Best method to render 6k footage to something playable (1080P)

[Lee M]

I am wondering what the quickest way to render a card (256GB) worth of 6K footage to 1080P in order to review it without having to wait for Red Player or CINE-X to load.

Here is what I have been doing:

For a full card, I have been using Red CINE-X Pro exporting as Prores 444 Proxy. This is taking me 4+ hours per card. After that it is not really playable in VLC without running into issues so I play/review the footage in Adobe Premiere which will play fine at full resolution.

I feel Premiere Pro would be a lot quicker to convert the 6K files to 1080P however I am getting a lot of freezing issues when I try to import more than one clip at a time and it seems to take forever just to get the several clips in the timeline.

I have a system with 4 GPU's so perhaps there is another software that can take advantage of them? I know with Red CINE-X I was able to select all 4 GPU's and set them at CUDA.

Any tips would be appreciated, need to review several cards worth of footage.

 

[Owen Rennie]

Can't you just playback r3d in 1/4 res? I do this on an old iMac and macbook.. couldn't imagine waiting 4 hours to export footage just to watch it

 

[Bob Gundu]

Change the QuickTime scale settings from smooth to faster. Also, you don't need 444 for proxy files. But ultimately I wouldn't bother with transcoding just to playback smoothly. If you're unable to playback 6k files in either Redcine or you're NLE, perhaps your hard drive speeds are the bottleneck. What about even playback 1/4 res?

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

Stop playing back at full 6k. Redcine and premier both let you use the 6k file but playback at a lower resolution to fit your systems speed

 

[Lee M]

Stop playing back at full 6k. Redcine and premier both let you use the 6k file but playback at a lower resolution to fit your systems speed

Where do I set the playback resolution? Couldn't find it in settings for cine-x

 

[Lee M]

Can't you just playback r3d in 1/4 res? I do this on an old iMac and macbook.. couldn't imagine waiting 4 hours to export footage just to watch it

It wont even playback at 1/16 in real time. Yes I can let it render the clip to get a head start for a few minutes but then if I click back or go to a different part of the clip it has to render again.

 

[Lee M]

Change the QuickTime scale settings from smooth to faster. Also, you don't need 444 for proxy files. But ultimately I wouldn't bother with transcoding just to playback smoothly. If you're unable to playback 6k files in either Redcine or you're NLE, perhaps your hard drive speeds are the bottleneck. What about even playback 1/4 res?

I have a really fast windows computer, good memory, and a good GPU but perhaps the fact I am opening the files from this external drive is the issue? https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STEB8000100/dp/B01HAPGEIE

 

[Lee M]

I tested editing the same r3d on cine-x with a newer pc I have with a lot less specs (see below) and it seems to playback fine with 1/4 quality without stalling whereas what was supposed to be my mega PC is not even playing it back at 1/16 quality without pausing to catch up. Both cards are using the GTX 1080TI GPU

Newer PC:
OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.15063 Build 15063
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name DESKTOP-Q5SNMGK
System Manufacturer MSI
System Model MS-7976
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU Default string
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4008 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 1.E0, 7/22/2016
SMBIOS Version 3.0
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer MSI
BaseBoard Model Not Available
BaseBoard Name Base Board
Platform Role Desktop
Secure Boot State Off
PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.15063.0"
User Name DESKTOP-Q5SNMGK\PC2
Time Zone Pacific Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 7.96 GB
Available Physical Memory 3.81 GB
Total Virtual Memory 16.2 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.87 GB
Page File Space 8.27 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Device Encryption Support Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: TPM is not usable, PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and device is not InstantGo, Un-allowed DMA capable bus/device(s) detected, TPM is not usable
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware Yes
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

1 year old PC (Supposed to be really good)
OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.15063 Build 15063
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name DESKTOP-R18S3J5
System Manufacturer Dell Inc.
System Model Precision Tower 7910
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU 0619
Processor Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2609 v3 @ 1.90GHz, 1900 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 6 Logical Processor(s)
Processor Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2609 v3 @ 1.90GHz, 1900 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 6 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. A16, 11/17/2016
SMBIOS Version 2.8
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode Legacy
BaseBoard Manufacturer Dell Inc.
BaseBoard Model Not Available
BaseBoard Name Base Board
Platform Role Desktop
Secure Boot State Unsupported
PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.15063.0"
User Name DESKTOP-R18S3J5\User
Time Zone Pacific Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 96.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 95.9 GB
Available Physical Memory 85.4 GB
Total Virtual Memory 143 GB
Available Virtual Memory 131 GB
Page File Space 46.8 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Device Encryption Support Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: TPM is not usable, PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and device is not InstantGo, Un-allowed DMA capable bus/device(s) detected, TPM is not usable
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware Yes
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

 

[Björn Benckert]

Check your GPU render setting inside the preferences Possibly the card is not st to be used.

Test to play from another drive possibly it's some connection issue on one of the machines.

Also if you want quick / fast proxies made. Then lower the debayer setting inside the export menu and do 1920 422 prores proxy . That should go faster than realtime on a decent machine.

 

[Tom Gleeson]

Unless your Seagate 8TB external can be configured in a stripped array I would expect pretty average performance from it. Run a test and see what speed you are getting off it. My new iMac will playback 6K footage at quarter Res at 25fps but off the internal SSD. No use having a powerful machine then drip feeding it.