H.265 Playback on iMac 5k 2017

[jpbedrone]

Trying to playback some footage shot in 4K HQ @ 30fps using H.265 (.mov) in Quicktime on my iMac 5k 2017. The playback is very choppy, playing fine for a few seconds, then freezes (timeline continues to count down) and then jumps ahead a few seconds. When I play the footage back directly from the SD card in the Mavic 2 Pro on my iPad via the DJI Go 4 app all is smooth. Any ideas/advise would be much appreciated!

 

[Davzone]

Convert it to h264 at about 40mbits.

 

[Robert Granata]

Convert it to h264 at about 40mbits.

I don't understand all the intricacies of codecs, but what's the point of shooting in H265 if you're just going to immediately convert it to H264? Does it make a better H264 file than native H264?

 

[jpbedrone]

Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. I was hoping that a 2017 iMac 5k with top spec could handle 100mbps. Reducing anywhere under this will have a big impact on the quality do you think?

 

[Davzone]

The h265 is to have enough data for post. Specially 10bit. Quality is not going to be better just because of the codec. You just have more flexibility on post.

Delivery in h264 is fine if you dialed in your colors etc. H265 is extremely resource intensive.

Most platforms only play back h264 anyway. Youtubes recommendation for 4K30 is around 45mbit.

 

[jpbedrone]

Looks like it may be the h265 codec. Lots of reports referring to issues with h265 and macs. Appears there may be very little difference in quality between h265 & h265 anyway. I’ll give h265 at 100mbps a go & see what happens. Great to have other Mavic owners out there to bounce ideas off!

 

[BlueBay]

H.265 is proving to be too difficult to work with unless you have a monster rig (either PC or Mac) with the very latest hardware CPU & GPU. I'm reverting to H.264 which is very disappointing for me personally.

More needs to be done by DJI to explain the challenges of H.265 before people dive in to buy the Mavic 2 Pro.

Hopefully, the larger sensor means that the image quality in H.264 should be better than older Mavics.

 

[Kilrah]

Are you on High Sierra? It's required for proper H265 handling.

 

[jpbedrone]

I'm on the latest version of High Sierra running on a top spec 2017 iMac 5k with 32GB RAM. I did a lot of tests yesterday recording at 4K HQ, 4K Full Fov and 1080 HD all at 30fps in both H264 and H265. Copying the files from the top spec 64GB SD card taken from the drone and inserted into a USB 3 card reader direct to the SSD HD on my Mac I confirmed that all H265 footage except for the 1080 HD file would not playback without judder using Quicktime as the media player. Following some information on other threads I then used iFFMpeg (Home) to convert the juddering footage to various formats (Prores Proxy all the way through to Prores 4444 and H265 to H264). I then tried playing back these files using Quicktime but the juddering was still present. (On a side note I also found, but could not explain why, the iFFMpeg software saw the source file for conversion as 24fps when I can 100% confirm the file was recorded at 30fps.) I have yet to try playing back any of the footage with a different media player but I must admit, I'm beginning to run out of ideas. Any advise out there would be much appreciated!

 

[BlueBay]

I'm on the latest version of High Sierra running on a top spec 2017 iMac 5k with 32GB RAM. I did a lot of tests yesterday recording at 4K HQ, 4K Full Fov and 1080 HD all at 30fps in both H264 and H265. Copying the files from the top spec 64GB SD card taken from the drone and inserted into a USB 3 card reader direct to the SSD HD on my Mac I confirmed that all H265 footage except for the 1080 HD file would not playback without judder using Quicktime as the media player. Following some information on other threads I then used iFFMpeg (Home) to convert the juddering footage to various formats (Prores Proxy all the way through to Prores 4444 and H265 to H264). I then tried playing back these files using Quicktime but the juddering was still present. (On a side note I also found, but could not explain why, the iFFMpeg software saw the source file for conversion as 24fps when I can 100% confirm the file was recorded at 30fps.) I have yet to try playing back any of the footage with a different media player but I must admit, I'm beginning to run out of ideas. Any advise out there would be much appreciated!

Thank you for the excellent insight & analysis. We'd expect (in theory) that a 2017 iMac 5K with 32GB RAM to be able to handle H.265, especially with High Sierra. I'm just wondering if there's a fundamental issue with retail GPUs, CPUs & H.265? I'd also like to know who the authority is behind H.265 so that we have some reliable reference.

It would be good to hear of any success stories with H.265 and please mention your hardware & software specification. (Maybe a survey would indicate that the majority of pilots are using H.264 - who knows?).

H.265 is becoming more mysterious with every day that passes.

 

[Kilrah]

Would be interesting for you to post a source clip for others to check it's actually OK.

 

[Ifti]

Isnt H.265 going to be the way forward though?
This is whats putting me off purchasing an iMac right now. Im waiting for a refresh, which should be due very soon, otherwise I may stretch to an iMac Pro...... I want to future eproof as much as I can and it seems H.265 is the way its going........

 

[Pablo]

Yeah upload a sample clip to dropbox and we'll see if it works for us (I have an iMac too).

 

[Kilrah]

Isnt H.265 going to be the way forward though?
This is whats putting me off purchasing an iMac right now. Im waiting for a refresh, which should be due very soon, otherwise I may stretch to an iMac Pro...... I want to future eproof as much as I can and it seems H.265 is the way its going........

All latest macs already support it. Just don't buy the generation before to save a buck.

 

[BlueBay]

I'm interested to know 'why' 2018 MacBook Pro's supports it.

Is it the software, GPU, CPU or all? I'm asking because there must be a way to help the pilots with an older Mac or PC to upgrade components rather than just say go buy a new Mac.

Obviously, we want to avoid any unnecessary and time-consuming software conversion from H.265 to something else and back again.

We may be able to conclude that H.265 just isn't relevant or needed at the moment, it's practically overkilling the workflow for most projects? I don't know ...

It seems that nobody really knows the DNA of H.265 to a sufficient level of detail to understand it fully (including me). Herein begins the journey!

 

[Sockeye]

There is no big mystery in the H.265 codec. It simply can compress Video data around 30-40% denser than H.264 can. This means you have smaller file sizes for the same quality in comparison to H.264.

Now the downside of H.265 is that the compression formulas are far more complex than H.264. This means your CPU has a lot more work to do, to decode (play) and encode (render) these files. Unfortunately the CPU does not get help on this by the graphics card.

This means if it jutters, your CPU is simply too slow.

The new generation of Intel i9 CPUs will have native H.265 support. This will speed up the things a lot.

 

[BlueBay]

There is no big mystery in the H.265 codec. It simply can compress Video data around 30-40% denser than H.264 can. This means you have smaller file sizes for the same quality in comparison to H.264.

Now the downside of H.265 is that the compression formulas are far more complex than H.264. This means your CPU has a lot more work to do, to decode (play) and encode (render) these files. Unfortunately the CPU does not get help on this by the graphics card.

This means if it jutters, your CPU is simply too slow.

The new generation of Intel i9 CPUs will have native H.265 support. This will speed up the things a lot.

Thank you so much, the information is allowing all of us to have a much better understanding of H.265. I'm so pleased that we've been able to narrow this down to CPU processing constraints. This is extremely valuable insight.

 

[BlueBay]

Thank you so much, the information is allowing all of us to have a much better understanding of H.265. I'm so pleased that we've been able to narrow this down to CPU processing constraints. This is extremely valuable insight.

Furthermore, do you agree that it's safe for us to make a statement that the majority of MavicPilots should use H.264 as a default configuration to avoid post-production problems and a load of trouble (unless they have an H.265 certified CPU)? Which definitely would not have been available pre 2018/19.

 

[Kilrah]

I'm interested to know 'why' 2018 MacBook Pro's supports it.

Is it the software, GPU, CPU or all?

Newer CPUs have hardware built in for decoding H.265.

No need to "wait for i9" as Sockeye said, it's already built in to CPUs since Kaby Lake gen that was released in early 2017, so that should be installed since mid-late 2017 models (check specs)..

 

[jpbedrone]

This is the spec of my iMac 5k 2017 that is running the latest version of High Sierra:

4.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz)
Radeon Pro 580 with 8GB of VRAM
32GB RAM
1TB SSD HD

Surely this is enough hardware power to handle a 4K 30fps H265 file? If this is not the case then I would assume that the majority of Mavic 2 Pro owners (and for that matter any DJI drone owner shooting this format) are unable to use the H265 codec?

I've tried converting to various flavours of Prores and from H265 to H264 using the iFFMpeg converter all with no joy. Am I correct in thinking that in order to use the 10-bit D-Log feature H265 is the only option? The media player I'm using is Quicktime and have also tried iMovie. I haven't yet tried VLC or any other player, has anyone else?

As mentioned previously, may it be worth starting a thread to determine if anyone is successfully using H265 and if so what, hardware/software combination is working for them? This possible new thread aside, any continuing advise on this thread would be very much appreciated!