Video editing getting more performance out of your system

I just noticed Blender can read canon.mov files
And if you follow the tips in this youtube movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJGLKHhf1EI
And have good hardware, like fast CPU or GPU and a fast disk, like a SSD.
After the tips

One can do realtime preview of a (in my case) 720P video without quality loss.
As for comparison it out performs sony vegas pro 10 - on preview while working with the strips !!!
And i suppose it will outperform it now on all fronts… i say goodbye vegas now.

PS and for all the other things you like to do, like denoising change color balance, deshake
There is virtualdub, with lots of free filters, you can do the clips first, then combine your clips in blender.

And have good hardware, like fast CPU or GPU and a fast disk, like a SSD.

Sounds like a useful tip for those to whom it applies.
My CPU is probably average for a desktop these days at its age.
My GPU is of no use for rendering. Video editing, I don’t know.
I don’t have an SSD.
And hell, I don’t even own a Canon product at present.
My rig will get updated when the budget allows, but for now it is what it is.
And I don’t think I’m the only one in this boat.
So while you’re tip may be very helpful for those who have the specs you mentioned, don’t feel lonely if this thread doesn’t get a big response.
Personally I always get terrible performance out of the VSE and for that reason it’s my least favorite editor in Blender.
If what you’re saying is an indication that the poor performance is directly related to my hardware there’s not much I can do at present.
If I misunderstood the message of your post, please correct me.

Hmmm, actually I get good performance from my Canon h264 files when I set the dimensions correctly. Canon actually records its frames (from DSLRs) at 1920 x 1088 <- yep thats an 8 not a typo.

So there’s a tip, check the image dimensions and make sure that Blender is using native source dimensions, so it doesn’t have to scale the image for every frame.

Also increase the Sequence memory allocation in the User Prefs and choose the right Audio process for sequencer use (tool tip tells you the right one).

Also I’m not sure how the shading properties can effect the 2D VSE render space as it is only invoked from a 3D scene?

Finally use proxies, they make everything more snappy and reasonable, but Blender is not a very good NLE anyway.

3pointEdit! You’ve pulled my butt out of the fire on several occasions when I ran into VSE trouble. Always appreciated.

Choose the right audio process? Where is there the option to choose an audio process, and what sort of process is it?

Finally use proxies, they make everything more snappy and reasonable

I hear proxies help. Are they pretty simple to set up? What are they anyway?

but Blender is not a very good NLE anyway.

Sadly, yes. The VSE needs an overhaul. The performance issues are a barrier.
I have Final Cut X and could learn to use that, yet I stubbornly try to keep my workflow all in Blender. :smiley:
I’ve become accustomed to the power of Blender’s nodes for still compositing. But when trying to take node-based compositing to the animation realm all sorts of issues crop up. If more people would back open film projects like Gooseberry and Blender development in general I’m sure Blender’s video editing capabilities would have already been improved.

User prefs sound output device:


Proxies are temp renders in jpeg movie format at low bitrate (and scaled), of your source media. You activate them in the strip properties then turn on proxy view in the VSE preview window. Select the strips with proxy turned on and generate them via the strip menu in the VSE. This will auto generate new media. Make sure that the proxy size matches the view size for proxy.

Be aware that you canot mix full res and proxy on playback, it’s an either/or situation. Non-proxied media will play black. It doesn’t affect the audio.

BTW I use fcpx, its great for editing, but I have to manually export and line up media in the compositor to perform VFX stuff.

Ehm i didn’t use proxies and I was able to see the final result realtime, but i will check that too.

Oh and i like to note also, that without all the above optimization settings, my hardware didnt perform great too. So the tips here will benefit anyone, maybe you wont get realtime fps, but you will go up in frame rate for sure. Once you are at full speed, i notice the final rendering will take more time, as each frame has to be converted to your desired output (video/image).

Well i dont have fcpx, and as vegas failed me, i now use blender; and i got to admit some things are a lot slower mainly the titles stuff, they need to go trough blenders render pipeline, and although there is opengl, its not so fast on my system.
For those titles i used background textures, in fact a few layers with transparency.
I disabled a much as i could for those scenes with texture meshes in blender internal, disable shadow disable mist disable disable disable …

Now a canon mov plays at 25fps, while a simple title plays at around 7fps
I got no GPU’s in this laptop, as my intentions where video editing, and later i got into blender.

On the positive side, yes sure lots of final editing was easier in vegas.
But to me to change to blender, is also a learning curve, there is more “freedom” in blender, you can do whatever you want, things not possible in vegas for final editing.
And for the pre-editing this was already to me the area of virtualdub.

And just for the record, yesterday i did an animation of an panorama photo inside blender. Simply move the texture under the camera and zoom in and out etc. When done i noticed due to movement of that and the frame rate. it showed hick-ups, so then my blender result got into virtualdub’s deshaker again.
And i did not completely removed it and now got that look as if it was handfilmed :), finally that movie part will go back into the final render… so sometimes i jump backward/forward with those editors.


does anybody know why there isnt a specific forum main thread dedicated to video editing with blender ?

You should look at some of my tutorials in sig below. This sub board is as close to vse specific as it gets here. Other apps will prerender effects for playback efficiency too. Sadly Blender doesn’t have this built in.

@3pointEdit: Thanks for the additional info on audio, proxies, and FCPX!