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I have seen a couple other people ask this question but I have yet to find an answer. When importing an mov file into the blender video sequence editor, I find that the program becomes extremely laggy and cannot playback at more than 4fps. Is there some special way to import a .mov file? Or can we officially say that importing an .mov file to blender is something to be avoided?

My solution was to export the mov file as an .mkv file and when I import that into the editor it works very fast. It is something specifically about trying to edit an mov file that blender doesn't like. Here is another link concerning this. I tried their solutions and I did not have success:

why is the video sequencer so slow with 4k files 2.79

Is anyone having success with mov files in the video sequence editor? Just to be clear, I am importing an mov file, not exporting my project as an mov file

Ray Mairlot
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CodingWoodsman
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2 Answers2

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Importing .mov is not the issue. Mov files are quicktime files. Quicktime is a container that can hold video files in a variety of different compression codecs. Some codecs are more efficient than others. Some codecs require more from the CPU than others. Some require faster drives to sustain the data rate. Some are fast and easy to play at the expense of quality. All quicktime files are not created equal.

The same can be said about mvk. It is a container, that can encode in different codecs. Some will work for you, others won't. Sustaining the data rate depends depends on the codec and the resources available on your computer.

But the bottom line is that editing 4k video requires a lot of computing power, and/or clever optimization. Blender's video editing capabilities are quite limited and antiquated. To deal with video you would be better off with a real video editing app. Most of them can play video more efficiently than blender, using GPU acceleration and multithreaded operations. Blender uses none of that.

Blender is a great 3D app but the vse's performance and design is sub-par to other apps out there in the real world.

no-can-do
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  • Thank you very much for answering. I appreciated it. The quicktime file I had loaded was not 4k, it was a cellphone video that was quite short. I have worked with much more complex, longer, higher resolution files with little issue. I have an 8 core CPU, and a 300$ video card, I would be surprised that I am bottlenecked by these to play a .mov file that is a couple seconds long in 1080x1920 resolution.

    I believe blender can indeed handle what I am doing. I believe there is another reason why we are all having issues with uploading .mov files and working with them.

     – CodingWoodsman May 09 '20 at 20:22
  • If you have a powerful computer, then use other video editing app, like DaVinci Résolve free. You will see a substantial difference in performance. Blender is great for 3D, but is not an efficient program to edit video. – no-can-do Jun 15 '20 at 06:52
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I also had problems with editing .MOV files. The rendered video output was frozen, yet the extra soundtrack I had added was playing fine.

I converted the .MOV to a .MP4 (using Cloud Converter), choosing settings for the conversion that would match the resolution and frame rate that I planned to use for the Blender rendering.

Duarte Farrajota Ramos
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Joe Blow
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