PC. Which is why I am reluctant to upgrade just yet. For me, native UHD H.265 editing will not be possible for the time being. Right now, proxies will do just fine. In a year or 18 months I will upgrade to something better - with greater processing power. At the moment a Ryzen Threadripper 2 looks very attractive and SSD prices continue to drop. Soon, for everyone, the 4K editing experience will feel the same as HD. In fact 4K will become normal as we move towards 8K and the huge processing power it will demand.

[GrassValley_PS]

All of you using H.265 need to remember that it entails some very heavy duty decoding to play on a computer. You will need a top level machine to handle this natively. Also the hardware assist will make a difference.

Remember how H.264 was when it first came out?