Why is editing Osmo Action 5 footage such a mess in Premiere…?

I’m seriously losing it. I do editing for a living, and this footage from the Osmo Action 5 is wrecking my Mac M2 Pro’s performance in Premiere (yes, it’s updated). I’ve got 32GB of RAM and it still falls apart.

Footage is 4K60, 4:2:0, HEVC. Even when I render everything, Premiere starts freezing after a bit. Playback turns choppy, I can’t hit play or pause, and the whole UI just locks up. I’ve cleared cache, used a new project and timeline, even tried changing the clip to 59.94. Still no good. And I’m editing off a T7 Shield SSD.

How is anyone supposed to work with these files without using proxies or converting them first? I’ve wasted way too much time on this already. Am I missing something basic here? I don’t want to convert a 28GB file and end up with 120GB+ if I can avoid it. Any solid advice would help.

Just transcode it to ProRes. HEVC isn’t meant for editing and it never really works well for that.

Tatum said:
Just transcode it to ProRes. HEVC isn’t meant for editing and it never really works well for that.

Yeah, that’s the only suggestion that kinda makes sense so far. But is that really my only option? My 28GB file turns into something like 140GB, even with ProRes LT. I tried and ran out of space mid-transcode.

@Voss
Editing video takes a lot of drive space. 140GB is honestly a small project. I’ve got an 11TB RAID setup and that’s still on the light side compared to some editors.

Tatum said:
@Voss
Editing video takes a lot of drive space. 140GB is honestly a small project. I’ve got an 11TB RAID setup and that’s still on the light side compared to some editors.

@Voss
Doesn’t matter if it’s .mov or .mp4 — what counts is the codec. You can have the same codec in either type of file.

Tatum said:
@Voss
Doesn’t matter if it’s .mov or .mp4 — what counts is the codec. You can have the same codec in either type of file.

But whatever settings I use in the camera, that codec is going to stay the same, right?