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Question: Does anyone know of a good workflow for editing large video files via Avidemux, Blender, Openshot, Kdenlive and/or similar programs?

Backstory: I shot a 2hr debate on my Canon 550d which resulted in 16 video files of hd 1080p quality, since the sd cards put a 4gb size limit on the length of a single shot. These hd files contain b-frames, which makes it quite hard to edit them because scrubbing the timeline goes all jittery.

Using Avidemux, I've experimented with various codecs: Huffyuv, H.264, FFV1 and FFVHuff. The container format mainly being .avi, and turning "Create OpenDML files" made it possible to create huge .avi files. Earlier I had briefly tried my hand at using .mkv files, but Avidemux kept crashing.

My plan was to import the resulting lossless files into Blender, Kdenlive or Openshot, and it seems that FFVHuff was the only codec that made it possible to move around the timeline in a decent way (at least in Blender). However that was using smaller .avi files.

Just now I tried bunching together five of the original files into a large 40gb .avi file encoded with the FFVHuff codec. I wasn't able to edit the resulting file in Blender nor Openshot. The program would just hang if I jumped to far out into the timeline and try to play the video. So, yeah. My question is at the top. Any assistance, greatly appreciated.

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  • And yeah, I'm on Ubuntu 11.04. :)
    – thunki
    Apr 30, 2011 at 22:40

1 Answer 1

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Alright! After some trials I managed to find a functioning workflow for HD video editing using Blender and Avidemux.

Procedure:

  1. Take the high-res footage and create additional low-res versions. What I do is use Avidemux to create .avi files encoded in m-jpeg format. Furthermore I also adjust the size of the low rez footage to 640x360px
  2. Import high-res footage into Blender. Keep the project's import settings high-res, meaning the video settings you would like to export the project in.
  3. When viewing the video sequencer timeline in Blender, select your high-res clips after importing them and press N.
  4. Under each of the clips, find "proxy" and check it. Afterwards you check and select "proxy custom file," where you then select the corresponding low-res file.
  5. And if you hover over the Sequencer View you will be able to press N, to see various render settings for that view. I like to select "proxy size 25%" under "proxy rend."

PS. You do not have to uncheck the proxies before exporting your finished project, Blender is smart enough to handle that automatically.

Cheers! :)

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