Maximizing Your 4K Editing Efficiency

I used to use a Generate filter, with a Circle, to build my vignette. This is not an accelerated filter, and if I add the Circle filter to the video, the render bar in the timeline immediately goes red. This means that Premiere Pro knows that it can't be done in real time. It's not going to be a GPU-assisted action and the CPU will have to try and do everything. In the video, you can see with nothing more than a single little white circle visible that I completely maxed out all eight cores at 100%. At the same time, my GPU utilization is 0.

When I invert and feather the circle so it actually allows the video underneath to show through, my playback is extremely choppy, despite pushing the CPUs as hard as possible. The key is that I added one non-accelerated filter. And suddenly, the system simply cannot do it in realtime. That makes all the difference. Choosing the right processes that are designed for acceleration lets you maximize the effectiveness of a less expensive system.

As soon as I disable the Circle filter, the render bar goes yellow again, meaning that Premiere Pro will do its best to make it happen in real time by using the GPU. It's still a bit stuttery because of all I'm trying to use. I can mitigate that by adjusting Premiere Pro to show me the video at less than 100% quality. You can quickly toggle video playback to 1/2 quality, and when you pause, the still image will be at 100% When I toggle this heavily effected clip to 1/2 quality, the playback becomes smooth.

Not only is the playback smooth, but now my GPU is not being pushed to 100%. The GPU is down to 40%. CPU use is unchanged around 70%. By staying within the constraints of what the computer can do, I can get smooth 4K playback (with seven filters heaped on top) on a sub-$1000 computer, playing footage coming across the network from a NAS. It's not coming off of a RAID, or a solid state drive, or some other expensive storage system.

Conclusion

You don't need to spend more than $5,000 for a high-end, kickass workstation to edit 4K video. Nor do you need to spend $3,000 on a big, multi-drive RAID using Thunderbolt 2. This guarantee comes with two caveats:

1. Work with camera-original footage.

By this I don't mean high-bitrate ProRes or DNxHD, CinemaDNG, or RAW. Those are for high-end productions. I'm talking about camera-original footage from mid-range systems—typical corporate setups, where we need to ingest, edit, and export footage expediently. Also, you're not using a ton of HDD space because you are keeping with a much lower-bitrate camera-original codec. With the Panasonic GH4, that's an 80 Mbps file for 4K footage.

2. Stay within the optimized capabilities of your edit system. For Premiere Pro, this means the accelerated filters.

When I have seven filters on top of a 4K clip and it plays smoothly and effortlessly, you can them see the value of choosing GPU-accelerated filters and effects over choosing something that's not accelerated. When you choose something that's not accelerated, you're not going to get smooth playback for that element until you render it.

Now, if you need to do that for specific clips, those you will have to render. Once the effects are rendered, the edit software will play the render and not have to try and compute the effect in real time. Your playback will be smooth.

Once you understand these two caveats to editing 4K footage affordably and efficiently, then you can minimize your editing time, spend more time delivering finished content, and less time waiting for your computer. You can save a lot of money and still get the job done. In corporate online video, it's all about getting your footage in, edited, and back out, and this approach will help you do that.

Are you making a feature film? Then you can worry about the highest quality image acquisition. Otherwise, focus on the turnaround, the return on investment, and the most efficient workflow possible.

No material connection exists between Anthony Burokas and Adobe, Alienware/Dell, or Panasonic. All products and services have been/are purchased at regular retail prices available to any potential user of said products or services.