Edit DJI Phantom 4 4K video in Sony Vegas Pro Smoothly

DJI Phantom 4 is often called “the iPhones of drones” — and that’s a fair description. It can record video up to 4096×2160 (4K) video. More and more people like to use it to record the happy time such as the precious wedding time. The raw footage may be not so perfect so that some would import the DJI Phantom 4 4K video to Sony Vegas Pro for editing. But feedback unveiled that when imported DJI Phantom 4 4K footage from the Micro SD card to Sony Vegas, the video preview and editing is choppy and lags.

4K editing does require a of lot horsepower but it is possible on slower machines. So although you can import your DJI Phantom 4 4K video to Sony Vegas Pro for editing, it will be laggy and choppy. To edit DJI Phantom 4 4K video on Sony Vegas smoothly, the better way is to record a video in 1080p video cause that any video recorded higher then 1080p will show as choppy in the video preview panel in Sony Vegas Pro 13 and lower version. In addition, the computer also plays an important role. The configuration determine if you can handle 4K video. Below are some data points tested with 4Kp60 footage. The tests were done using a 4k capable monitor connected via displayport.

Tests, in order of memory:

i7-4770k using integrated GPU: 4k@60, no issues.

EVGA nVidia GTX 750Ti: 4k@60, no issues.

i7-2600k using integrated GPU: 4k@60, no issues.

G540 Celeron CPU (2013 CPU) using integrated GPU: 4k@30 no issues, 4k@60 a slight slowdown during high action scenes. CPU was pegged @ 100% for majority of the scenes. I believe that this chip is using the same integrated GPU as the 2600k, so it may have simply been an issue of the performance capabilities of the chip.

EVGA nVidia GTX 680: 4k@60, no issues.

If you use these configurations, you may be able to edit DJI Phantom 4 4K video in Sony Vegas Pro smoothly. Otherwise, you can choose to record video using DJI Phantom 4 in 1080p H.264 MOV video. In addition, you also can convert DJI Phantom 4 4K video to Sony Vegas Pro most compatible H.264 MP4 video in 4K video or 1080P when your computer is a lower-end one.

How to Convert DJI Phantom 4 4K Video to Sony Vegas Pro?

Pavtube Video Converter is a feature-rich application that focuses on turning 4K movies into 4K videos with MP4 (H.264/H.265) and MKV (H.265) extensions. It can convert DJI Mavic Pro, DJI Phantom 4 4K video in MP4 and MOV codec to 4K MP4 for Sony Vegas Pro editing and it also can compress DJI Phantom 4 4K video and other 4K recording devices footage to 1080p MP4, WMV, AVI, etc video for SV when your computer can't handle 4K smoothly. You can change video frame rate, bitrate to make the video editing more smoothly in Sony Vegas.

In addition, this DJI Phantom 4K video conversion tool is wrapped in a user-friendly interface that bundles many output profiles, a built-in media player that lets you preview clips and take screenshots, along with clipping, 3D and editing options. Since batch processing is supported, you can populate the task list with as many DJI Phantom 4 4K videos as you want to convert to Sony Vegas Pro at the same time. Also, you can merge multiple DJI Phantom 4k clips into a single file, trim DJI 4k footages to convert only the parts you're interested in, rotate and crop clips, make image adjustments (brightness, contrast), and apply text or image watermarks.

For Mac users, you can turn to Pavtube Video Converter for Mac to convert DJI Phantom 4 4K video to Sony Vegas Pro supported video formats.

Steps to Convert DJI Phantom 4 4K Video to Sony Vegas Pro

Step 1: Add Phantom 4 4K videos.

Open the DJI Phantom 4k to Sony Vegas program, click "File" menu, from its drop-down option, select "Add Video/Audio" to load 4K video to the program. This program supports batch conversion, so you can add multiple files into it at a time.

load phantom 4 4k files

Step 2: Choose output format

If you want to transcode DJI Phantom 4 4k video to H.264 MP4 video, just choose "H.264 High Profile Video(*.mp4)" in "Common Video" and then adjust video size in "Settings" to keep 4K resolution and choose framerate as 30fps. If you want to compress DJI Phantom 4 4k video to 1080p for Sony Vegas Pro, you can choose choose HD MP4 format to keep high video quality and get the compatibility.

hd mp4

Then open "Profile Settings" window, click "Size(pix)" to select 1920*1080 as the final resolution for output video. You can also adjust video and audio settings, including codec, aspect ratio, bit rate, frame rate, sample rate, and audio channel.

Step 3: convert DJI Phantom 4 4k video to SV

Finally, simply hit the big "Convert" button to convert DJI Phantom 4 4k videos to Sony Vegas friendly format. Once the conversion ends, just click “Open” button to get the generated files for natively editing in Sony Vegas Pro 10/11/12/13/14 perfectly.

How to Import Files into Sony Vegas Pro?

Once you’ve set up your Project, you will need to import video clips. Each folder is called a ‘Bin’, and you can create as many as you want by selecting the Media Bin>Right Click>Create New Bin.

This is important, because once you’ve setup your project into bins, you can search (Right Click on a bin>Search Media Bins…) these bins and you can even save your results into a ‘Smart Bin’ for future use!

There are two simple ways to import video into Sony Vegas Pro:

File>Import…>Media…

Click the Import Icon (next to the lighting icon)

Once you have imported your video clip, you can right click it and select Properties… to view its properties. You will also get a snapshot of it at the lower end of the Project Media Window, as shown in the above image.

Sony Vegas Pro allows native editing of many file formats, including R3D. For Red Media, if you right click the clip you will have the option of selecting File Format Properties… to get extra settings to ‘correct’ your R3D files.

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