Drone footage choppy in premiere and after export
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BasLeroy
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I shot some drone footage in Iceland. But I have a problem with the editing of it. The raw footage is okay no problems with it. But when I throw it in premiere and then export it (with premiere or media encoder, does not make a difference) Its choppy and I cant fix it.
2021-12-23
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JohnLietzke
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That is often an issue that occurs with high resolution footage on lower powered computers.  

When I edit on my MacBook I have to wait for the footage to process and load completely.  Trying to run the video before the underlying processing is completed results in the choppy playback and stuttering.  It can take 10 minutes for a 4 minute segment to process.

On my overkill desktop it only takes a few seconds to process.

I have set the segment video lengths to 2 minutes instead of 4 minutes in the DJI Fly app to reduce the processing time for usable footage.  I still use my laptop for on the go editing and this really helps on processing time.  But it seems that inevitably the usable footage always spans multiple segments.
2021-12-23
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BasLeroy
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JohnLietzke Posted at 12-23 09:34
That is often an issue that occurs with high resolution footage on lower powered computers.  

When I edit on my MacBook I have to wait for the footage to process and load completely.  Trying to run the video before the underlying processing is completed results in the choppy playback and stuttering.  It can take 10 minutes for a 4 minute segment to process.

Thats not the problem, that it's high resolution footage because I am editing with proxies and my pc can handle 4k footage. The problem is after I export the footage it is still choppy.
2021-12-23
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JohnLietzke
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From what you are describing it could be the editing software and encoder processes that is the problem or a hardware power issue.

I guess a better question to ask is what are your hardware specs: CPU, GPU, RAM?  Is it a laptop or desktop.
2021-12-23
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DJI Stephen
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Hello there BasLeroy. I am sorry for the trouble this has caused and thank you for reaching out. Since this is a 3rd party software ( Premier ) to view your captured footages. I hope that you will get the best recommendation from our fellow DJI co pilot who are using the Premier to view and edit there work. Thank you.
2021-12-23
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Vincent Leclerc
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I have the same issue exporting my footage with Premiere Pro. Then I tried TunesKit AceMovi to edit and export my footage, the video looks just fine.
2021-12-23
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ZenaDrone
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ZenaDrone refers drone technology in agriculture and offers high definition camera drone for industries especially agriculture and hemp plantation tracking. https://www.zenadrone.com/
2021-12-24
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ZenaDrone
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The ZenadronZenadrone 1000 provides accurate details about the construction site, terrain, mapping, and vegetation surrounding it. It facilitates the management of construction materials, machinery, and contractors present in the location. Furthermore, it helps construction companies inspect high-rise buildings without risking their personnel's safety.

2021-12-24
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BasLeroy
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JohnLietzke Posted at 12-23 13:15
From what you are describing it could be the editing software and encoder processes that is the problem or a hardware power issue.

I guess a better question to ask is what are your hardware specs: CPU, GPU, RAM?  Is it a laptop or desktop.

I have a desktop.
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-9400F CPU @ 2.90GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
RAM: 16GB
2021-12-24
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BasLeroy
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JohnLietzke Posted at 12-23 13:15
From what you are describing it could be the editing software and encoder processes that is the problem or a hardware power issue.

I guess a better question to ask is what are your hardware specs: CPU, GPU, RAM?  Is it a laptop or desktop.

When I put the video in a new premiere pro project is plays normal I noticed. Only with some videos
2021-12-24
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JohnLietzke
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BasLeroy Posted at 12-24 02:49
When I put the video in a new premiere pro project is plays normal I noticed. Only with some videos

May try waiting after loading the videos for about 10 minutes.  I know it is not a great answer but it may that the video has not completely been imported.  

This sounds a lot like what I was experiencing on my laptop.  This occurred in both Final Cut on MacOS and in Premiere on both Windows and Mac.

I built a new system a few months back that is top tier and I still have to wait about 30 seconds with 4K video for it load and play smoothly.  

I know this sucks to hear but your computer may need more time to import and convert the video to the format used by adobe for editing.
2021-12-24
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Tuxtard
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Maybe your timeline FPS does not match your drone video FPS.
2021-12-25
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BasLeroy
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Tuxtard Posted at 12-25 03:43
Maybe your timeline FPS does not match your drone video FPS.

With 1 shots this is true The shot is 30FPS and the project is 25FPS. But some 25FPS shots are also choppy so...
2021-12-28
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RobZilla
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I had this issue with Premiere as well. You can either use an older version of Premiere 2021 instead of 2022, or what worked best for me was to queue it up in Media Encoder (any version but the later 2022 works). Also when you use Media Encoder make sure to close Premiere to save on resources.



2021-12-28
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hmooly
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I had the same problem a while back and totally forgot about the solution, till it happened again.
First of all, if I understand BasLeroy correctly, his issue is the exported video file and not playback while editing, so assuming the exported file is not a 4K/un-compressed codec, the issue is about the speed of drive from where Premiere is reading the files.
I know this sounds stupid. In my case, I shot with Mavic 2 Pro, mostly 4K in log color profile, so this makes the source files huge, and for some reason on export if the source files or on a normal HDD with speed about 150/MB, my export it ...ty, but simply by copying the source to an SSD/M2 and forcing Premiere to read for the to the new path, the export looks perfect.
As I said, it is stupid, and it might be some bug in Premiere or somewhere in Adobe encoding engine, but I wasted more than a week till I found a solution.
Anyways hope this will solve BasLeroy's problem because I know how it feels to finish a project and look at the export and say
2022-3-11
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BasLeroy
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hmooly@gmail.com Posted at 3-11 01:01
I had the same problem a while back and totally forgot about the solution, till it happened again.
First of all, if I understand BasLeroy correctly, his issue is the exported video file and not playback while editing, so assuming the exported file is not a 4K/un-compressed codec, the issue is about the speed of drive from where Premiere is reading the files.
I know this sounds stupid. In my case, I shot with Mavic 2 Pro, mostly 4K in log color profile, so this makes the source files huge, and for some reason on export if the source files or on a normal HDD with speed about 150/MB, my export it ...ty, but simply by copying the source to an SSD/M2 and forcing Premiere to read for the to the new path, the export looks perfect.

Thanks for the suggestion. I already had the footage on a SSD. I fixed it by exporting it with Media Encoder. Don't know why that fixed it. But it worked.
2022-3-11
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hmooly
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BasLeroy Posted at 3-11 01:48
Thanks for the suggestion. I already had the footage on a SSD. I fixed it by exporting it with Media Encoder. Don't know why that fixed it. But it worked.

Great, happy to hear that.
Just an update, after exporting it once from the SSD source and then re-linking the files to HDD, the exported file is okay so that it can be some wired bug in PR or AME!
2022-3-13
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G-FLYBOY
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I read a lot about this jittering but this is clearly a problem with DJI and Apple. When I import 4K 24 footage into premiere pro it plays fine. I have fast SSD drives and a new Mac Studio. When I do a same as source output, or any kind of output and open in Quicktime it stutters. If I import the stuttering sequence back into Premiere Pro it plays rock solidly. Also if I use the PP presets for Vimeo and facebook they play mostly good on those sites. So to me this is something DJI and Apple have to work out which I doubt they will. DJI Air 2S which I use is more "sumer" than "pro" likely the same problems with DJI Air 3S. DJI might want to abandon H.264 +265 for pro res. I doubt they will.
2023-8-7
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G-FLYBOY
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It is because H.264/265 is a horrendous codec for video editing but great for X mas videos on tik tok and great for instagram. I have a beast of a computer and fast SSD drives and it is a part of life when you use "pro" summer drones, jitter is just a part of the game. Important. Make sure the specs of timeline match the specs of footage also found transcoding or interperet footage has same unsatisfying results. H.264 footage wouldn't play smoothly on the Cray super computers at the Pentagon. Take a look at all the home dec factual type shows etc on TV and you will see a lot of jittery footage it is just the nature of H.264/265 and the noise from the camera sensors-don't get me strated. Anything Below The Mavis 3 Cine is just an expensive toy. Do your best and find some settings that work and you can squeeze out something useful from these drones. Cheap is what cheap does.
P.S. Youtube is an echo chamber with most "influencer" types just repeating everything they heard on each others posts to get hits. The internet will tell you that low cost drones will allow you to work on Hollywood feature films but they wont but they certainly do have ther place just be ready to accept inferior quality. It is still pretty remarkable what you can get for $1000 these days. I have loads of fun with my Air 2S.  Boy the advertising videos of the guy and girl in there off road vehicles flying drones all over the world sure are seductive. Made me spend $1500 plus applicable tax.

I have been working in film and television for 30 years so I know what I speak of. I am not looking for clicks or free drones on youtube. Realize you have a low end product and make it work for you somehow. Don't let the noise on Youtube wear you down.
2023-9-9
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Geo_Drone
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Premiere Pro uses the codec installed in your computer. Also Media Encoder.

So...
A few steps you need to do:

1 If you have more types of FPS (that should not be as you are making it wrong if you do not plan a slow-down), reinterpret the footage - right click on file imported in Premiere, INTERPRET FOOTAGE, then set the FPS as in your timeline. It will slow down or speed up according to what you have used, FPS is set same as timeline so you will not have that awful micro-skip of frames.
2. If you need to speed up or slow down the reinterpreted footage, use Optical Flow.
3. Set both Premiere and Media Encoder to work with NVIDIA GPU...you have it in Preferences.
4. Export using MAIN profile, not Main 10...also if you export it in 4K H265 , use MAIN and Profle 6.1, in order to get at least 60Mbps for HEVC 4K. Use also Optical Flow.
5. Clean the buffers...sometime the buffers are corrupt, just make sure you use for buffer a secondary drive (not partition, DRIVE HDD or SSD - preferably SSD)
Cheers.
2023-9-10
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Geo_Drone
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G-FLYBOY Posted at 9-9 06:16
It is because H.264/265 is a horrendous codec for video editing but great for X mas videos on tik tok and great for instagram. I have a beast of a computer and fast SSD drives and it is a part of life when you use "pro" summer drones, jitter is just a part of the game. Important. Make sure the specs of timeline match the specs of footage also found transcoding or interperet footage has same unsatisfying results. H.264 footage wouldn't play smoothly on the Cray super computers at the Pentagon. Take a look at all the home dec factual type shows etc on TV and you will see a lot of jittery footage it is just the nature of H.264/265 and the noise from the camera sensors-don't get me strated. Anything Below The Mavis 3 Cine is just an expensive toy. Do your best and find some settings that work and you can squeeze out something useful from these drones. Cheap is what cheap does.
P.S. Youtube is an echo chamber with most "influencer" types just repeating everything they heard on each others posts to get hits. The internet will tell you that low cost drones will allow you to work on Hollywood feature films but they wont but they certainly do have ther place just be ready to accept inferior quality. It is still pretty remarkable what you can get for $1000 these days. I have loads of fun with my Air 2S.  Boy the advertising videos of the guy and girl in there off road vehicles flying drones all over the world sure are seductive. Made me spend $1500 plus applicable tax.

I am sorry to say but you talk wrong things.
H265 is a great codec and is easy to be edited if you do not have your grandma computer.
All you can do with a Mavic 4 Cine I can do with an Air 3..why? Because editing matters 40% of final work...
Also The Cine does not give you any extras, the Apple codec ProRES is same quality as H265. Also ProRes needs denoise as is a raw footage...If you need same speed in H265, you just decode it to DNX format that is practically ProRes.

2023-9-10
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G-FLYBOY
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Geo_Drone Posted at 9-10 22:11
I am sorry to say but you talk wrong things.
H265 is a great codec and is easy to be edited if you do not have your grandma computer.
All you can do with a Mavic 4 Cine I can do with an Air 3..why? Because editing matters 40% of final work...

Actually Geo Drone H.264 and 2.65 are not great codecs to edit. I have an ultra fast modern computer to work with and H.264/265 still hiccup. If you had the knowledge you would understand that H.264 was invented to be a very tiny file size for consumer cameras etc so as to be able to shoot a lot with minimal camera internal or SD card memory. It is a terrible on the other hand for editing. There are many articles available about this if you would like to read them. Sorry if you were unaware of that.
2023-10-10
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Geo_Drone
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G-FLYBOY Posted at 10-10 04:46
Actually Geo Drone H.264 and 2.65 are not great codecs to edit. I have an ultra fast modern computer to work with and H.264/265 still hiccup. If you had the knowledge you would understand that H.264 was invented to be a very tiny file size for consumer cameras etc so as to be able to shoot a lot with minimal camera internal or SD card memory. It is a terrible on the other hand for editing. There are many articles available about this if you would like to read them. Sorry if you were unaware of that.

Dude,

I edit in H265 in my studio since codec appeared...what are you talking about? Any Ryzen 7 or I7 will work ok with proxy's and even raw footage can be edited (but will stay longer at export), we have here IBM Blade with 4 x 24core cpu and 2x Quattro, we make LIVE editing in HEVC...
So learn a little edit, don't explain me my work.

If you want to be fast and edit like ProRes, just decode H265 in DVXHQ and you have a ProRes like speed on normal computers...

And the HEVC codec is laughing at ProRes at any hour at size, quality of colors and DR being the same (you do not have more color flexibility in editing HEVC 10 bit vs Prores 4-2-2 from Mav 3 Cine, this was already tested on many youtube channels).
We do not talk here about Blackmagic cameras, but sensors from drones.

So....any else?
2023-10-12
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11jesseison
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Ive had the same issue working on windows. Its the Premier pro for windows thats bugged out. Ive used handbrake to reexport the clip's and works just fine
2023-12-21
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G-FLYBOY
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Geo_Drone Posted at 2023-10-12 00:13
Dude,

I edit in H265 in my studio since codec appeared...what are you talking about? Any Ryzen 7 or I7 will work ok with proxy's and even raw footage can be edited (but will stay longer at export), we have here IBM Blade with 4 x 24core cpu and 2x Quattro, we make LIVE editing in HEVC...

Hey "Dude" 1980 calling.
2-11 09:40
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