Native video format in Reaper?

[cerio]

Hi all, I'm experiencing performance problems when editing a video with several clips in Reaper.

Some clips are MOV files, some are MP4.

Does it make any difference if I convert all files to a format Reaper can use natively? In that case, which format use Reapèr natively?

Any other help / hint is greatly appreciated.

PS: I'm using an computer with 8 gb RAM, I know it's not too much, but I'm using only 6 video tracks and no effects, I think the coumputer should be able to handel it.

[Fabian]

Reaper uses mov and mp4 natively, I guess it can be said. Reaper uses VLC for playback, and it can handle both formats.

The problems I have experienced is if different resolution and different frame rates are used, that seems to take a lot of juice. Try by first converting videos to the same frame rate and resolution.

Six video tracks... I don't think I have ever used that many in the same project. I typically have one or two video tracks, and no videos playing simultaneously.

[cerio]

Originally Posted by Fabian

Reaper uses mov and mp4 natively, I guess it can be said. Reaper uses VLC for playback, and it can handle both formats.

The problems I have experienced is if different resolution and different frame rates are used, that seems to take a lot of juice. Try by first converting videos to the same frame rate and resolution.

Six video tracks... I don't think I have ever used that many in the same project. I typically have one or two video tracks, and no videos playing simultaneously.

Thank for your answer. Yes, Using MOV / mp4 I can use Reaper for this project, the only limitation is that I can´t use more than 2 clips simultaneously, no matter if they are muted or not.

I suppose that my computer is just too old.

[SonicAxiom]

you may be able to reduce load on Reaper by using videos with a single common frame rate. Settle on the frame rate which is already valid for the majority of videos and then convert the others to that frame rate. The file format should not really matter.

You can increase the amount of videos that can be used in Reaper before it starts to stutter by tweaking the performance parameters accessible by right-clicking the video window and also by deliberately putting in a fairly low value (like 400) for the x-resolution in Project Properties -> Video -> Preferred Video Size. The video preview will be of lesser resolution obviously but at least preview is much more fluent, especially when working with multiple videos and video fx. Make sure to remove the value again before final rendering!

.

[superblonde.org]

I experienced video playback/render problems with some videos (after updating to catalina) - and the very simple solution which worked was to change video decoder priority in preferences, as the default is the vlc decoder, and i moved it to be later in the priority list.

i have edited my amateur music videos with all kinds of video items in the tracks (mp4, mov, avi, .webm) and all have worked great without frame drop etc, including on a very old intel macbook pro (snow leopard!).

i would say the 'best' video format to use in reaper, if you have a choice, would be the os native one, whichever that is, for macos it is mov (not mp4).

edit - you say multiple video tracks, well, the problem might be your hard drive, i did all my editing using external usb2 or usb3 spinning hard drive (not ssd), and max resolution was 720p. i did a video or two at 1080p and yeah playback was not smooth, realtime render of 1080p is too much for a 10 year old laptop; but render still worked ok, just slow.

[cerio]

Thanks both for your answers. I've tried all your suggestions, but nothing really works in my system. Using a common frame rate helps a little bit, but unfortunately it doesn't really solves the problem.

And yes, I think the problem is actually (and mainly) the hard drive.

[fakemaxwell]

MOV and MP4 are containers, the extensions don't tell you anything about the actual workings of the video file.

My guess is that you're working with compressed footage. Basically, the computer has to interpolate on the fly between full "keyframes," which depending on the video quality will have several (higher quality, bigger filesize) or not many (lower quality, smaller filesize).

What you'll want to do is convert to a format that uses a keyframe for every frame. This will be a larger file size, but the computer doesn't have to calculate anything during playback, so you'll have less issues working.

SonicAxiom has developed a nice little utility for Windows that can convert video files to any of the ProRes profiles, which I've found to work the best in Reaper. DNxHD (Avid) is another option but is more of a pain to work with.

If you're on Mac, get acquainted with FFMPEG (which powers SonicAxiom's utility, Reaper's video engine, and basically everything else that uses video nowadays) and you can spit things out pretty quickly.

As long as you're using a different HDD for video than your main project drive, you shouldn't have any issues when using the right footage.

[Fergler]

Don't set your expectations too high, Reaper uses CPU to display video.

[cerio]

Thanks all again, great information here