Problem solved. It was to do with teamviewer. I had to disable one of the features on teamviewer which creates some button on every window open. Now smart renderer works fine. thanks to pegasys support for their prompt help.
1. BACKGROUNDWorkflow time again! Put your feet up and let me send you to sleep....Ever since I got my Panasonic GH4 I've been searching for a way to smart render the UHD MP4 footage that I shoot with it for archiving, in a batch. By that I mean trim files without recompression. This is super-important for me because I'm building a huge archive of marine life footage, and so much of the original footage is useless while the camera is rolling, waiting for the moment. File size is important because I like to carry this archive with me in the field on HDD for reference purposes, but I hate losing quality with recompression. The best (IMO) lossless codec (MagicYUV) creates files 18 times larger than the original. The strongest lossy contender (Sony XAVC Intra) creates files 3.3 times larger (link). Me no like! My frustrating search for a solution is documented here.2. TRIMMING A FILE WITH FFMPEGHowever I've found out that FFmpeg will smart render MP4 files. Here's an example command line:
tmpgenc mpeg smart renderer 4 crack patch
So there are a number of options there, depending on which format audio you shot, and how important it is to you.3. THE ENDS AREN'T QUITE RIGHTAs far as I can tell, FFmpeg trims the file to the first i-frame outside the selected range at each end, so it only copies whole GOPs. But information is embedded in the trimmed file to tell it how many frames to hide when decoded. I think Premiere Pro ignores that information when the file is put on its timeline, so just shows a clean file, but a bit longer than you thought you had trimmed. Vegas Pro makes an effort to get it right but often displays a small number of fewer or extra frames at the end. It might be FFmpeg's problem, I don't know. In the case of GH4 UHD 30p trimmed footage you typically get 2 extra duplicate frames at the start and 3 extra at the end. Files that are only trimmed by 1 or 2 frames at the ends, actually lose 1 or 2 frames when decoded.4. WRITING A LIST FOR A BATCH-TRIMMING (WITH COMPENSATION FOR THE ENDS)So I've written a script to export the first Vegas Pro video track as a list in a text file, trimlist.txt, which can then be used by a batch file to trim the files with FFmpeg. Each line contains the name of the media file, the timecode in, and the length of the event on the timeline, separated by spaces. Copy and save the text as "FFmpeg Trim List.cs" in your scripts folder (such as C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 13.0\Script Menu). As my starting point I used a script that JohnnyRoy wrote over 9 years ago for exporting a list of MPEG-2 files for Womble smart rendering.To compensate for the decoding peculiarities in Vegas Pro, the script adds frames to the start and end of the file, for later trimming with another script (see section 6 below) when the files are put back on the timeline. It also detects how many frames you have trimmed from each end and compensates further if you are only trimming only 0, 1 or 2 frames. The priority is to completely avoid duplicate or messed up frames at the end of this workflow. The 2nd priority is to preserve as much of the wanted section as possible. There are 7 user-settable figures in this script. As they are shown, with GH4 UHD 30p footage, you don't lose any frames with normally trimmed clips, and the most you would lose from an end of an untrimmed clip, or one trimmed really close to the end, is 2 frames.Edit: There is later version of this script, in a later post, that automatically runs the batch file described later in section 5, along with other various changes!
That hard-codes the list to "E:\\trimlist.txt", so you'll almost certainly want to edit that path for your system.5. PROCESSING THE BATCH-TRIMThe next step is to process the list with FFmpeg. I am doing this with Windows batch files, which I got some help with on the wonderful Stack Overflow. They include code to add an incrementing suffix to the filename if you are trimming more than one clip from the same media.Here is one to smart-trim MP4 files. As explained above, it doesn't work for LPCM audio. Copy and save this text as *.bat. Edit the location of the trim list file. Double click to run it:Edit: The later version of above script, in a later post, automatically runs the batch file
I don't fully understand the warnings (in yellow on Windows 10) about global headers but they can be ignored in relation to this workflow.Once it's working nicely you could remove "pause" from the end so the command prompt window closes itself, but I like to review the command prompt window to make sure there were no errors (shown in red on Windows 10).Here is one to smart-trim and re-wrap to MOV files, keeping the LPCM audio. For other variations, change the options in the ffmpeg line, referencing either the individual command lines in section 2 of this post (above), or the FFmpeg documentation.
Thank you Musicvid. It's been great. Season's greetings to you too :)Peter, I have looked into VideoReDo before and have just tested the current trial version again with some GH4 UHD 30p footage. In my first test, it crashed during the render. I did then manage to render 2 files, but they do not decode properly in VP13. Much of them appear as green thumbnails on the timeline, they don't play back properly, and the end is not quantized. So I really don't have much faith in VideoReDo for doing this. If those problems could be solved somehow (a different profile perhaps?), is there any way to get an edit list into it from Vegas etc.?Note that for just trimming files one by one from Panasonic cameras, their own PHOTOfunSTUDIO is probably the best way as it is robust, frame-accurate, and retains metadata including exposure details.What Altarvic has done with smart trimming in Vegasaur 2.4 is really great. It provides not just smart trimming, but also a complete interface to FFmpeg, allowing conversion to ProRes etc.. There are a few things to note:- For Panasonic GH4 MP4 UHD footage and many similar long-GOP formats you'll still need to trim the ends of the Vegasaur-smart-trimmed files when placed back on the timeline to avoid peculiarities at the ends such as repeat frames, reversed frames. You can trim using a script as per section 6 of my guide above, and add frames in advance in Vegasaur Smart Trim to compensate.- My workflow above adjusts the number of added frames if one end of the file is not trimmed at all, or if the cuts take place very close to the end of the file. Vegasaur does not do this and it probably shouldn't attempt to, as it's format-specific and overly-fastidious for most purposes.- The latest FFmpeg included in Vegasaur 2.4 (download the static 64-bit build here) has a stable native AAC encoder which is apparently "of equal or greater quality than most of the other encoders available to the public", so if you want AAC encoding there's probably no longer any need to build your own FFmpeg with Fraunhofer FDK AAC codec support. I haven't compared the quality of the 2 codecs.- There are further observations in this thread.- Some Smart Trim custom commands from the lastest Vegasaur help file:Re-wrap video files to MP4 (w/o re-encoding):
I just tested TMPGEnc Smart Renderer again, the latest version 5.0.7.9. Unlike my previous test, it does now "mostly" smart render GH4 footage. However with my UHD 30p MP4 clips it re-renders the first 64 to 74 frames (more than 2 seconds) and the final 2 to 12 frames. It does make a good job of the re-render though, and the quality of the re-rendered part can be set. The rest of the clips is identical to the original, as is the audio. And when the rendered clips are decoded in Vegas Pro there are no repeat or glitched frames that need trimming, as happens with FFmpeg.However the bigger problem is that the batch list format (*.tmsr5b) is a closed/compiled/encrypted format so it's impossible to get a batch list into it in text format from Vegas.
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