MJPEG Gearshift proxies

Laurence wrote on 6/22/2007, 7:24 AM
With my slower single core P4 desktop and laptop, I am always looking for ways to save CPU and storage space on projects.

I just tried using Gearshift with the http://www.pegasusimaging.com/picvideomjpeg.htm$28 Pegasys MJPEG codec[/link]. I generated Gearshift proxies that were 640x360x29.97P. That way Vegas would be doing no scaling or deinterlacing on preview with an easy to see preview window. It seems to work really well. It previews even through transitions without dropped frames. I used a medium quality setting. The MJPEG proxies are a fraction of the size of DV proxies. 15 gig of HDV footage amounted to only 2.55 gig of MJPEG proxies.

Anyway, for desktop editing with a Canopus box, I'd still recommend using standard DV proxies so that you can preview fullscreen with an external monitor, but if you don't have the external firewire monitor setup or you're editing on a a laptop at Starbucks, MJPEG proxies work really well.

This also opens up possibilities like copying the tiny MJPEG proxies to a pendrive and editing a project on a laptop, then bringing the project back to your desktop and "switching gears" for the final render. You could also edit this way on the built in 4200 or 5400 RPM drive of a standard $500 laptop, and just bring the completed VEG file back to your desktop for a final "switch gears" and render.

Pretty cool stuff if you ask me!

Comments

Wolfgang S. wrote on 6/22/2007, 7:30 AM
This possibility has been described earlier - for PAL-mjpeg-avi proxies (German):

http://www.videotreffpunkt.com/thread.php?threadid=1141

Desktop: PC AMD 3960X, 24x3,8 Mhz * RTX 3080 Ti (12 GB)* Blackmagic Extreme 4K 12G * QNAP Max8 10 Gb Lan * Resolve Studio 18 * Edius X* Blackmagic Pocket 6K/6K Pro, EVA1, FS7

Laptop: ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED * internal HDR preview * i9 12900H with i-GPU Iris XE * 32 GB Ram) * Geforce RTX 3070 TI 8GB * internal HDR preview on the laptop monitor * Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K mini

HDR monitor: ProArt Monitor PA32 UCG-K 1600 nits, Atomos Sumo

Others: Edius NX (Canopus NX)-card in an old XP-System. Edius 4.6 and other systems

Laurence wrote on 6/22/2007, 8:01 AM
Danke schön
Laurence wrote on 6/24/2007, 8:11 AM
I'm working away on this project using my P4 2.8 laptop and MJPEG proxies and I must say this is a great way to work on a slower system. I am editing a project on a USB model 500 gigabyte Western Digital My Book that I picked up on sale at Staples for $129. The MJPEG proxies are less than 3 gigabyte in all. I've got a nice big preview window and there are no dropped frames during the transitions. On straight footage, CPU usage is less than 20%. On transitions or color correction it goes up to less than 60%. Crossfading between two color corrected clips drops some frames during the transition, but it it immediately recovers after the transition. This is definately as good workflow for slower single core systems.