At some point in our lives, we’ve all encountered the dreaded ‘spinning wheel of death’ when working on our computers or laptops. All you did was press the backspace key a few too many times and suddenly your computer is trying to crack the Enigma code!
With the ever-increasing capability of shooting higher resolution video on even the most mundane of video cameras, it’s no wonder our machines are gasping for air!
Here’s 3, handy-dandy top tips for helping your machine cope with editing higher res footage.
(It’s worth noting that I’m editing on Adobe Premiere Pro, but the processes are similar across most other editing applications including Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer.)
1. UTILISE A PROXY WORKFLOW
Oooo, sounds complicated, right? Wrong. It’s super easy to learn and even easier to use.
Proxy files are duplicate video files that have been transcoded (fancy way of saying converted) into smaller file sizes with it’s quality significantly reduced. But don’t worry, we get the full resolution quality back when we export our project. The advantage of working with proxies means our machines don’t have to edit, render and playback at full res quality resulting in a much more pleasant and uninterrupted editing sesh for you. And here’s how it’s done:
Within your editing software, navigate to your high res footage using the media browser and tick the ‘ingest’ button. Next, hit that spanner icon (or ‘wrench’ icon for y’all American folk out there).
Inside the ingest settings, change it from ‘Copy’ to ‘Create Proxies’ using the drop down menu. And whilst you’re at it, change the preset option to 'H.264 Low Resolution Proxy’ and set a proxy destination for where you want all the duplicate movie films to be saved.
Next, drag and drop your footage from the media browser into your footage bin and watch the magic of a proxy workflow come to life. Your machine will automatically boot up Media Encoder and begin converting your high res files into smaller, more manageable proxy files.
And that’s it, you can now start your edit with peace of mind that your computer won’t burn out from processing ungodly amounts of data.
2. WHAT'S YOUR MEMORY LIKE?
Can you remember the last time you ACTUALLY read any terms and condition documents before confirming you’ve read them? No, neither can I - but it’s not YOUR memory I’m concerned with.
Your computer’s short term memory is called a RAM (Random-Access Memory) and it’s where data is stored on a temporary basis for as and when the processor requires it. Every computer comes with RAM and the more of it you have, the better.
Within your editing software, find your memory settings and make sure you are dedicating a sufficient amount of RAM to your software. Also, we want to optimise for ‘Performance and NOT ‘Memory’ which sounds backwards, I know…
3. BUT WHY IS MY 8K RAW 12:1 FOOTAGE AT 120FPS STILL LAGGING?
It’s because your playback settings are demanding too much. This is a really quick adjustment within your software that has drastic affect on your computers ability to playback even the highest quality footage.
Within your editing software, move to your playback monitor, and using the drop down menu change the playback resolution from ‘Full’ to ‘1/2’. As you have probably figured out, this reduces the playback quality from full res to half res and will go a long way to stopping those horrible lags. You can reduce the quality further if necessary with some footage allowing you to reduce it to a ‘1/16th’ of the quality. But do not fear, this only reduces playback quality and not the output quality of your video at export.
... AND ACTION!
So, with these tips in mind, it’s bye-bye spinny wheel of death and hello to a comfortable and lag-free edit without the need to upgrade your setup. Look at you go!
