GH4 New Computer System Buffering GH4 Footage: Please Help!

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nathannguyen59

Active member
Hey guys, so I put together a custom PC for editing and I was really hopeful that it could edit GH4 footage like butter but so far it has been a huge disappointment. At my home, I used my sister's three year old custom PC which much greater success. Her's did not even have CUDA capability for Premiere Pro but could play back GH4 footage full res no problem.

With my computer, it skips a good amount of frames and stutters even on 1/4 resolution.

Here are my computer specs. I spent about $1500 on everything so I really hope someone can help me figure out what part of my computer is bottlenecking or if there is something I am just missing.

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/brysoncwick/saved/#savedbuild_1454736

Thanks in advance guys!
 
No way man. That ain't right.
something didn't go together correctly. That PC should be just fine.
now, it could be a lot of different possibilities dealing with hardware compatability, or it could be something as simple as a totally wrong video driver installed.
i know that when you build your own PC from scratch there can be MAJOR hardware incompatibility issues, but I don't know where you'd find a reliable and up to date database to search all of your system's limbs.

That said, did you do a clean install of the OS and software, are you running a store bought PRE-load, or an OS update?

Without knowing your exact scenario, I'd always advocate for doing a clean OS install, followed by updates and newest drivers, then software. Just to be sure.

What else can you tell us abut this computer?
 
Have you edited the CUDA_SUPPORTED_CARDS.TXT in Premiere Pro folder? without this Premiere Pro can´t recognize the GTX 770 to use the Mercury engine(CUDA).
 
You might find this interesting; I was able to get my old 2009-4Core Mac Pro to playback my GH4-4K footage smoothly. I’m using a two-monitor set up with 23” Apple Cinema Monitors. We replaced the Graphics Card that came with the Mac Pro with a Used Quadro 4000 card and “WOW” all of a sudden 4K plays back just like 1080P, perfectly.
 
Your specs are solid. If I were building this I have one suggestion and that is to substitute your system drive ssd with the Samsung 850 pro series. It has much better read/write specs than the Kingston. Also, because of the nature of how ssd's work plan on getting a capacity that is twice the data size that you expect to have on your system drive.
 
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So in terms of the questions I have been receiving about my system:

I installed the Adobe Creative Suite CC legally through my school so that should not be an issue
I have not edited the "CUDA_SUPPORTED_CARDS.TXT" yet but it seems Premiere Pro recognizes my card since it allows for CUDA enabled within the program. Not sure how to make sure it is actually working though...
And when it comes to Drivers, I have simply been updating the newest driver installations through the Nvidia app that pops up. IS there a way to make sure I have the newest drivers?

Thanks again for all your guy's help. It is much appreciated.
 
Add a second dedicated video media drive too. Highly compressed video codecs like the GH4 require a lot of frame buffering in NLE's and asking the system drive to do double duty reading original media while reading and writing full buffered frames in the time line can bottleneck you, especially with 4k, SSD speeds or not.
 
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Here's a short thing to try.

Download the latest VLC player. With the old version I had choppy 4K playback. With the new version it it smooth as butter. Also, I think (!) that by installing the new player you automaticly install the new drivers that are also used in Premiere. Not sure about this though.

But anyhow, nice specs you've got there. It's absolutely not the hardware at fault here. Try to download all the latest drivers (especially GPU) and the latest versions of Media Player / VLC player / Quicktime.

See how it goes.
 
  • Make sure you have the latest drivers for your card, and make sure to get them directly from Nvidia, not the card or computer manufacturer.
  • Use msconfig to turn off all services that don't absolutely need to be running - that's pretty much Windows services, Adobe and vital security software.
  • Use Task Manager, or a program like CCleaner, to stop all auto run programs except for Adobe and security software.
  • Don't use resource heavy security software like Norton or McAfee - AVG or Avast are much more system friendly.
  • Make sure your media - including preview files and conformed audio files - are on not on your system drive.
  • Run a drive speed test to make sure the second hard drive is fast enough - it definitely should be. But, if you're doing several layers, or a multicam edit, you may need 2 or more drives in RAID 0.
 
Did all the advice work? That is a pretty nice system, and the CPU is faster than mine. No reason for it to be choppy.
 
Thanks everyone for the help! I'm pretty sure it was the drivers since I updated it from the Nvidia website and I can now play the footage at full res with no buffering. Before, I thought updating the drivers through the GeForce experience was enough but apparently I wasn't updating the correct drivers that my computer had. So when in doubt, just type in your graphics card and "driver update" and then just download the most recent patch. Worked for me like a charm.

Also, my preview files, audio files, and media are all on a separate drive from my SSD or system drive. I am thinking of upgrading my system drive to 250gb soon because the 125gb filled up very fast. Don't know if this will do anything, but I'd like to have more space for future programs and whatnot.
 
The next sweet spot is increasingly looking like it's 500GB. Don't box yourself in with a minor upgrade in capacity.
 
Seconding that. I have a 240GB SSD as my primary system drive and it seems as though every few weeks I'm out of space again. A great number of programs default to saving data in your C:\users folder and I find I really have to stay on top of it. I wish I had sprung for a 500GB solid state - my laptop has one and I only need to go purge things every month or more with it.
 
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