(Feature) Working with full HD video files is slow, even on modern computers

[Andreas Brudin]

(This is a feature request)
When working with high quality source files, the user interface gets slow and hard to use. Previews are slow, sometimes almost unusable and the application may even crash as a result.

A great feature would be if one could convert the source files to some nice light "working format" (lower quality, smaller frame sizes etc), so that timeline editing goes fast and easy, and that one, when it is time for rendering, could choose to use the original files so that the rendered video becomes high quality.

[Olivier Girard (eolinwen)]

Working with FulHD needs a lot of power for the Hardware. So, you could see more informations here (in details) but i specifie like solution to convert your video file in another format/codec before with a tool like EKD who can work with this type of files.
http://openshotusers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=342
http://openshotusers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=169
http://openshotusers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=267

[Rob Agnese (ragnese)]

I'm guessing that the older Windows Movie Maker does something like this.

Editing the same files in both Movie Maker and Openshot was like day and night. Openshot's preview was clearly nicer looking, so I presume that Movie Maker cut the quality way down.

[Cyril Jaquier (cyril-jaquier)]

I second this. It would be really nice if Openshot could automatically convert the files to more usable resolution/format/codec for edition and use the original files during export.

[madpentiste (antoine-messiah)]

I had the same kind of problems (working with video files of around 1GB each, plus photo files, plus audio files, etc.)

The problem disappeared when I put files are on separate, fast-access, USB keys (for example Patriot). I tried the following configuration: videos on one USB key, and other files (projects (.osp), music, pictures/photos, sequence of pictures) on another. With that configuration, everything worked fast, almost instantly.

This indicate that the issue might be some traffic jam when the programs has to access several files, some of which are big, at the same time (or in a short period of time), on the same media.