shadow files or proxy editing

micncue

Newbie Joined: Jan 17, 2009 20:05 Messages: 28 Offline

Solved by

Aug 24, 2012 20:15

hi, i've always had trouble editing with the native files that come out of my Canon Vixia HF M31. makes a nice picture, but when i dump a bunch of those into PD's bin and start an edit, it takes forever to perform all operations. the delay is massive. and, as would be suspected, it gets worse as the timeline fills up. to remedy that, i've used a file converter to dumb these down from .mts/h264/mpg4 to mpg2. really ugly. so......a friend of mine was talking about something called proxy editing, where the video you're editing drops down into a near SD mode, in case your files are as uncompressed as the .mts files, or your PC is on the edge of not handling those big ol' files. you edit in this mode, but jump back up to full HD when you export. my PC has plenty of soup, so i'm thinking it's the size of these files, or Cyberlink's difficulty in reconciling these files for it's interpolation, that is giving me trouble. this friend found a review from when PD9 first came out. this person said Cyberlink has a feature called shadow files that are equivalent to the proxy editing process. is this true? i can't find it in an index search. that would make me very happy if this is indeed true. ps. what function does hardware acceleration serve? is it in the edit or export? is it necessary? i have not used it in the past. thanks. mike

Dell Studio 540
Windows Vista 64bit service pack 2
Quad Core Q6600 @2.4ghz
4gb RAM

ynotfish

Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline

Aug 24, 2012 23:53

Hi Mike -

Quote: Cyberlink has a feature called shadow files that are equivalent to the proxy editing process. is this true?

Yes - it's true. If your PC is struggling with files from your Vixia MF M31, you should turn on shadow files in Preferences. It's under General > HD video processing.

Your understanding is correct. It allows you to edit using SD clips, but when you produce (export) your video it will be in the format & profile you select. If you recorded in MXP or FXP mode, that would be AVC H.264 1920x1080

You didn't mention what GPU you're using. That's probably having a huge impact on your ease of editing.

I wouldn't worry too much about hardware acceleration. It may allow slightly faster production time, but quality can suffer.

Cheers - Tony
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HalCon

Senior Contributor Location: Charlottetown, PEI Joined: Mar 01, 2008 10:36 Messages: 719 Offline

Aug 25, 2012 08:40

Just to add to Tony's note.

When using the Shadow files, wait for all the shadow files to finish generating before attempting to edit.

Hal
OS - Win11 Pro, Alienware R13, CPU - Intel Core I7-12700KF 12 CPUs), 16g DDR5 4400 RAM, Video - Geeforce RTX 3080ti 12g, PD11 & PD365
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ErikJon777

Newbie Joined: Feb 26, 2015 17:15 Messages: 23 Offline

Feb 26, 2015 19:37

I think that the issue is that nearly every programmer tries to push the limits on subsequent releases of his program, and ends up bloating it with new features, plug-ins, bells and whistles, all requiring more processing and more memory. He says to himself, "No, but everyone surely will have upgraded by the time this release comes out..."

He then tells the consumer "This new version will work on Windows XP" but what he really means is, if you max out the RAM, close all other programs, and use only one media clip, it will barely work on XP; in fact, it was made for 64-bit Windows 8..."

The moral to the story is (in this case), if it is supposed to work on your OS, you are safer to buy the older version.

I did that with GarageBand. I checked out which version was recommended for the OS that I had, and once found, I bought the previous version instead. Worked like a charm.

Keep in mind that some of these comments on the forum come from folks who have 15GB of RAM on their computer, and are less likely to have stability issues with video and photography.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Feb 26. 2015 19:37