7 - Blender Video Editing (Preview Performance BOOST! [ Video Proxy ])
Why Blender Stack Exchange recommends it
Blender Stack Exchange users link it when someone has laggy or freezing VSE preview playback and needs a quick walkthrough of setting up proxies.
Recommended by 5 people across 5 different months, 2015 to 2021.
What it is
A short 2014 tutorial by Mikeycal Meyers on using video proxies in Blender's Video Sequence Editor to speed up preview playback. It walks through setting a proxy size for selected strips and rebuilding proxy and timecode indices, with an update note for Blender 2.74 and later.
What people said
Recommends labrat · 2015-06 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How do I use Proxies in the VSE correctly?”
When I choose a 'Proxy Render Size' in the properties panel of the preview window then it seems that this is all I have to do in order to boost up the performance of the preview display for playing video. At least it is visible that the resolution changes to a chosen value that seems to match to the chosen proxy render size. But I have watched a tutorial in which it is explained that I first have to make settings in the properties panel in the sequencer window under 'Proxy/Timecode' > 'Set Selected Strip Proxies'. According to the tutorial the button 'Rebuild Proxy and Timecode Indices' should be pressed then. After that the computer starts to calculate data which takes a moment. It is expla
Recommends gdquest · 2018-01 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Why is Blender's V.S.E. Slow?”
To add to the answer above... The Sequencer only uses 1 CPU core Blender's Sequencer doesn't use all the available power on your computer. The video engine roughly uses one CPU core , and that's it. Note: I'm talking about video, image strips... scene strips are different as you directly render a 3d scene using the engine of your choice. Blender's Sequencer was developed decades ago, and it seems its renderer wasn't re-written since then . Other professional video editing program will likely uses all CPU cores together with the GPU to provide faster preview and renders. It's not as bad as it seems In my experience, rendering performances are mostly an issue for real-time preview. Regardless
Recommends doakey3 · 2018-03 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Low frame rate in video editor preview”
First, make sure Blender is using the same resolution as your input video in the timeline. [LINK] If you're still slow, then it's probably time to generate proxy files. You're probably trying to edit a compressed video type instead of a RAW video type. By making proxy files, you get around this issue. Here's a video tutorial [this video] on how to generate proxy files.
Recommends Tanner · 2019-12 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Movie editing: low FPS on preview”
If you make the video a proxy, it reduces the resolution of the preview so it doesn't have to render a large file size, but also keeps the original intact. This video explains how to do it. [this video]
Recommends TipTopReaper · 2021-05 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Blender VSE keeps freezing every time I try to click on anything”
I am using Blender 3.0.0 alpha, b/c of Cycles X to render faster, b/c I'm on a time crunch. I've been using the Blender VSE to do my video editing for a school project, but now, I don't know if that was a bad decision or not. I've been looking everywhere for solutions to speed it up, but I don't know what to do. I saw a video from MikeyCal with a solution to combat the problem, but I think it might be too late, as I have too many elements in my video and I don't know if this solution still works for Blender. What he did was to set the video proxy to 50%. [this video] Here is the video to see what his solution was. I have a lot of video and sound elements in my edit (blend file) and every time I t