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Mac Pro 4,1 (5,1), editing and viewing 2.7k & 4k video, where is my bottleneck?

M

Messy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 5, 2010
426
13
Hey guys,

I own a few drones.

I shoot in 2.7k and 4k, and I can barely view the videos without my Mac playing them choppy.

Where are my bottlenecks, and is it viable to edit using a machine like this?

Samsung 850 SSD
2 x 2.66ghz Hex Core's
32GB RAM
GTX 770

CLo2MNS.png


TIA
 
Videos play really choppy, and that's if at all, any 1080p stuff is fine but any high bit rate or 2.7k/4k just goes to ****.
[doublepost=1484668517][/doublepost]
mastermamo said:
What software are u using to edit on
Click to expand...

Either AE or Premier, but even playing in VLC or Quicktime my Mac has issues.
 
mastermamo said:
It's the graphic card that's the bottleneck. U need more VRAM especially when playing back 2K/4K/5K
Click to expand...

Not to doubt what you said, but isn't the GTX 770 more powerful than the dGPUs in the 2016 MBP, yet they can play 2K/4K without an issue?

Could it possibly be a CUDA driver that needs updating, as they're on Sierra? http://www.macvidcards.com/drivers.html

Just spitballing here by the way, I'm happy to be corrected if I'm way off the mark. :)
 
mastermamo said:
It's the graphic card that's the bottleneck. U need more VRAM especially when playing back 2K/4K/5K. And playing back from a SSD would help as well
Click to expand...

I play the same videos on my MBP 13" which has the Intel 6100 GPU, and they play just fine. So you're sure it's the graphics card?
[doublepost=1484668863][/doublepost]Im reasonably confident it's not the graphics card.
 
Messy said:
Hey guys,

I own a few drones.

I shoot in 2.7k and 4k, and I can barely view the videos without my Mac playing them choppy.

Where are my bottlenecks, and is it viable to edit using a machine like this?

Samsung 850 SSD
2 x 2.66ghz Hex Core's
32GB RAM
GTX 770

CLo2MNS.png


TIA
Click to expand...

I'd be tempted to try a SATA III card and a separate SATA III drive and see if the videos play any better from that drive.

But that's just my twopennyworth :)

Good luck.

Paul B.
 
Messy said:
CUDA is on latest.

Zo95zgK.png
Click to expand...

Hmm, okay. The drivers listed on MacVidCards begin with 367.xx.xx, so I'm not sure if there's an update for Sierra that the CUDA control panel isn't finding (though obviously I'd hold off on updating until somebody gives a second opinion). Or perhaps MVC's are flashed differently. :)

Was the issue persisting on previous iterations of OS X?
 
keysofanxiety said:
Hmm, okay. The drivers listed on MacVidCards begin with 367.xx.xx, so I'm not sure if there's an update for Sierra that the CUDA control panel isn't finding (though obviously I'd hold off on updating until somebody gives a second opinion). Or perhaps MVC's are flashed differently. :)

Was the issue persisting on previous iterations of OS X?
Click to expand...

Running latest driver.

Unfotunately I can't tell you whether I would have had this issue on prior OS's as I didn't edit 2.7 and 4k back then.

lRrm30F.png
 
Messy said:
Running latest driver.

Unfotunately I can't tell you whether I would have had this issue on prior OS's as I didn't edit 2.7 and 4k back then.

lRrm30F.png
Click to expand...

Thank you for your patience Messy. I'm afraid we'll have to go through some messy troubleshooting.

For diagnostic purposes, please could you create a new Administrator user account and just try to play a 4K video though that? Is it still choppy?
 
h9826790 said:
Try this player. It's still in Alpha stage, but in my own experience, is the best player for 4K video so far. Can easily play high bitrate (100Mb/s) 4K H265 video on my Mac smoothly.

https://lhc70000.github.io/iina/
Click to expand...

I'll get it testing as well as the 5k player.
[doublepost=1484669492][/doublepost]
keysofanxiety said:
Thank you for your patience Messy. I'm afraid we'll have to go through some messy troubleshooting.

For diagnostic purposes, please could you create a new Administrator user account and just try to play a 4K video though that? Is it still choppy?
Click to expand...

I shall have to do it in a few hours, just in the middle of a project, sorry.

What's your thinking regarding a different account?
 
keysofanxiety said:
Not to doubt what you said, but isn't the GTX 770 more powerful than the dGPUs in the 2016 MBP, yet they can play 2K/4K without an issue?

Could it possibly be a CUDA driver that needs updating, as they're on Sierra? http://www.macvidcards.com/drivers.html

Just spitballing here by the way, I'm happy to be corrected if I'm way off the mark. :)
Click to expand...

CUDA has nothing to do with normal video playback. CUDA is more for rendering purposes.

I agree with Messy regarding trying a SATA III drive
[doublepost=1484670321][/doublepost]
h9826790 said:
Try this player. It's still in Alpha stage, but in my own experience, is the best player for 4K video so far. Can easily play high bitrate (100Mb/s) 4K H265 video on my Mac smoothly.

https://lhc70000.github.io/iina/
Click to expand...
Getting this and testing now as we speak
 
mastermamo said:
CUDA has nothing to do with normal video playback. CUDA is more for rendering purposes.

I agree with Messy regarding trying a SATA III drive
Click to expand...

Sure no need SATA III, because I am just using native SATA II port, can play back high bitrate 4K video smoothly. AFAIK, the player (software side), and CPU (single core performance, hardware side) are usually the most limiting factors for 4K video playback on the cMP.

A video (end product) usually won't go over 100Mb/s, but SATA II can go up to ~250MB/s (2000Mb/s) in real world. It won't bottleneck the playback.
 
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keysofanxiety said:
Hopefully diagnose if it's some software item causing a problem... it's a long shot but for the minimum effort, worth trying to see if it's any better, then work backwards from there.



AFAIK is an acronym "as far as I know" :)
Click to expand...

Wahahahaha I feel like a total noob now. I'm like why the hell can Google not find AFAIK Player anywhere hehe

5ce4768d3b1e2fe57ee077c27c54b4a2.jpg


Did this before anyone could beat me to it lol
 
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This is probably totally unrelated as you're talking about playback (I'm assuming you mean the final exported movie file) but when I mix frame rates in FCPX I get really choppy timeline playback. I don't remember if I had this issue in premiere as I switched to FCPX over Christmas when I got my drone. I try to keep frame rates consistent per project now.
 
h9826790 said:
Try this player. It's still in Alpha stage, but in my own experience, is the best player for 4K video so far. Can easily play high bitrate (100Mb/s) 4K H265 video on my Mac smoothly.

https://lhc70000.github.io/iina/
Click to expand...

You are awesome! Thank you sir for the tip! :) This is the first player able to play 4K UHD h.265 footage in 10 bit on my Mac Pro! And I'm not talking about Youtube videos, but real h.265 footage. Actually it's the first application that uses the 10 Bit pixel depth (ARGB2101010) of my ASUS PB279 monitor on OS X, wow.

It uses all 6 cores/12 threads of the W3690 3.46GHz (which goes up the 85° C)! Unfortunately in hectic moments in the movie the W3690 can not deliver 24 fps, so I think the CPU is the bottleneck (the GTX Titan X has no h.265 hardware acceleration).

I will try this player in a few days with my Mac Mini with a GTX 960 eGPU (the GTX 960 and GTX 950 are the only Maxwell cards with h.265 hardware acceleration).
 
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AndreeOnline said:
What codec do you shoot in?

Assuming you don't have any hardware problems, your SSD, RAM and GFX are not a problem.
Click to expand...

Well it depends on the camera I am using. My tools of choice are Arri Alexa, RED Dragon and Phantom a flex for high speed work. Rarely a DSLR like a 5D MKIII is used for a small cutaway

Arri Alexa and SXT / Amira = ProRes or MXF/DNxHD
Sometimes I shoot ARRIRAW but using an external XR Capture Drive

RED : Redcode RAW (R3D)

Canon : RAW

Phantom 4K : Uncompressed RAW
Then transfer data to a Cinemag IV for
Prores 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 1080p or 4:4:4 UHD

Playback is smooth enough in premiere to be workable with at half red but with CC2017 I generally transcode in at import time to plain 1080p which is manageable on a 5.1 Mac especially if I'm jumping between PP and AE using the dynamic link
 
mastermamo said:
Well it depends on the camera I am using.
Click to expand...

I meant the original poster, who is having playback problems. :)

I can play a 520Mbit/s 4k DCI ProRes video back from a 2.5" spinning external USB3 hard drive using 8% of my CPU, 10% of my gfx memory and 15% of my GPU.

But ProRes is a professional intermediate codec that's easy on the system. Many consumer/prosumer cameras (like drones) use what I'd call "delivery codecs" for recording, like flavors of h.264 and h.265. They are long GOP codecs that compress well, but they also demand much more of the computer when playing back, since the CPU will need to "reconstruct" image data on the fly, that's been abstracted into the codec algorithm.

Both my Canon 1Dc and 1DxmkII record in .mjpeg. That codec is much tougher to get smooth playback from, depending on player/software—even if it's an intra frame codec.

A 4k video file ≠ A 4k video file
 
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