Smartphone footage not playing smoothly in Vegas

Richard-Bril wrote on 9/29/2020, 3:32 PM

My problem is that when I import native MP4 video files into Vegas, there is a tiny bit of jitter or stutter (maybe it's a skipped frame) every now and then. It kind of looks like the camera jerked for a second. These jitters only appear once the MP4s are in Vegas, if I play the raw files in VLC (or any other media player) there is no jitter. Some of my video clips might not show any of this jitter in Vegas, while others might have several, it's sporadic…but if there is jitter in the file, it is always at the same place in the clip.

I do all my filming on a Galaxy Note 9 phone in 3840x2160, either in 30fps or 60fps. Lately I've been doing most of my filming using a Movi Freefly gimbal...and when connected to the gimbal I am not given the 60fps option, but 24/30fps (in up to 4K), or 240fps in 1080. Regardless of whether I film while connected via Bluetooth to the gimbal, or just holding the phone and filming natively, I still have this issue once importing the MP4s into Vegas.

I haven't found any solutions that address this specific problem. If I render the raw MP4 files in HandBrake and then take them over to Vegas, it fixes the problem and the jitters are gone, but I lose some of the quality in the video even when using HandBrake's highest quality settings...not to mention the fact that it can make the files sizes about 5 or 6 times larger than the native MP4 files that the phone created. I'd much rather not have to pre-render hundreds of video files for every project I work on in HandBrake before taking them to Vegas, not to mention the loss of quality. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

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Richard-Bril wrote on 10/9/2020, 5:10 PM

@JN- sounds great, thanks! However, on a higher specced machine (like my son's gaming machine which handles editing in VP pretty good), there was a considerable difference to the response time and VP playback when loading 70'ish MP4s that were rendered with the old batch file compared to the new one. The new rendered files done with your new batch file, when enabling the thumbnails in VP took about 5 seconds to populate them all compared to about 60-90 seconds when using the first set of rendered files done with your first batch file...not to mention that you could barely play the file in the editor without tons of choppy-ness.

Do you think there is a quality difference between a -16 render with the original batch file compared to a -16 render with the new batch file? Do those IBP's make a difference to quality?

I might as well ask this also...to have FFMpeg do a re-wrap of an MP4 and convert it to CFR (the way HOS does), is that something that could be coded into a batch file if the coding specs were known?

Richard

Richard-Bril wrote on 10/9/2020, 5:11 PM

@Musicvid FilmIcPro does not have a confirmation on whether their app records in CFR.

Musicvid wrote on 10/9/2020, 5:24 PM

@Richard-Bril So I may have missed it, but troubleshooting starts by removing all external variables. When you shoot without the Filmic, does the camera footage behave in Vegas as expected, when using the advice offered to you above; i.e, import Constant Frame Rate, Same as Source?

JN- wrote on 10/9/2020, 5:28 PM

@Richard-Bril "Do you think there is a quality difference between a -16 render with the original batch file compared to a -16 render with the new batch file? Do those IBP's make a difference to quality?"

I figured that was coming, so here's the answer, basically no difference quality. I used a higher quality reference file to compare the 2 "16" versions below.

---------------------------------------------------- "01 Original (Note9)-[CFR]-NEWER.mp4" metrics below

SSIM All........ 0.988750 (19.488324)
PSNR Average ... 46.356465
VMAF ........... 99.982183

---------------------------------------------------- "01 Original (Note9)-[CFR]-OLDER.mp4" metrics below

SSIM All........ 0.986868 (18.816830)
PSNR Average ... 45.555916
VMAF ........... 99.977599

"I might as well ask this also...to have FFMpeg do a re-wrap of an MP4 and convert it to CFR (the way HOS does), is that something that could be coded into a batch file if the coding specs were known?"

I didn't see that one coming!

I would do it if I knew how, even Marco said it wasn't possible using ffmpeg. If anyone knows, it's WWAAG.

wwaag wrote on 10/9/2020, 5:37 PM

AFAIK, it's not possible using FFmpeg alone.

JN- wrote on 10/9/2020, 7:13 PM

@wwaag👍 Good enough.

Richard-Bril wrote on 10/10/2020, 3:53 AM

@Richard-Bril So I may have missed it, but troubleshooting starts by removing all external variables. When you shoot without the Filmic, does the camera footage behave in Vegas as expected, when using the advice offered to you above; i.e, import Constant Frame Rate, Same as Source?

@Musicvid I'm very close to writing up a detailed explanation of every angle to the original question I posed to this forum in my first post and then tag it as a solution so other people looking for answers to this issue can hopefully happen upon this thread...but to simply answer your question, I've tried 3 different 3rd party apps to record video on my phone, none of them offer the ability to record in CFR. My phone (a Samsung Galaxy Note 9) records pretty good video (apart from some sensitivity to light sources drastically changing) and always has...and plays those videos fine on a computer through a media player, or on a TV through a TV Box, etc. But when those same videos are imported into VP (and from all I have read...other NLEs as well, namely Adobe Premier), the variable frame rate video most smartphones record in will cause some playback issues (which are also passed along to renders...meaning it's not just a playback issue, but the video file itself will cause those "issues" to be passed along to the final render). In my case and with my phone...the "issues" I have with the VFR footage in VP is that it causes some slight jitter (or jerky-looking camera movement...or what some might even think to be buffering, skipping or hiccup playback sporadically).

By re-rendering the native footage using (HandBrake, Wondershare, JN's FFMpeg Batch files, or other such software) and converting to CFR, it completely fixes the problem. Further, by re-wrapping the files using HOS (which skips the transcoding process altogether, thus avoiding quality loss), also completely fixes the problem. (I might as well note that I tried doing this CFR conversion from within Vegas by doing a render using one of their higher quality rendering options...but it did NOT fix the problem. Even though it resulted in a CFR file, the "jitter" was passed along to the newly rendered files.)