Hi All,
I'm having some troubles editing footage shot with a DJI Phantom 4 Pro at 4K in h.264. It is barely able to play back in Premiere Pro (CC2018 on Windows 7, but I've also had the problem with a fully spec'd 2017 Model iMac Pro), even when dropping the preview resolution down to 1/16th. It freezes and stutters, and even when paused it takes up to a minute just to load the preview image.
My workstation has no trouble with any other types of files. 4K H.264 from other cameras (Nikon D850, GoPro) all works perfectly smooth with no issues at all. And of course Prores/DNxHR are absolutely buttery, as you'd expect, as are .r3d files. I don't think it is a case of my system being underpowered, it just doesn't seem to play nicely with the DJI footage - which makes no sense, as it should have the exact same performance as the other h.264 cameras, shouldn't it? Strangely, the 50p files actually seem to play back a bit more reliably than the 25p ones.
I know the obvious answer is probably to transcode, but I've got ~45min of drone footage for each day of a 30 day shoot and that would give me probably give me 10TB+ of Prores of which I only need a few seconds worth from each day. But at the moment I can barely even preview the files to find those bits I need!
Has anybody else dealt with these problems before and found a solution or a logical reason as to why the DJI footage is so much more difficult to edit than any other form of h.264?
I'm having some troubles editing footage shot with a DJI Phantom 4 Pro at 4K in h.264. It is barely able to play back in Premiere Pro (CC2018 on Windows 7, but I've also had the problem with a fully spec'd 2017 Model iMac Pro), even when dropping the preview resolution down to 1/16th. It freezes and stutters, and even when paused it takes up to a minute just to load the preview image.
My workstation has no trouble with any other types of files. 4K H.264 from other cameras (Nikon D850, GoPro) all works perfectly smooth with no issues at all. And of course Prores/DNxHR are absolutely buttery, as you'd expect, as are .r3d files. I don't think it is a case of my system being underpowered, it just doesn't seem to play nicely with the DJI footage - which makes no sense, as it should have the exact same performance as the other h.264 cameras, shouldn't it? Strangely, the 50p files actually seem to play back a bit more reliably than the 25p ones.
I know the obvious answer is probably to transcode, but I've got ~45min of drone footage for each day of a 30 day shoot and that would give me probably give me 10TB+ of Prores of which I only need a few seconds worth from each day. But at the moment I can barely even preview the files to find those bits I need!
Has anybody else dealt with these problems before and found a solution or a logical reason as to why the DJI footage is so much more difficult to edit than any other form of h.264?
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