Getting Started - MP4 compressed during import

[naomi32]

Aloha. I am brand new to video editing. I’ve watched a few tutorials and then opened a video that I’d exported from my phone into a folder on my laptop. It copied sideways, and I was pleased that it rotated itself in Shotcut. However, even thought the sound is perfect from my personal folder, in Shotcut it’s rough. There was a message about converting it to editable format, which I did (to largest size), but that didn’t do anything. Can anyone help me to get started?

Thank you, in advance, for your help!

[MusicalBox]

Hi @naomi32
By “rough”, do you mean that your video looks low quality in the preview window of Shotcut ?

Maybe you have Preview Scaling or Proxy enabled (or both).

These tools help a lot to reduce lagging when editing and previewing, but in the preview window, the video will look “rough”. If they are enabled, you can disable/reenable them when you want.

If you didn’t enable them, then you’ll need someone more competent to help you. And no worry, someone will. But to help them help you faster, please provide more informations:

• Your computer and it’s operating system.
• What version of Shotcut do you use ?
• Information about your original video : Size, and type (.mp4, .avi, .mov etc…)
• The Video Mode you use in Shotcut (Settings > Video Mode)
• And if possible, a screen capture of your entire Shotcut window would help also.

[ejmillan]

Converting to a user-friendly editing format helps to manipulate and edit the original video (in cell phone recordings the frame rate is variable and that is not very good for frame-by-frame editing).
So, converting to friendly editing and the proxy and preview scaling functions are solutions for different scenarios, but eventually all of them together will provide a better experience so that the video can be edited smoothly (forward and backward) and without lags.
About the audio, what happens? does it get choppy? is there background noise?
If you can provide the information indicated by @MusicalBox, we can speculate less and go to the source of the issue in order to help.

[naomi32]

Thank you MusicalBox and ejmillan

I can’t tell if it looks low quality because of the size.The video and sound are choppy.
My computer is a Lenovo T410, using Windows 7 Pro, Intel Core i5
Shotcut version 20.07.11
Original video is an MP4, 141MB
Video Mode is automatic
I don’t see a way to attach my screenshot

It’s my first time using any video app. I am clueless about which settings to use.

[ejmillan]

Yes, I see that you have converted the original video file (from a mobile phone with a variable frame rate) to a user-friendly video file (UtVideo).
But you do not have preview scaling and proxy function enabled.
To improve preview performance (because this seems to be the problem) you can enable preview scaling and proxying.

I link relevant technical information as well as a practical video about these functions.

Preview Scaling

The Preview Scaling setting may be used to reduce the resolution of video processing when you are using a fair amount of filters, transitions, and track blending. This may help with the performance during the editing process. [image] However, keep in mind that the source video or images must typically be scaled down to the designed preview scale, and that will have a processing cost. See Proxy Editing for the remedy to that. Proxy generates substitute clips at the same resolution as preview sc…

Proxy Editing

Introduction Proxy editing is the process of creating and using low resolution videos and images in places of the original or optimized (Convert to Edit-friendly) files. This provides the advantage that your computer has less work to do in realtime while editing: decoding, scaling, and effects. This is, quite simply, because there are less pixels to compute. Then, when you are ready to export, it will use the original (or optimized) files for full quality. Performance is optimal when the pre…

Tips on How to Speed Up Cinematic Editing & Reduce Lag with Proxy Editing in the New Shotcut Update

I hope that with this, the performance will be better.
Tell us about it.

[Hudson555x]

What does the audio tab show?

[naomi32]

Well, I didn’t change any settings since last time I played the choppy videos, but when I dragged them from “recent” to the playlist area under “properties” it played the way it should. So, I’m glad that I hadn’t tried anything, yet.

Thank you for your help and suggestions, everyone. I am sure I will have more questions as I go. Ejmillan, I will check out the info you provided.

[MusicalBox]

@naomi32

However, even thought the sound is perfect from my personal folder, in Shotcut it’s rough.

I think I read your post too quickly yesterday. I thought you meant that the video was “rough” when you were talking about the audio… Sorry about that.

Like @ejmillan said, Proxy and Preview scaling will help to reduce or even eliminate lags and choppiness.

Also, if your computer is close to the minimum requirements (like mine is), I find it also helps a lot to free up as much memory as possible by closing any other programs that uses a lot of memory.
Right now I have 4 tabs opened on Chrome and I just launched Photoshop and the two programs use close to half a gig of memory.

[naomi32]

I think it may have been about memory, too. I had two instances of my browswer open; several tabs open on the first, and a second one with Shotcut forum and related tabs open, including youtube. Right now, I just have the second browser open. So, that could be the difference.