Proxy and Original Media in one timeline, the constant switch...

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Level 1

8 points

Proxy and Original Media in one timeline, the constant switch...

hey all,

so let's say you are editing some heavy h264 footage which came out of a stabilization software called Reelsteady and in the same timeline you have some Sony XAVC footage which doesn't need proxying since it scrubs and edits just fine. The Reelsteady clips have been proxied as otherwise it is too painful to edit.

Of course now i have to switch the viewer back and forth from the Check at "proxy media" and "original/optimized media" since there is no setting to view both. Am I missing something? Why can't I just see the footage which has been proxied as proxy and the clips that haven't in their normal form?

Surely I can't be the first to want this :). Thanks for your feedback and help!

Posted on Nov 20, 2020 11:02 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

151,179 points

Nov 20, 2020 11:07 AM in response to Elhungarian

What OS and FCP version is this? You need to update to a recent version. There is a viewer preference called proxy preferred for just this situation.

Follow up question, why is your H.264 painful play? Most computers don't have any problem with H.264, in fact that's the codec that can now be used for proxies.

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Answer 2

Elhungarian Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 26, 2020 3:29 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

thanks for your reply. fcpx 10.4.8 Will have to look at updating once any current projects are through. MacOS Mojave 10.14.6.

h.264 is normally a breeze, but these files that ReelSteady creates just choke up my machine, I don't understand why. I assumed they were h265 and my Skylake CPU doesn't natively do h.265, but they aren't they are 264. No idea.

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Answer 3

Elhungarian Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 26, 2020 5:15 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Hi Tom, sure, here is a smaller example at 1.5Gb. normally they are longer and therefore 7-9Gb. I'll leave it up for a bit so you can take a look, but will have to take it down before too long. https://bit.ly/2Vi9oSV

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Answer 4

Elhungarian Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 26, 2020 6:32 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

no worries. Appreciate you even taking a look. With these types of files just hitting the spacebar to start playing takes longer than with a regular 100mbps XAVC-S file. I assume the codec used isn't the most efficient.

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Answer 5

Nov 26, 2020 6:55 AM in response to Elhungarian

What is your mac, graphics card, and where is the media stored?

I tried your file and even after applying some effects it plays back instantaneously, and smoothly, even without rendering; it does not drop a single frame.

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Answer 6

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

151,179 points

Nov 26, 2020 9:52 AM in response to Elhungarian

There is something odd about this media. It's sluggish to perform in some instances in the timeline. If the timeline is playing and I click somewhere else in the timeline the playhead will leap there and continue playback. I tried different projects, 6K RED media in a 1080 timeline, 4K HEVC media, 4K ProResRAW, and they were all immediately responsive. The GoPro media, I click, I wait, and then playback starts. That's unusual, also the encoding information is different from what I've seen in other MPEG-4 files.

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