Editing VIRB360 Videos -- so slow and stalls

Attempting to edit VIRB360 videos is an exercise in frustration and patience .. The Virb EDIT software simply stalls out at times .. It seems to be single threaded and will constantly sit at 99% CPU (on an 8 core machine -- meaning its just using 1 core) It will almost always be in R state -- meaning its doing something internally vs waiting on disk or network I/O which would be in U state

Simple things like trimming a few minutes off the front or rear of a video can take 5-10 minutes to completely while VIRB Edit is unresponsive. Opensnoop doesn't show any appreciable file activity during this time .. So its busy doing something internal.

During other times when it hangs it seems to want to spend a of time in /var/folders/sp/ which its carrying a tonne of .tmp files (about 900M at this moment) Really not a good place to do this as thats on the system drive .. It apparently ignores the settings for temporary storage which is typically some off board platters more suited for video editing . Moving them to a offboard drive via symbolic link sped things up .. but still not very optimal

It also rereads these files constantly .. sometimes hundreds of times in a minute .. sometimes stalling as it reads them over and over.

501 844 Garmin VIRB Edit 143 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework

501 844 Garmin VIRB Edit 143 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Resources

501 844 Garmin VIRB Edit 143 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Resources/Info.plist

501 844 Garmin VIRB Edit 143 /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemFolderLocalizations

501 844 Garmin VIRB Edit 143 /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemFolderLocalizations

In short, the user experience here is horrific .. I can literally edit a whole video in finalcut while I'm waiting for a trim left to execute in garmin VIRB edit.

0 schinder over 7 years ago

That's not been my experience. First, which VIRB Edit are you using? The current for OS X is 5.1.2. On my 2010 MacPro with 8 Xeon cores (so it looks like 16 to software due to hyper threading), VIRB Edit (actually the subprocesses it starts to do the actual rendering since my ATI Radeon GPU is apparently too old to use) will happily eat up about 8 or so (not all) while exporting video. I find it better to use my 2014 dual core i7 MacBook Pro for processing video from my 360, though, because VIRB Edit will use the Intel Iris GPU, and it's actually faster than the MacPro. So it may be that your problems are specific to your machine and what you run on it (antivirus? no one on a Mac should be running that stuff).

0 dallascyclist over 7 years ago

VIRB edit Version 5.1.2 (170712.1425

It opens multiple threads, but never engages more than one core .. its slower than molasses on a dead winter day . This is when editing/exporting/ etc .. I think its really bugged code though as its constantly reading files over and over that make no sense to have to re-read .. I mean come on, localizations need to be read on startup its not like its going to change or anything. Same thing happens on my other macbook (circa 2011, which is oddly enough about the same speed as this newer one when using VIRB edit)

0 dallascyclist over 7 years ago

Mac Specsciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1241235.jpg

0 schinder over 7 years ago

Mine is a 2014 MacBook Pro, also running 10.12.6 and VE 5.1.2. As I said it's my primary video rendering engine because my MacPro does get a little sluggish when rendering. I have no problems whatsoever with my MacBook. CPU usage is always low (50 - 60%) when rendering; it's the GPU that works hard.

The big difference is the video GPU. You have two. Is there some way to choose between them or to disable the Radeon? The Intel Iris on my MacBook works fine (after VIRB Edit was fixed to fix the inverted video problem in earlier releases).

0 dallascyclist over 7 years ago

The only real option for managing GPUs appears to be in the Automatic Graphic Switching profile in the Energy Saver tab of Systems Preferences. I downloaded gfxCardStatus which allows toggling between the discrete and integrated GPUS .. When Garmin VIRB Edit is running its forced the to discrete GPU claiming "application dependency" I suppose I can edit the EFI and disable it, but really?

Mind you rendering and things like that are slow .. the real problem is stalls and delays while editing on the timeline .. Like I mentioned in the previous posting a Trim Right will take 20 minutes ..

How big are your clips? Most of mine tend to be in the 4-6 hour range -- for example see the following as a single "clip"

-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 3268080161 Aug 12 20:38 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0010001.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18074895625 Aug 12 20:54 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110026.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18073895751 Aug 12 21:08 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110027.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18073455229 Aug 12 21:21 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110028.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18073703364 Aug 12 21:33 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110029.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18073722886 Aug 12 21:46 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110030.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18073528139 Aug 12 21:59 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110031.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18074040126 Aug 12 22:11 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110032.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18073590630 Aug 12 22:24 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110033.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18073538210 Aug 12 22:36 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110034.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18073713709 Aug 12 22:49 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110035.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18073748421 Aug 12 23:02 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110036.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 18073893035 Aug 12 23:14 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110037.MP4
-rw-r--r-- 1 garmin admin 16481944037 Aug 12 23:25 2017 Red River Roadkill_V0110038.MP4

Mine is a 2014 MacBook Pro, also running 10.12.6 and VE 5.1.2. As I said it's my primary video rendering engine because my MacPro does get a little sluggish when rendering. I have no problems whatsoever with my MacBook. CPU usage is always low (50 - 60%) when rendering; it's the GPU that works hard.

The big difference is the video GPU. You have two. Is there some way to choose between them or to disable the Radeon? The Intel Iris on my MacBook works fine (after VIRB Edit was fixed to fix the inverted video problem in earlier releases).

0 schinder over 7 years ago

The longest I've done is 3 hours at once, and I do very little editing. Create the project, drag the clips (usually a single clip now that I have the powered VIRB 360 mount) into the project, choose the GMetrix template (and the nice thing so far about the 360 is that unlike my VIRB Elite I don't have to replace the GMetrix all the time with that from my Edge or my Epix), choose the stabilization, export the video. Of course exporting takes many hours. Some of those steps do hang for a little while, but never more than a minute. Once the video is exported, I cut out pieces if I want using ffmpeg from the command line. I view exported 360 video on my MacPro with GoPro VR Player, which unlike VIRB Edit, doesn't seem to use the GPU on my MacBook and so runs slow on it. On the MacPro GoPro VR Player works fine. The one problem is that the GoPro player doesn't understand the audio codec and so butchers the audio. (QuickTime Player understands the codec but doesn't understand 360 video.) I'm going to have to find a better 360 player. Since my MacBook only has a 512 Gb SSD, I can't really store much on it at 40 Gb per hour of 4k 360 video, so getting the videos exported and off my MacBook is a priority.

0 dallascyclist over 7 years ago

I have some 2 hour long ones, but they are rare .. I'm using the powered mount as well .. a 256g card to hold the footage. A maximum of 6.2 hours, but mostly they tend to be 4-5 hours. I"ve got a nice off-board raid for video which with FCP is really really fast even editing 4k in near real time ..

The import from the memory to VIRB Edit takes a couple of hours .. export takes a couple of hours .. both of those I can understand .. I really don't want to use ffpmeg for trimming as that why there's a NLE here .. when FCP supports 360 I'll probably start using that and drop VIRB edit. I really just want to trim the front and back .. though with the youtube upload limit I usually have to split things into 100G chunks which can take the better part of an afternoon using a simple TRIM left, export, clear trimming, TRIM right, export workflow .. With the export taking the majority of the time, but the trim and clear trim taking about 30-45 minutes total time. Even the gmetrix overlay takes a good 10 minutes to apply. And replacing the Gmetrix data (I need several things from the Edge 1000 still) takes another 15 minutes ..

Anyway, for viewing though I'd recommend the VLC which has been forked and patched for 360 videos http://www.redmondpie.com/download-vlc-360-vlc-3.0-brings-360-degree-video-playback-to-windows-and-mac/ it runs with basically minimal cpu / gpu and you can view the VIRB 360 videos before or after processing

0 schinder over 7 years ago

Wow, nice, thanks for the link. Works well on my MacBook, and even the audio (mostly wind noise in the clip I looked at) is right! This will become my new viewer.

0 holisticrunner over 7 years ago

I have the exact same problem with my 15" MacBook Pro Mid2012 16GB, Retina Intel HD 4000 1.5GB, GT650M 1GB. No matter which Graphics Card I choose, playback stutters.

What can I do to fix this problem?

0 dallascyclist over 7 years ago

it spends a huge amount of time rereading/writing /var/folders/sp/[uuid]/T/*.tmp files I sped things up considerably by moving this off the flash media and onto a usb-c raid with a symlink .. It still hangs for rediculous periods of time for simple stuff so its not a true fix .. just a way to make some things go faster.