Working with huge GoPro files

Hi Community.

I'm frequently editing sports-stuff where GoPro cams are 'hidden' in the scene,
or attached to parts of the equipment.
Those cameras are not 'actively operated', meaning they are set to record
and keep recording throughout the event until either the battery dies or the card runs out of space.

Naturally this leads to a huuuge amount of data that needs to be edited.
In Resolve, editing those files becomes a real nightmare since after every edit
the h264 files are (sort of) re-scanned to generate the thumbnails on the timeline.
During 'scanning' playback isn't possible either.

So basically every single edit means waiting for 3-10 seconds before playback can be resumed.
Converting the files with GoPro's Software to another format is not an option
due to the massive amount of data I already have to deal with using the original files.

Can anyone recommend a way to speed up editing in this case?

Thanks!

Smart cache ?

Well the actual solution is one that "is not an option". If you add up all those 10 second wait times every time you hit play, it would surely be worth buying more storage and going with the correct workflow and saying goodbye to these problems.

I think the only recourse with GoPro files is to convert them to ProRes 422 (for Mac) or DNxHD (for Windows) and deal with those files that way. The ease of playback is much better with those formats. H.264 is just a pain in the ass.

I do a pre edit of all my go pro stuff in QT making short clips out of clips that are typically very long. It's a process that I will have to go through anyways and in the end I am only putting clips on the timeline that I really want to work with.

The other method is to throw them down on the time line in Resolve and export them as pro res clips at the end of the day and let them render to Pro Res overnight. It's a pretty efficient work flow.

Typically, I shoot with Pro Tune On and I like what Resolve can do for me.

Thanks for the tips, guys.

So basically re-encoding seems the way to go.
(And buying more storage....bugger...)

So, working with GoPro software isn't an option. The GoPro Studio will playback the MP4, then select your in and out points and conform to AVI (or MOV).

I do it all in Step #1 - convert MP4 to AVI

I do not go to Step #2 to add ProTune or other

I do not select in and out though, I conform the whole clip(s) (and only use seconds).

But for you, would not GoPro Studio be the answer you are looking for. Quickly seek the tiny bit you need, conform to AVI (or MOV) and import into Resolve.

I use avidemux (free from http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux) to pull snippets from GoPro files. It can do that in a 100% non-lossy fashion (i.e. doesn't add any loss to what's already lost), and it runs really well on any Windows system that can even barely run Resolve. I'm guessing that's also true for the Mac version, but I don't have a Mac.

Steps:

• Run avidemux and load your file (you can drag and drop if you like)
• Leave every avidemux setting at its default except change the output format to MP4. That way it will not transcode anything.
• Find the start point for your excerpt (or a little bit earlier) and press '[' (left square bracket) to set the "in" point
• Same deal for the end point but use ']' to set it
• File / Save -- include ".mp4" in the name you type, because avidemux doesn't add that
• Repeat for every excerpt you need, and bring those saved files into Resolve
• Press control-W to clear, then load your next GoPro file

You'll notice it saves the excerpt MP4 file more-or-less instantly -- no transcoding. The video and audio are bit-for-bit identical to the original GoPro source.

EDIT: Forgot to mention... Avidemux lets you append input videos, so if you ran the GoPro for a so long it created multiple MP4 files, you can stick them all together. Very handy if the scene of interest straddles a file boundary. After dragging in the first file, dragging the next one into the video area appends it. Or you can use File/Append.

Soooo....after long silence I wanted to share the current workflow
which actually works extremly well with huge GoPro files,
saving time *and* HD-Space...

GoPro by default creates two types of files.
The actual GOPR0nnnn.MP4 (with...say...3.8 GB) and a GOPR0nnnn.LRV (with....say...120 MB).
LRV stands for "LowResolutionVideo" but is essentially an mp4 as well.

So I create 2 folders on my HD: "Low" and "Full".
In "Low" I copy all the .LRV's and rename them to .mp4
Then I use those for editing in resolve (which is nice and fast!).

Once the "offline" is done, I simply change the file's source folder from "Low" to "Full"
and ....tadaaaa!....there are my fullrez clips.

Works like a charme...

As I still shoot on Canon DSLR and also use GoPros quite a bit, the first step of my ingest workflow is always to convert all h.264 to ProRes. ProRes edits much nicer and more fluently on my machine.

True.
But as I said in the beginning of this thread,
the GoPros just sit there and do many hours of recording in one go.
So I end up with humungous .mp4's out of which I only need a few short portions.

Converting 20 GB worth of GoPro footage to ProRes for each job
simply would blow my timeframe and (most likely) storage space...

Converting 20 GB worth of GoPro footage to ProRes for each job
simply would blow my timeframe and (most likely) storage space...

Not if you do lossless excerpts first (using avidemux, for example), and convert only the excerpts to Prores (with Cliptoolz, for example). Then the big GoPro files don't have to be part of your project. Just the little excerpt files. The original files can even be deleted, if you're really, really, really sure you got all the good stuff in the excerpts.

The stated problem is that nobody started and stopped the camera. The
lossless excerpt method let's you do that in retrospect.

Converting 20 GB worth of GoPro footage to ProRes for each job
simply would blow my timeframe and (most likely) storage space...

And that could be solved just with having an assistant transcode everything and then pull out only the useful moments during each file. It's not rocket science to do. A good assistant can pay for themselves in just a day or two of work, particularly if they're pre-cutting 4-5 hours of footage down to 15 minutes of usable information.

Ahhh.....good idea.
When the time comes that the one-man-show which I am can afford an assistant
(plus the extra workspace/hardware) that'll be a cool thing to consider....

I use iDealshare VideoGo to convert various video files to GoPro supported video format.
It also helps to convert GoPro files to other video format.
Here is the easy guide https://www.idealshare.net/video-conver ... v-mpg.html

I used to convert to Cineform in GoProStudio, but my pc can do a decent job with native files.

Smart cache on and 1/2 or even 1/4 resolution for scrubbing fast through. Mark roughly in and out and put on time line.

Up the preveiw res again when fine editing.

Will have to look into a solution when I get the / and HEVC as I'm on Win10.