Movie Clip Editor RAM usage

[Sean]

I really want to get into motion tracking in Blender but I have one huge limitation, RAM.
I have 16GB of DDR3 RAM so in theory loading a 14 second 30 fps 1080p video that is 27.1 MB in size shouldn't be an issue, right?
Wrong. Loading the 27.1 MB video to RAM in the Movie Clip Editor takes an insane 6880M of RAM. What happened to 27 MB?

For this example I can load the video and edit it just fine. But if the video was twice as long, only 60ish MB, I would be maxing out all of my 16 GB of RAM. This makes it next to impossible to track footage that is over 30 FPS for anything longer than 30 seconds. Once the ram limit is reached, it has to load each frame off of my SSD every time and takes forever making it unrealistic to spend time trying to track many points in the video.

The last thing I had to try was a RAM disk where I loaded the footage directly to the RAM. So in theory, it should be able to just load it off the ram very quickly without having to worry about the RAM cache. Of course, something as stupid as that didn't work either. It was no faster than loading directly from my SSD.

Why is this happening? How does a 27 MB video take up almosy 7 gig of ram? Is there any way for me to be able to edit longer or higher quality videos without having 64-128 gig of ram?

[wellen1981]

Originally posted by Sean:

I really want to get into motion tracking in Blender but I have one huge limitation, RAM.
I have 16GB of DDR3 RAM so in theory loading a 14 second 30 fps 1080p video that is 27.1 MB in size shouldn't be an issue, right?
Wrong. Loading the 27.1 MB video to RAM in the Movie Clip Editor takes an insane 6880M of RAM. What happened to 27 MB?

For this example I can load the video and edit it just fine. But if the video was twice as long, only 60ish MB, I would be maxing out all of my 16 GB of RAM. This makes it next to impossible to track footage that is over 30 FPS for anything longer than 30 seconds. Once the ram limit is reached, it has to load each frame off of my SSD every time and takes forever making it unrealistic to spend time trying to track many points in the video.

The last thing I had to try was a RAM disk where I loaded the footage directly to the RAM. So in theory, it should be able to just load it off the ram very quickly without having to worry about the RAM cache. Of course, something as stupid as that didn't work either. It was no faster than loading directly from my SSD.

Why is this happening? How does a 27 MB video take up almosy 7 gig of ram? Is there any way for me to be able to edit longer or higher quality videos without having 64-128 gig of ram?

My mind blown... you have my sympathy and my interest.

Could it be to do with blender import settings for video clips?

My best guess would be a bug in blender or a memory leak somewhere.

[Sean]

Originally posted by wellen1981:

Originally posted by Sean:

I really want to get into motion tracking in Blender but I have one huge limitation, RAM.
I have 16GB of DDR3 RAM so in theory loading a 14 second 30 fps 1080p video that is 27.1 MB in size shouldn't be an issue, right?
Wrong. Loading the 27.1 MB video to RAM in the Movie Clip Editor takes an insane 6880M of RAM. What happened to 27 MB?

For this example I can load the video and edit it just fine. But if the video was twice as long, only 60ish MB, I would be maxing out all of my 16 GB of RAM. This makes it next to impossible to track footage that is over 30 FPS for anything longer than 30 seconds. Once the ram limit is reached, it has to load each frame off of my SSD every time and takes forever making it unrealistic to spend time trying to track many points in the video.

The last thing I had to try was a RAM disk where I loaded the footage directly to the RAM. So in theory, it should be able to just load it off the ram very quickly without having to worry about the RAM cache. Of course, something as stupid as that didn't work either. It was no faster than loading directly from my SSD.

Why is this happening? How does a 27 MB video take up almosy 7 gig of ram? Is there any way for me to be able to edit longer or higher quality videos without having 64-128 gig of ram?

My mind blown... you have my sympathy and my interest.

Could it be to do with blender import settings for video clips?

My best guess would be a bug in blender or a memory leak somewhere.

One thing to note is using Blender 2.8, I get almost half the ram usage of video clips. 3.6GB of ram for the 27MB is still way to much, but it's a huge step in the right direction. Another big change is the speed of loading the video which is increased dramatically.

[wellen1981]

I plan to use Blender for all future video editing needs so will keep an eye on this thread. Sorry I don't have any ideas as I havent started using yet. Knowing the attitude of the developers behind Blender, I can't see them being happy with that excessive ram usage. Those guys are more into performant outcomes.

Have you checked out Blender website for others complaining or filing bug reports?

[Sean]

Originally posted by wellen1981:

I plan to use Blender for all future video editing needs so will keep an eye on this thread. Sorry I don't have any ideas as I havent started using yet. Knowing the attitude of the developers behind Blender, I can't see them being happy with that excessive ram usage. Those guys are more into performant outcomes.

Have you checked out Blender website for others complaining or filing bug reports?

Don’t get ahead of yourself. As much as I love Blender, I isn’t a very sutable software for video editing. I use Magix Movie Maker for all my video editing (I also bought Vegas 14 in the humble bundle for $20 and I plan to move to that in the future).
As far as i know there aren’t any audio editing tools in Blender either. The only reason I use Blender as a video editor is for its amazing motion tracking software and integration with its own 3D modeling, animating, and rendering components along with their fully fledged node editing/compositing
system. But when it comes to editing normal videos, you will save so much time and effort by using another software that it’s worth spending $25-$75 for a separate video editing software.

[wellen1981]

Originally posted by Sean:

Originally posted by wellen1981:

I plan to use Blender for all future video editing needs so will keep an eye on this thread. Sorry I don't have any ideas as I havent started using yet. Knowing the attitude of the developers behind Blender, I can't see them being happy with that excessive ram usage. Those guys are more into performant outcomes.

Have you checked out Blender website for others complaining or filing bug reports?

Don’t get ahead of yourself. As much as I love Blender, I isn’t a very sutable software for video editing. I use Magix Movie Maker for all my video editing (I also bought Vegas 14 in the humble bundle for $20 and I plan to move to that in the future).
As far as i know there aren’t any audio editing tools in Blender either. The only reason I use Blender as a video editor is for its amazing motion tracking software and integration with its own 3D modeling, animating, and rendering components along with their fully fledged node editing/compositing
system. But when it comes to editing normal videos, you will save so much time and effort by using another software that it’s worth spending $25-$75 for a separate video editing software.

Cheers for your experienced insights.
I did see a yt vid maybe 3 years old showing video editing in blender and i only have basic editing needs so it did look to meet them.

I will stil have a look but if blender devs have also abandoned the video editor side of things then i would use other options. As far as i currently know, video editing is still existing in blender.

As for audio editing that is my area of expertise so I am fine in a DAW for most of that.

I still appreciate your warning and will let you know how it goes once i try in blender for vid editing.... it cant be worrse than windows movie maker, right?!

[Mika]

Motion tracking. What did you expect?

I don't know if it works the same as cinema 4D...

The video uses those 27MB, which uses all the RAM is simply to calculate the pixels of each frame, the more indicators you use more RAM will use.

Equally 14Mbps for only a few seconds of 1080P video is a lot. Reduce the bitrate to about 5Mbps as much and I would even say you can reduce it to 3Mbps if you want less space by keeping 30 / 1080P. You can also try a much lower quality video, something like 360P / 24FPs at about 512Kbps (just to try), being a video of poor quality you can work fluidly, once you have all the tracking and animation is simply add the original video in background. You save a lot of time and problems.

[Sean]

Originally posted by Mika:

Motion tracking. What did you expect?

I don't know if it works the same as cinema 4D...

The video uses those 27MB, which uses all the RAM is simply to calculate the pixels of each frame, the more indicators you use more RAM will use.

Equally 14Mbps for only a few seconds of 1080P video is a lot. Reduce the bitrate to about 5Mbps as much and I would even say you can reduce it to 3Mbps if you want less space by keeping 30 / 1080P. You can also try a much lower quality video, something like 360P / 24FPs at about 512Kbps (just to try), being a video of poor quality you can work fluidly, once you have all the tracking and animation is simply add the original video in background. You save a lot of time and problems.

I was wondering if it was possible to work in a lower resolution and render it in full resolution.

I agree with all of that, except the ram usage isn’t morion tracking. That’s just opening the movie clip editor, and clicking play. That’s what confuses me.

Either way, thanks a lot. I’m sure your tips will make a huge difference.