MacBook Pro 2020 - Lag with 4K? Any suggestions?

[timmilesmusic]

Hey Folks,

I wanted to reach out to fellow Mac users and see if you're running into this issue. I use a DJI Mini 2 drone filming at 4K 30FPS in manual mode with a SS of 60FPS for a lot of my videography work. with the footage out of this drone, I notice a lag in my side panning shots and gimbal down to the horizon line pan ups when playing back the footage on my MacBook Pro 2020 only. I re-watched the raw footage side by side on my Mac using Quicktime, VLC Player and a few others and the Mac consistently has judder and lag. It seems inconsistent and will be smooth for a second and then judder and it repeats this cycle with every video. If I play the same raw footage back on my 2019 Retina iPad or my fairly old 4K Samsung TV from a USB drive, the footage is smooth and looks great. Any ideas what would be causing this on the MacBook Pro 2020? I have tried regular 2.7K on the Mac from the Mini 2 and that video is pretty smooth and without issues. It seems to be specifically with the Mini 2's 4k Footage. I have a brand new Macbook Pro 2020 Retina 13 Inch, 32 GB of RAM with 32 GB 3733 MHz LPDDR4X and 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7. It has a Intel Iris Plus Graphics 1536 MB. Is this a settings issue that can be resolved with a couple of clicks for a newbie video editor like me? Or is my machine just not up to the job?
Thanks,
Tim.

 

[iColas7]

Hey Folks,

I wanted to reach out to fellow Mac users and see if you're running into this issue. I use a DJI Mini 2 drone filming at 4K 30FPS in manual mode with a SS of 60FPS for a lot of my videography work. with the footage out of this drone, I notice a lag in my side panning shots and gimbal down to the horizon line pan ups when playing back the footage on my MacBook Pro 2020 only. I re-watched the raw footage side by side on my Mac using Quicktime, VLC Player and a few others and the Mac consistently has judder and lag. It seems inconsistent and will be smooth for a second and then judder and it repeats this cycle with every video. If I play the same raw footage back on my 2019 Retina iPad or my fairly old 4K Samsung TV from a USB drive, the footage is smooth and looks great. Any ideas what would be causing this on the MacBook Pro 2020? I have tried regular 2.7K on the Mac from the Mini 2 and that video is pretty smooth and without issues. It seems to be specifically with the Mini 2's 4k Footage. I have a brand new Macbook Pro 2020 Retina 13 Inch, 32 GB of RAM with 32 GB 3733 MHz LPDDR4X and 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7. It has a Intel Iris Plus Graphics 1536 MB. Is this a settings issue that can be resolved with a couple of clicks for a newbie video editor like me? Or is my machine just not up to the job?
Thanks,
Tim.

Hi! I have the same problem, with Mini 2 and MacBook Pro 2017. All my clips works fine on other devices, but in Mac there are a lot of lag. Meanwhile, the clips in 4K from my iPhone X (H265, 60FPS) works fine. What is the problem?

 

[Gwendolini]

Hello.

I downloaded sample files 2-4 from here: https://www.tomstechtime.com/mavicmini2

I could play all three files back smoothly within QuickLook and QuickTime Player on my M1 Mac mini.

30FPS in manual mode with a SS of 60FPS

What do you mean with "a SS of 60 fps"?

 

[iColas7]

Hello.

I downloaded sample files 2-4 from here: https://www.tomstechtime.com/mavicmini2

I could play all three files back smoothly within QuickLook and QuickTime Player on my M1 Mac mini.


What do you mean with "a SS of 60 fps"?

I see microlag Have you Catalina or Big Sur?

 

[Gwendolini]

I see microlag Have you Catalina or Big Sur?

Big Sur due to the M1 chip. Microlag could also be a rolling shutter effect or when the drone pans around and the frame rate is not optimal it seems like a lag or shuttering effect.

 

[iColas7]

Big Sur due to the M1 chip. Microlag could also be a rolling shutter effect or when the drone pans around and the frame rate is not optimal it seems like a lag or shuttering effect.

But in tv or other device the clips are perfect! By the way, I send my clips to my friend who have MacBook Pro 2018 (my Mac is Retina 2017) and he sees the clips perfectly

 

[ColdCase]

I dunno, just a couple data points.

Using QT, if I look carefully for it, I see a small amount of flag pole shudder at the beginning on my top of the line 2017 iMacPro with High Sierra. Perhaps a little more on the external LG 27EA83 screen than the internal screen. The external is a 2560 x 1440 display, internal is a 5120 x 2880. I'll have to boot into BigSur at some point and try it.

The sample video is 3840 × 2160, 25fps, about 100 mbps. It displays full screen on the iMacPro at 2560x1440 (the default smaller window 1920x1080 by default). So there is both fps and size conversion.

I see a lot of shudder with VLC

QT on my 2020 MacBook Air core i7 with Catalina displays the video smoothly after the first time. If you are looking for it, there is just a bit of shudder when viewed the first time. It scales the video 0.75x to 2880x1620

Some devices handle 25fps differently than others. There also could be shudder in the original that sometimes gets smoothed.

 

[ColdCase]

I rebooted my iMacPro into BigSur.
Using QT on the built in monitor, the video defaults to a 3840 by 2160 resolution and plays smooth as silk.
Set to full screen it scales to 5120x2880 an there is just a slight flag pole shudder if I look hard for it
On the external LG monitor it defaults to a 1920x1080 screen, and scales to 2560x1440 full screen and there is just a little more shudder in both cases.

In all cases, once you get by the beginning flag pole, I don't notice shudder.

I've been around high quality video for decades and have seen my share of artifacts. BigSur on the internal monitor viewed without scaling is pretty darn good.

 

[e1me5]

DJI codecs are notoriously bad and harsh on the hardware. Its a huge pain when i try to edit 4k 50p shots from my phantom 4 pro, so i convert them to proxies for smooth editing and then reconnecting them when i am done for color grading and export.