Ever had issues playing back video in your session? In This article, Damian Kearns demonstrates how to use the free DaVinci Resolve program to avoid slowdowns, crashes and glitches that commonly occur when using the wrong video codec in your DAW.
Primer: Video
I’ve been transcoding my video files for 20 years or so, even prior to using capture and playback products like Doremi Labs’ SCSI HDD V1D or Canopus ADVC-100 or ADVC-1000 (the latter owned by Grass Valley) for creating and outputting the first DV files I used with my audio sessions. Back then, I could create my own video files in real time with these sorts of products by ingesting 4:3 video (standard 4:3, anamorphic or letterbox) from Digital Betacam, Betacam SP, or Betacam SX but as was often the case, editors would supply me noncompliant video files I would have to transcode to work with my system. During most of this time, I could rely on QuickTime Pro to get the transcode job done but when Apple announced they were dropping 32 bit software support, I started looking to other programs.
There must be a hundred or more programs that can do the job of transforming a video from one format to the next but when I sat down with my very clever friend, Richard, he told me he uses Blackmagicdesign’s DaVinci Resolve to get the job done. Blackmagicdesign’s hardware was already installed and integral in my studio, as I had been using a USB 3.0 Intensity Shuttle to play out my sessions’ video files to my studio TV monitor since 2013. The brand name meant something to me. So, I liked this DaVinci solution for that and because it’s free, feature-packed and has potential uses beyond just transcoding videos. I tried it for myself and found Resolve to be extremely efficient and swift. For 6 years now, I’ve been using DaVinci Resolve to mitigate any video playback issues.
Video Files supplied by picture editors can come in a variety of formats, some of which are not supported for use in various digital audio workstations. The highly compressed files, like H.264 for instance, can siphon off valuable systems resources from our workstations. This needn’t be the case.
On AVID’s website, there’s an easy-to-read document in the Avid Knowledge Base that sums up everything you need to guide your choice for ideal video file format and picture size. Check out Avid-Qualified Video Rates, Rasters, and Codecs for Pro Tools for specific details about how to optimize your picture playback but for the purpose of this article, I’ll point out the section that provides general guidance. This is taken directly from the document:
General Performance Notes:
Although H.264 playback performance has greatly improved in 2019.10 and later, intraframe codecs such as DNxHD/HR and Apple ProRes are preferred over any Long GOP codec, especially with editing workflows. This is simply due to the nature of the intraframe codecs compared to long GOP codecs.
Certain codecs, especially long GOP, will perform better on higher powered machines.
High frame rates and high raster sizes have independent performance considerations. It is important to consider which attribute is most important to your workflow. If you encounter performance problems with a file that has both a high frame rate and high raster size, try requesting a file that has one of these attributes reduced. For example, if you are using a 4k 60 fps file, you may be more concerned with frame rate. Video performance may be improved if you use a 1080p 60 fps file instead.
It’s recommended to use LB (Low Bandwidth) codecs when working with files that have both a high frame (greater than 30 fps) rate and raster size (greater than 1920x1080). For example, use DNxHR LB instead of DNxHR HQ when working with a 4k 60fps file.
It’s recommended that you use an intraframe codec, such as Avid DNxHD/HR, when working with sessions that require high CPU usage. Long GOP codecs, such as H.264, are more CPU intensive and can compete with audio processing resources.
As you can see above, DNxHD/HR and Apple ProRes are preferred since they employ intra-frame codecs, which means data compression is applied to each single frame of the video file during its creation and is based solely on the information inside the picture itself. Inter-frame codecs analyse changes over multiple frames of picture and compress data which doesn’t appear to change over the course of those frames. Inter-frame codecs tend to produce much smaller files than intra-frame codecs but are more taxing on our systems to unpack, since the de-compression process is more involved.
Bigger Is Better
I’ll sum this all up nicely: We work in audio. We don’t actually need 4k video to do our recording, editing and mixing jobs for the most part (definitely exceptions to every rule) and we certainly don’t want our video files to perniciously chew into our CPU usage, bogging down playback and causing stops and hangs here and there. Intra-frame codecs do produce much larger video files than inter-frame codecs but this means less work for host systems like the AVID Video Engine or 3rd party programs like Non-Lethal Applications’ Video Sync 5 to do. Although Logic Pro’s pdf manual gives no guidance on video codecs, I will assume ProRes video files will work really well since they’ve been part of the Apple ecosystem for many years (Logic likely uses QuickTime to unpack any QuickTime supported video codec) . With this in mind, I’ll be outlining how to convert a video file to ProRes for use inside DAW programs, using Blackmagicdesign’s Davinci Resolve. Of course, any other codec supported by your DAW can be sustituted in place of the codec I am using in this example.
The steps to create a ProRes Proxy video file are as follows:
Step 1: Select Your Media and Transcode Options:
If you haven’t already done so, head over to this page and download the correct software installer for your system, whether it be Mac or PC or even Linux. Registration is straightforward and inside a minute, you’ll be downloading the latest DaVinci Resolve software installer.
Once you’ve installed the software, boot it up. Launch the default untitled project. Drag any single movie or group of video files you want to convert into the top left Media Pool area that says “No Clips in media pool” in the main project window. If the project’s frame rate differs from your media, you’ll evoke a pop-up asking you to switch. You ought to if you need to so click “Change” to keep project and media at the same frame rate.
Select any and all media you want to convert. A red outline will appear around selected video clips. Then, from the File menu at the top left of your display, click and scroll down to ‘Media Management…’ which is where we access the transcoding options.
Pro Video Tip For Picture Editors or people sharing their transcodes elsewhere in post production: Before transcoding the media, in order to keep the metadata for roundtrips especially when working in Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, go to the File Menu/Project Settings and in General Options, select ‘Assist using reel name from the’, then select "Source clip file pathname". You should then see the Reel column fill in with the source clip name. It is not set by default. Handy little tip for all of you planning more than one use specific for these transcodes.
In The Media Management pop-up window there are two main tabs: ‘Copy’ and ‘Transcode’. The default is ‘Copy’ but we want ‘Transcode’ so click over to that tab.
Set the destination where you want your new file to go. I typically have a ‘Video Files’ folder on a different drive to the one that contains my Pro Tools audio sessions. In this example, I’m using a very sparsely populated SSD Drive called 217 BU 1. The only thing this drive does during my DAW sessions is host my video files. This keeps the throughput on my main audio drive dedicated to sound only and through years of working this way, I’ve found streaming audio and video data from different drives to be an incredibly stable workflow. It also makes archiving and deleting the videos much easier since they’re not nested inside my Pro Tools sessions.
The Settings sub tab is pretty straightforward. Since we have media selected in the media pool, we’ll “Use Selected media pool clips” and “Transcode All Media”. One thing I hate is the “Use project name subfolder” option so I always deselect that because it ends up creating a subfolder inside my Video Files folder and nesting my transcodes in there.
Your window should now look similar to what is shown in the picture above, except for your unique ‘Destination’.
Step 2: Select Your Video Options
In my example the file I’m using is 820.68 MB’s in size, as evidenced at the bottom left of the Media Management window. Keeping the Video format as ‘QuickTime’, when I switch ‘Codec’ to Apple ProRes the file size jumps to 7.09 GB’s. This is because the original file is a highly compressed mp4 and the Apple ProRes default in DaVinci Resolve is 422 HQ (high quality). As I cycle through the ‘Type’ selections underneath the ‘Codec’ selection, I can see the various inferred file sizes. The typical Apple ProRes 422 would yield a 4.73 GB movie. If I go to the highest ProRes 4444 XQ it’s a whopping 15.96 GB’s. This would probably be very nice looking but in AVID’s support article (the one I referenced above and earlier in the article) they clearly state support for Apple ProRes HQ/LT/Proxy. Since ProRes Proxy is officially supported in my DAW and the smaller file size at 1.46 GB’s, I tend to use these. Why? I have plenty of storage but I often have to share my sessions with other editors. This codec variant greatly reduces my upload/download time and after 6 years of use, I can attest to its reliability inside my DAW. It also looks very nice on my HDTV monitor.
As we look at the video Resolution settings, we can “Render at source resolution”. This is sometimes helpful if the source file must stay the same size to maintain an accurate visual reference. I personally don’t encounter this too much (sometimes I select this for use with commercials that are atypically formatted for the web) so I mostly I keep the resolution at 1920x1080 HD (aka 1080p) because my entire system– including my TV monitor and Pro Tools- seems to work well at 1080p. At this resolution, I won’t have to upscale smaller files and when I am sometimes handed 4k files, this downscaling to 1080p greatly improves the overall stability of my Pro Tools system.
Step 3: Audio Settings
The third and final sub-tab probably needs the least amount of explanation since we’re in the audio field anyway. I keep the Audio codec at “Linear PCM” and ‘Render’ 2 channels of audio only. I usually only use the video guide track audio as a sync reference. If you think you need all the audio tracks from the source video file, just maintain the default “Same as source” setting.
Creating Transcoded Files
The final step is to hit ‘Start’ at the bottom of the Media Management window. This will initiate the transcode. Once I finish transcoding, I usually head back to the Media Pool in the main project window and hit ‘delete’ to remove the media from the project so I can start fresh next time.
Conclusion
If you've been having stability issues when working with picture inside your DAW, transcoding to a supported codec is certainly a step to consider. Transcoding properly will reduce the load on your CPU so you can just focus on your audio work. By experimenting with the various supported codecs, you might just find the right settings for your system, to keep things looking their best and working well.
Pro Tools Pro Tip
If you’re a Pro Tools user on a recent release version, you might want to play around with the relatively new addition to the AVID Video Engine’s functionality. Either on your video track itself or under the Setup Menu/Timecode Overlay Settings… you can now put timecode burn-in on your video, with minimal but useful settings options. The little purple clock on my video track is where this TC burn-in can be engaged or bypassed. Check out the monster TC burn-in I placed at the bottom of the black video screen in the picture above. The controls aren’t as fancy as what can be found in Media Composer but they are ample for Pro Tools and a welcome addition to the toolkit.
Another thing to keep in mind is working with your video tracks in ‘blocks’ view, as I do, will also reduce CPU and GPU usage, as ‘frames’ view requires more system resources. This was really apparent in older versions of Pro Tools, on older computers, but it’s still good practice.