New to AVC

Widetrack wrote on 10/8/2018, 12:04 PM

I was just asked to edit a bunch of mixed footage, that Vegas identifies as:

·         2720 x 1530, 59.940fps, AVC,

·         2720 x 1530, 23.976fps, AVC,

·         1920x1080, 30.00fps AVC

All these from a DJI drone, probably a Mavic Air.

And some other clips of:

·         3840x  2160, 23.976fps AVC

From an unidentified hand-held camera.

I’ve never edited anything beefier than 1080HD before, and the file sizes, framerates, and image sizes make me wonder if my setup can handle this material, and if there are any considerations I need to make. I’m also not sure if all this is just AVC or something even bigger.

I loaded one clip of the 3840x  2160, 23.976fps footage into Build 261 and experienced very slow playback and other performance. I dug around and found Nick Hope’s post (8/28/2017, 10:58 PM) about deactivating so4compoundplug.dll, and following his directions helped there. This morning, I upgraded to Build 387 and haven’t opened it yet, and I’m hoping to get some thoughts from you guys before I wade into it again.

Thanks for the benefit of your collective experience.

Tim

I’m running V 15, Bld 387 on a Dell Inspiron with a 3.00GHz i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, Win 10, and an Nvidia GeForce GT 730.

Comments

Kinvermark wrote on 10/8/2018, 12:35 PM

DJI footage is typically highly compressed h264 or h265 footage, so it is quite difficult to work with.

My opinion: Your system isn't up to the challenge. It will be a real struggle.

You could transcode everything to proxies, but even then you are looking at high frame rate 2.5K and 4K material... perhaps try a small test, before you commit.

Widetrack wrote on 10/8/2018, 2:50 PM

Kinvemark: Thank you for the opinion. FWIW, bld 387 with the so4compoundplug.dll modification is playing and letting me edit the 3840 x 2160 footage easily. I'll probably do this 'til I need glasses.

Kinvermark wrote on 10/8/2018, 3:08 PM

Welcome. By so4 "modification" I presume you mean you have disabled it in favour of the older compoundplug.dll. I have done the same with Vegas 14, and, yes, the playback is better using the old decoder for SOME kinds of footage. I am a little surprised that this holds true for the h.265 DJI footage, but there are lots of variables at play here.

Keep in touch with your editing experience as things progress.

Widetrack wrote on 10/8/2018, 3:24 PM

No kidding. "A little surprised" doesn't begin to describe how I feel about it. I'm waiting for some terrible implosion of the whole thing to hit me right after I get used to doing this.

And Yes, I meant disabling so4.

NickHope wrote on 10/8/2018, 10:12 PM

Welcome. By so4 "modification" I presume you mean you have disabled it in favour of the older compoundplug.dll. I have done the same with Vegas 14, and, yes, the playback is better using the old decoder for SOME kinds of footage. I am a little surprised that this holds true for the h.265 DJI footage, but there are lots of variables at play here...

so4compoundplug was not introduced until VP15, and is not used to decode H.265 (HEVC). mxhevcplug.dll is used for that. The Mavic Air shoots H.264 (AVC) only.

Kinvermark wrote on 10/8/2018, 11:58 PM

Quite right. Memory error (mine, not computer's) from testing Vegas 15. Anyway, Vegas 14 uses older decoder and was faster than Vegas 15 with newer decoder (unless so4 replaced), so net result is the same.

Am I correct in recalling that some of the DJI drones record h.265?

NickHope wrote on 10/9/2018, 1:46 AM

Yes I've got a clip on file that Philip Bloom shot on on the Phantom Pro 4 that is H.265.

Widetrack wrote on 10/9/2018, 8:52 AM

Nick & Kinvermark: Thank you both for the information. This is helping clear things up for me. But I'm still unclear about so4. Is it intended for h264? Is it the actual decoder, or does it have some other function? In any case, what is the best decoder for h264 in V15 (or anywhere else, for that matter)?

NickHope wrote on 10/9/2018, 9:37 AM

Yes, so4compoundplug.dll is a new decoder, introduced in VP15, that handles H.264 (AVC). That's all it is as far as I know, although I'm not 100% that it doesn't play a part in encoding as well (I vaguely remember a post where someone said their encoding performance changed after they disabled/enabled it).

It has some functionality that the older compoundplug.dll doesn't, in particular it decodes Panasonic GH5 10-bit 422, JVC YUV 422, and iPhone/iPad AVC footage (without requiring Quicktime).

However it has serious issues with certain "flavors" of AVC, in particular some of that shot by DJI, GoPro, and XiaoYi cameras. Beyond that, it still seems to be "worse" than the older codec at decoding XAVC-S, and it may be slightly worse at decoding some of the other AVC formats that both codecs support; it certainly doesn't appear to be any better.

I'm not really sure of the reason that this codec was made the default for most regular 4:2:0 AVC & XAVC-S when it doesn't appear to have an advantage. At a guess it may be because it ties into some greater project to improve Vegas' performance. Or, at a wilder guess, perhaps it's so Magix pays fewer royalties on some proprietary technology within the older codec??

You can disable the whole codec in the internal preferences, but then you're losing support for those formats I mentioned above, and you never know when you might need that. A more cautious way to do it, available in VP15 build 361+ & VP16, is to use the So4 blacklist. By default that prevents only DJI, GoPro & XiaoYi AVC from being decoded by so4compoundplug.dll, and leaves the new support in place. You can add XAVC to the blacklist, or other formats if you can find a metadata tag that works, as explained in this post about it.

Widetrack wrote on 10/10/2018, 11:19 AM

Nick: thank you very much for that lucid clarification. What is not clear is why we have to run around trying to figure out how and why Vegas' default decoder is laughing in the face of our latest deadline, and making us and our chosen editing software look incompetent.

Wouldn't this be an issue worthy of Magix' attention? Especially in the midst of a marketing campaign for V16?

Kinvermark wrote on 10/10/2018, 12:55 PM

I am sure it is "on the list." The idea behind introducing the blacklist is to make this workaround invisible to users. Unfortunately, the forum has a memory. :)

Widetrack wrote on 10/10/2018, 8:10 PM

And a very good memory it is.

This forum, and its predecessors from Sony and Sonic Foundry, has been my teacher, friend, and savior more times than I can count. The accumulated knowledge of the current and past members here is priceless.

Widetrack wrote on 10/10/2018, 8:27 PM

One last question (for now). How do I move so4 back into Vegas so I can start using the convenient Blacklist?

 

Kinvermark wrote on 10/10/2018, 9:01 PM

Well, unless you did something "unusual" I would guess that you didn't actually move the so4 dll anywhere, just turned it off in preferences. So just reverse the procedure here:

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/avc-xavc-s-issues-in-vp15-try-disabling-so4compoundplug-dll--108345/