Vidding process: Proxy workflow

[thuviaptarth]

alpharatz and corbae put together a really great presentation on getting started vidding. It includes examples of a lot of different ways of doing things, and that plus people sharing some of their processes, tips, and tricks at vidukon_cardiff made me think it might be useful to share how I do things. I'm going to try to put some stuff together and tag it all "vidding process".

Today I'm going to talk about using proxies when vidding.

What's a proxy?

A proxy is a decompressed and/or lower-resolution version of a source file that's easier for your computer and/or editing program to handle.

Why are proxies necessary?

Well, they may not be! If your computer and program seem to be working fine with high-res source, you don't need to mess with anything. However, if you have problems with rendering source while you're editing -- there's a big lag when you scrub through footage in the Source Monitor, the video in the Program Monitor stutters, it's hard for you to manage precise timing because of video lag -- then it may be a good idea to use proxies.

The source of the problem is two-fold:

• Your video source is probably compressed and encoded for viewing, rather than editing. This means that your editing program needs to decompress it on the fly in order to work with it.
• You're probably using a computer designed for a consumer end-user, instead of hardware specially designed for video editing. (The good news is, now so do a lot of professional video editors -- which is why proxy editing workflows are built into most editing programs used by professionals.)

Proxy file size and hardware constraints

Because proxies are uncompressed, they are much larger than the original source files, even though they are a lower resolution. Right now I'm working with source where the original files (at 1080p) are 2GB each and the proxies (at 540p) are 6GB each.

I work around the space constraints by putting the source (both the originals and the proxies) on external hard drives. This works fine and without any noticeable hiccups or lags, but it's not free. Right now a 2-TB drive costs around $60. I don't have any great budget suggestions for this, sorry. :(

Proxy workflow

Proxy workflow is pretty simple:

1. You create proxies for the source files.
2. The editing program uses the proxies instead of the source while you're editing.
3. The editing program uses the original source when you're rendering your video output file.

Most editing programs have proxy workflows built in so that they will do a lot of this work for you -- once you tell them to create the proxies, they will create the proxies for you and then automatically use the proxy while editing and the original when producing an output file without you having to make any manual switches. I'm including instructions for the two editors I've used, but you can probably find the instructions (and video tutorials!) for any program by googling "[name of program] proxy editing".

Both of the programs I'm going to talk about come with their own media converters to make the proxies, but if yours doesn't, you can use free programs like Handbrake or, well, a lot of GUIs slapped on top of Handbrake to do the conversions. I use Vidcoder for conversions that DaVinci or the Adobe suite can't do, like lossless repackaging of mkvs as mp4s.

Proxies in Adobe Premiere

I'm giving instructions for Windows but they should work for Macs with the usual shortcut key substitutes.

Set up Project panel

You may find it helpful to set up your Project panel to display proxy information by default.

1. In the Project panel, click the menu icon and select Metadata Display.
2. Search for "Proxy", then select Proxy (this tells you whether proxies are attached or offline) and Proxy File Path (this tells you where the files are).
3. Click Save Settings to save this as a custom metadata display you can switch to, or OK to save it as the default metadata view.

Set up Source and Program Monitors

Make sure that the Toggle Proxies buttons appear in the Source and Program Monitors beneath the video display. The button names appear in tooltips when you hover over the buttons. If you don't see Toggle Proxies, click the plus sign to choose from more buttons.

The toggle is blue when you're viewing proxies and white when you're viewing full resolution media.

Create the proxies

1. Open Premiere and import your source files (Ctrl+I or drag them from Windows Explorer).
2. In the Project panel, select your source files, right-click, and select Proxy > Create Proxies.
3. Select a format. (My recommendation is Quicktime instead of H.264.)
4. Select a preset. (My recommendation is "ProRes Low Resolution Proxy".)
5. Set a destination for the proxy files. (I usually select Next to Original Media, in Proxy folder, but you can select anywhere. It doesn't need to be the same drive as the original media or the Premiere project file.)
6. Click OK. Adobe Media Encoder opens up and begins transcoding.

How long this takes depends on your computer specs and the quality of the original media. For me, it usually takes about thirty seconds to transcode each minute of 1080p source. You can edit using the original source files in Premiere as the proxies are being made, but this can be slow or frustrating if your computer doesn't have a powerful processor, so I usually just set the encoding to run overnight as soon as I know I want to make a vid.

Edit with proxies

When the proxies are complete, they'll be attached automatically the next time you open Premiere, but you can also attach them manually by right-clicking on the original source file in the Premiere Project panel and selecting Proxy > Attach Proxies.

To edit with the proxies, make sure Toggle Proxies is selected (blue) in the Source window. To view the output with proxies, make sure Toggle Proxies is selected in the Program Window.

You have a lot of customization options available -- you can set up Premiere to automatically create proxies for any new video files, or create your own proxy if you don't like the default ones. (I set up one for a 1024x540 resolution, for example, because I didn't think I needed 720px for editing.) For more information, see Adobe's documentation on Ingest and Proxy Workflow.

Proxies in DaVinci Resolve

Again, I'm giving instructions for Windows, but they should work for Macs.

Everyone else in the world calls LQ files for editing "proxy media", but DaVinci Resolve calls them "optimized media".

File Location

Resolve doesn't offer you a choice of where to save the optimized files; they will be saved in the same location as the originals. Make sure the original media is saved on a drive with plenty of room.

Optimization Settings

1. Go to File > Project Settings and select Master Settings.
2. Scroll down to the Optimized Media and Render Cache section.

3. I use these settings:

   • Optimized Media Resolution: Quarter for 1080p, one-eighth or one-sixteenth for 4K.
   • Optimized Media Format: DNxHR HQX
   • Optimized Render Format: DNxHR HQX

   If you try this and you're still seeing slowness in rendering on the timeline, try a different media format and render format.

4. Click Save.

Smart Bins

I find it useful to have smart bins for optimized and non-optimized media. To create them:

1. In the Media Pool, right-click in the Smart Bin area and select Add Smart Bin.

2. Name the bin "Optimized Media" and give it the following settings:

   • Match all of the following rules
   • From MediaPool Properties select Optimized Media
   • Set the comparison to "is not"
   • Set the final value to "Original Resolution".
3. Click OK.
4. Repeat for "Non-Optimized Media", but set comparison to "is" and the final value to "None" ("Original Resolution" seems like it should work, but doesn't).

Create optimized media

On the Edit Page or in the media pool, select your source files, right-click, and select Optimize media.

How long this takes depends on your computer specs and the quality of the original media. For me, it usually takes about thirty seconds to transcode each minute of 1080p source. You will not be able to edit in Resolve while the media is being optimized, and your computer in general may be slow. I usually set up Resolve to optimize a batch of media overnight.

Enable optimized media

In the Playback menu, select Use Optimized Media If Available. While you're there, I also recommend setting Proxy to Half or Quarter Resolution. (For Resolve, "Proxy" means the playback resolution rather than ... using anything that fits the general definition of "a substitute for something else enabled of authorized to perform some of the original's actions or responsibilities". I have no explanation for this.)

See the DaVinci Resolve User's Manual (pdf) for more information.

Comments

[alpheratz]

Oh wow, I super appreciate you putting this post together. I didn't know any of this. Not only is this proxy workflow going to be incredibly useful to me, but I also didn't know that you could have an encoding optimized for viewing as opposed to an encoding optimized for editing. I bet that explains some differences I've noticed while working with different source. Thank you so much and I am definitely going to be reading any future posts you might write!

[thuviaptarth]

I'm glad it was helpful!