P3P video playback on PC looks corrupt until compressed

[tclark333]

I just upgraded from a P3A to a P3P. When I went to watch my first video on my computer, Windows media player made it look horrible. It started out in slow motion, then sped up to fast motion, but the video was still jumping around and looked corrupt. I then switched over to VLC but it wasn't much better. It played at the right speed, but video still jumped some and in places it looked like what you would see if your satellite tv signal was weak.

I thought I had a bad P3P, but then I used Windows movie maker to convert the video to a 1080p mp4 file and that brought the size of the file down from 4GB to just over 1GB. Then it played perfectly. So it appears the difference in watching a 4K video over 2.7K is pretty big.

Is this normal? I have a pretty fast computer (or so I thought) but would that be the problem? What's the best way to watch these 4K videos back?

Computer details:
Windows 7 x64
Inter i5-3570K CPU @ 3.4GHz
8GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7800 Video Card

 

[Reed L]

It's probably just the raw 4K video coupled with an antivirus program that runs larger movie files into the ground, my pc is has 16gigs of ram and I still have to convert my video's. But I just convert them to H264 4K and everything runs smooth. My pc just doesn't like the 4K mov file itself from the P3Pro, next time it will be 64gigs or more as we move into 8K videos and so on SO try converting to H264 4K and see if it runs fine, it probably will.

 

[sonof40]

Would you happen to be able to recommend a desk top for the above, including video editing?

 

[bbfpv]

Would you happen to be able to recommend a desk top for the above, including video editing?

4K video editing PC build under $1400

This one's a bit dated (1.5 yrs old) if you want current cutting edge, but still good information: Optimizing Your Computer for 4K Editing and Colour Grading

 

[Reed L]

Lot's of choices, I have an Asus laptop but this works - Dell XPS 8900-7944BLK Desktop PC with Intel Core i7-6700K Processor,24GB DDR4 Memory,2TB+256GB SSD,Nvidia GTX 960 Graphics,Windows 10

 

[ddh1313]

Was the original file being opened directly from the sd card or copied local and then played?


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

 

[tclark333]

Was the original file being opened directly from the sd card or copied local and then played?

I copied it over first.

 

[tclark333]

But I just convert them to H264 4K and everything runs smooth.

Mind me asking what you use to convert them to H264 4K? I'm assuming that's better quality than the 1080p option I'm getting with Windows movie maker, right?

 

[Shammyh]

To begin with, download combined community codec pack. Then open the 4k files with media player classic.

On your i7, that should play smoothly. If not, disk i/o is your limit, not CPU or graphics.

 

[sonof40]

4K video editing PC build under $1400

The video card alone goes from $206 to over $1000.

 

[Reed L]

Mind me asking what you use to convert them to H264 4K? I'm assuming that's better quality than the 1080p option I'm getting with Windows movie maker, right?

Yes it's 4160P or 4K and I use Power Director 12. PD 14 is out now and I just looked at my pc to make sure that I had 16gigs and I have 8 also... hehe. Power Director will produce a 4K movie in just a few minutes with what I'm running and will work well with yours.

PowerDirector 14 Ultra

 

[tclark333]

Awesome, thanks! I'll give that a try.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

I thought memory was my bottleneck, so I upped it to 32GB. I still had choppy video, so I added SSD hard drives and that made the biggest difference.

 

[sonof40]

Yes it's 4160P or 4K and I use Power Director 12. PD 14 is out now and I just looked at my pc to make sure that I had 16gigs and I have 8 also... hehe. Power Director will produce a 4K movie in just a few minutes with what I'm running and will work well with yours.

PowerDirector 14 Ultra

Does PD 14 Ultra do a decent job of color grading?

 

[Shammyh]

I thought memory was my bottleneck, so I upped it to 32GB. I still had choppy video, so I added SSD hard drives and that made the biggest difference.

Yea... My android phone happily plays 4K with 3GB of RAM. And that's with an Arm core, not an Intel x64 core.

As I stated above, if you have an i5 or i7, and at least 8 GB of RAM, then disk is mostly likely your bottleneck. Even the integrated gpu on older Intel chips is capable of rendering 4K videos on a 1080p display.

 

[henick]

I have a 2013 macbook pro that chokes on 4k with its i5 and 4gb ram but the new desktop I built this year with a gtx970 and 12gb plays perfectly. New phones have different codecs that can play 4k on arm processors.

It's probably your machine. Test it by turning the p3p to 1080p 60fps and trying it. You'll probably notice it plays that fine.

 

[Shammyh]

I have a 2013 macbook pro that chokes on 4k with its i5 and 4gb ram but the new desktop I built this year with a gtx970 and 12gb plays perfectly. New phones have different codecs that can play 4k on arm processors.

It's probably your machine. Test it by turning the p3p to 1080p 60fps and trying it. You'll probably notice it plays that fine.

Totally fair, in fact modern SoCs have tons of hardware media acceleration.

But really, a 2013 Mac book won't play a low bitrate 4k file? I find that preposterous! Doesn't mean it's not true of course...

That's what, ivy bridge or sandy bridge with 4 GB of ram? Maybe the disk speed was limiting, or even RAM on a later Mac OS update, but even a slow hdd should be able to serve up >8 MB/s sequential read... So I don't see why in theory that wouldn't be enough for a 60 mbit/s video file.

Guess it's totally possible, but if I had that hardware in equivalent Linux/Windows flavors, up until your post I would have easily bet a fiver that it would play P3 4K smoothly.

 

[Reed L]

Does PD 14 Ultra do a decent job of color grading?

I have only had to brighten some movies, it has the ability to change colors but I really watch what I am shooting so haven't done much if any any color changes myself in the last couple hundred movies

 

[Trackman1]

I just upgraded from a P3A to a P3P. When I went to watch my first video on my computer, Windows media player made it look horrible. It started out in slow motion, then sped up to fast motion, but the video was still jumping around and looked corrupt. I then switched over to VLC but it wasn't much better. It played at the right speed, but video still jumped some and in places it looked like what you would see if your satellite tv signal was weak.

I thought I had a bad P3P, but then I used Windows movie maker to convert the video to a 1080p mp4 file and that brought the size of the file down from 4GB to just over 1GB. Then it played perfectly. So it appears the difference in watching a 4K video over 2.7K is pretty big.

Is this normal? I have a pretty fast computer (or so I thought) but would that be the problem? What's the best way to watch these 4K videos back?

Computer details:
Windows 7 x64
Inter i5-3570K CPU @ 3.4GHz
8GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7800 Video Card

I have the same PC configuration as you. I have a P3A and always shoot in 1080P 60fps and 60Mbps.

There are two monitors connected to the video card. One by HDMI 1.4 and the other by DVI.
The DVI monitor has a very slight jerkiness to it. The HDMI connected pc does not.

I have noticed the same as you. When I compress a video down to less than 60Mbps it is smooth on the DVI monitor.

Too add a little more to this. I have an older pc that is 2.4ghz intel quad core. 12gb ram and the same video card.
It's monitor is a 50" Panasonic plasma connected to the HD 7800 by HDMI 1.4
These PC's are networked by wire.

I can play the same raw 60Mbps 1080p video from the pc like yours, across the network to the plasma and it plays smooth.

So if you are connected by DVI cable, you might want to try HDMI 1.4. None of my HDMI cables are expensive. They are all cheap ones from China.
But they are HDMI 1.4 spec.

 

[henick]

That's what, ivy bridge or sandy bridge with 4 GB of ram?

Yeah ivy. I was surprised also. It was actually the last thing I'd considered. I automatically assumed the unit wasn't taking video right because I just expected it to be the bird for no reason.