HEVC 4K/60fps HDR Workflow Suggestions?

Hello all, first post here. I'm no FCPX pro, but I'm at least comfortable working with most of the program.

I recently bought an external capture card that records gameplay footage from a console to an SD card in multiple possible formats, notably in 4K/HDR/60fps in the HEVC codec, as well as h.264 for non-HDR footage in various resolutions. It can wrap any of these in either .mp4 or .mkv too.

The footage looks great with custom bit-rates set, and I can't wait to get into editing things together properly.

The problem is that Quicktime does not allow for any editing/trimming of HEVC files. So, on my 2GB-15GB recordings, all I usually need are short 100MB-500MB chunks that are useful for editing. I have not yet found a streamlined way to work with these files without eating up my hard drive. My only other option is to record in h.264 for my footage, but then I lose out on both playing and recording nice HDR footage.

I would really appreciate any advice, or to just confirm that at this point in time I am SOL in being able to trim an HEVC file without re-encoding through multiple programs (tried working with Avidemux+Handbrake, but this process takes upwards of 5 minutes for a 30 second trim, and I can't reliably get HDR to re-encode either).

Thank you.

I just tested that on an iMac Pro running Catalina 10.15.5, Quicktime Player can trim various types of HEVC without re-encoding. I tested camera material from a DJI Inspire 2, an Arlo security camera, an iPhone, and both 8-bit and 10-bit transcoded HEVC material from FCPX and Premiere Pro.

This does NOT mean it can trim every HEVC variant in existence. Can you state the year and model of Mac you have, also what version of MacOS you are running?

joema wrote: I just tested that on an iMac Pro running Catalina 10.15.5, Quicktime Player can trim various types of HEVC without re-encoding. I tested camera material from a DJI Inspire 2, an Arlo security camera, an iPhone, and both 8-bit and 10-bit transcoded HEVC material from FCPX and Premiere Pro.

This does NOT mean it can trim every HEVC variant in existence. Can you state the year and model of Mac you have, also what version of MacOS you are running?

Sorry, I thought system info may have been too much.

I am on Catalina 10.15.5 as well, iMac 27-inch 2014 fully loaded. The footage is HEVC (10-bit) BT.2020 PQ 9-16-9 HDR10.

In the meantime, the only workaround I have found in the past day that is tolerable is using Avidemux in a particular way (have to manually set AAC audio even though "copy" from source would still be AAC, otherwise it won't import with the rest of the file in FCPX). It isn't as fast or smooth as Quicktime, but it's a lot better than having to re-encode via Handbrake for sure.

El Matadurr wrote: ...I am on Catalina 10.15.5 as well, iMac 27-inch 2014 fully loaded. The footage is HEVC (10-bit) BT.2020 PQ 9-16-9 HDR10...In the meantime, the only workaround I have found in the past day that is tolerable is using Avidemux in a particular way..

So far, Quicktime can trim all the camera-generated HEVC material I've encountered. You apparently have some novel format of HEVC generated by a capture card from a game console. There are various other 3rd-party utilities (some Windows some Mac) which claim to do no-encode trimming. I have not investigated those in a long time, and cannot give any guidance on that. However you could pursue those.

Since your ultimate goal is edit these in FCPX, if that will import your original material you could just do that. If importing using "leave files in place" there is no additional space consumption. On a 2014 iMac 27, it might be slow to edit without proxies -- whether trimmed or untrimmed before import.

joema wrote: So far, Quicktime can trim all the camera-generated HEVC material I've encountered. You apparently have some novel format of HEVC generated by a capture card from a game console. There are various other 3rd-party utilities (some Windows some Mac) which claim to do no-encode trimming. I have not investigated those in a long time, and cannot give any guidance on that. However you could pursue those.

Since your ultimate goal is edit these in FCPX, if that will import your original material you could just do that. If importing using "leave files in place" there is no additional space consumption. On a 2014 iMac 27, it might be slow to edit without proxies -- whether trimmed or untrimmed before import.

I see. It looks like this is the case then. Unfortunate.

As mentioned in the last post, Avidemux is about the only program I've found that works decently well for trimming without re-encoding.

Also, I cannot reasonably import the original materials (unless I scrap the footage after each project), even if I leave the footage on another folder within my folders. Reason being, the capture card does not have a "DVR" feature, so often my "clips" are anywhere from 2 to 20 minutes of relatively empty footage, where the only good part is the last minute or so. Importing these massive files will eat away at my hard drive faster than I would want.

Regarding proxies, I've been meaning to learn more on that, as you are correct--editing 4K/HDR/60fps content takes a good time both in rendering files within the timeline, as well as making any kinds of changes. I'll start researching that more and how it can speed up workflow without losing quality of the original file.