Mac specs: Editing 4K

[Skidbita]

What spec Mac Book Pro are people using to edit in 4K?
I can't seem to get 4K footage to run without stuttering which makes it impossible to do anything with.
I am trying to work in Adobe CS and GOPRO editor with same results.

My Specs are:
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.7 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 16 GB
Intel HD Graphics 3000
Type: GPU
Bus: Built-In
VRAM (Dynamic, Max): 512 MB

 

[James Munro]

I use a 2015 12" MacBook One to edit 4k on the road. It handles it quite well, it's just rendering time in Final Cut which takes ages.
1.1GHz Intel Core M with 8GB.
I wasn't expecting it to do so well so I kept it.
Never tried Adobe Premiere or the GoPro Studio on it though. Does the 4k footage stutter in the finder or just those Apps?

 

[Skidbita]

I haven't tried Final Cut but it stutters in VLC also, I might try and get a demo version of FC to try.

 

[Dr. Ifly Drones]

This is my configuration:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014) - Technical Specifications

I also have several external 2-5TB drives to store video and images. Mine runs at an acceptable speed.

 

[Jacky Poon]

What spec Mac Book Pro are people using to edit in 4K?
I can't seem to get 4K footage to run without stuttering which makes it impossible to do anything with.
I am trying to work in Adobe CS and GOPRO editor with same results.

My Specs are:
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.7 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 16 GB
Intel HD Graphics 3000
Type: GPU
Bus: Built-In
VRAM (Dynamic, Max): 512 MB

Hi,

Are you sure your MBP don't have duo GPUs with at least 1GB VRAM? For editing it'd mostly depending on your GPU spec how much it can handle beside the power of your CPU, but ultimately it depends on what your editing software chooses to use up first. The latest OSX automatically toggle between GPUs depending on the task you are asking it to do.
For smooth playback usually an OS running on a fast internal SSD would do the trick for such low bit-rate footage. For editing however, I usually edit offline with lower res proxies at 1/4 or 1/8 of the original res and export back to hi-res for grading, and even then sometime it struggles to keep up and render for ages...

If you want to edit on-the-go then edit offline with low res proxies and setup your NLE software properly to suite your system.

 

[CaptainBadge]

Imac Retina 5k
4 GHz I7
32 GB Ram
AMD R9 M295X 4096 MB

This thing screams through rendering 4k in FCPX.

 

[Skidbita]

Only 1 GPU with 512MB RAM.
I have tried to play directly from SD card and from HDD with same result, stuttering.
Could it perform better with a faster SSD?

 

[ajohnsonlaird]

You might want to consider proxy editing -- where you make lower resolution copies of your raw footage, edit that, and when you have finished the edit, revert back to the 4K for the final render. It means that the editing happens really rapidly without making extensive demands on the machine until you're ready to do the final render.

See e.g. Premiere Pro Quick Tip: How to Create Proxies - The Beat: A Blog by PremiumBeat
Just do a Google search for the name of whatever app you use for editing and "proxy media," for example: fcpx proxy media

Andy.

 

[andrew259]

SSD drives make s huge difference.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[RaptorMan]

Not sure what the budget is, but going with a 6 or 8 core CPU like the i7-5820K (6-core) or i7-5960X (8-core) will offer just about the best video editing performance and both are over-clockable. The 5820K can be had for about $380 whereas the 5960X is more like $1000.

A good GPU will handle the effects and without a good or supported GPU the rendering time when you have effects can be REALLY long. But, the most important component is the CPU. SSD's are probably the second most important item followed by the GPU and RAM unless you are effects heavy then it would be GPU second and SSD third.

You can spend a lot on a 4K video editing rig but a good one is in the $2K-$3K range. Of course, you pay a premium for Apple so maybe adjust those number up by a few hundred if going the Apple route.


Brian

 

[Jacky Poon]

Not sure what the budget is, but going with a 6 or 8 core CPU like the i7-5820K (6-core) or i7-5960X (8-core) will offer just about the best video editing performance and both are over-clockable. The 5820K can be had for about $380 whereas the 5960X is more like $1000.

A good GPU will handle the effects and without a good or supported GPU the rendering time when you have effects can be REALLY long. But, the most important component is the CPU. SSD's are probably the second most important item followed by the GPU and RAM unless you are effects heavy then it would be GPU second and SSD third.

You can spend a lot on a 4K video editing rig but a good one is in the $2K-$3K range. Of course, you pay a premium for Apple so maybe adjust those number up by a few hundred if going the Apple route.


Brian

A few hundred is definitely an understatement going with apple...

Would be good to get your opinion on this mate: Im currently looking at a custom built "hacintosh" - E5 chip with 12 core and 30mb cache, GTX 970 4GB GPU and a 240GB SSD with (4) RAID0 2TBs as an editing-only drives for around 1.5K USD and thats a complete work station. Add another 6-8GB GPU, budget 4K monitor and all the bits and bobs Im looking at 2.2K... what do you reckon? If I go with a Mac Pro and spec it up about same I'll b looking at about 10K!

 

[Jacky Poon]

My MBP is configured as follows:

Hardware Overview:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,3
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 16 GB
SMC Version (system): 1.70f6
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

My 4K just barely makes it, but it is doable. On big/super important stuff I have to use my desktop: Mac Pro, 3.4 Ghz, 32 gb ram,
AMD Radeon R9 280X 3GB HDMI PCI Express Video Graphics Card, (4) SSD drives,
and thats no speed deamon either but acceptable and works well but slow.

Anybody got any good ideas about how to get my MBP to get the job done (short of selling it and getting a new one) please I'm all ears. I have only 1 SSD in my MBP. I portioned off a section as a scratch disk for Adobe programs but I'm not sure if thats doing much good. You really should have multiple SSD so Adobe can read and write at the same time.

I've just got the latest MBP 15" with top spec (stock)... don't notice that much improvement over my last MBP which is also top spec late 2013 model. If you are going to spend $$ wait for the next gen if I were you, its due for an update in the next half year and likely to come with the new skylark chip...

Couple of things you can try which most of my editor folks do: edit offline with proxy in lower res (much lower for MBP), and/or add a dedicated RAID station through thunderbolt 2.0. Setup a RAID0 with 4x SSDs you can get up to 1.5GB/s in both read/write, or just use descent HHDs you can get up to around 600MB/s. Obviously depending how much you are willing to spend as well you can add multiple hi-end GPUs.... but honestly, editing low-res proxy is the way to go IMO.

 

[RaptorMan]

A few hundred is definitely an understatement going with apple...

Would be good to get your opinion on this mate: Im currently looking at a custom built "hacintosh" - E5 chip with 12 core and 30mb cache, GTX 970 4GB GPU and a 240GB SSD with (4) RAID0 2TBs as an editing-only drives for around 1.5K USD and thats a complete work station. Add another 6-8GB GPU, budget 4K monitor and all the bits and bobs Im looking at 2.2K... what do you reckon? If I go with a Mac Pro and spec it up about same I'll b looking at about 10K!

I don't know what prices you're paying in China, but a 12-core Xeon is going to run about $2600 USD here in the states -- and that's just the CPU. More cores is an advantage but the price delta when you step up to a Xeon is huge.

My rig, which I completed the build just a couple weeks ago, is based on the i7-5820K CPU that I've over clocked to 4.2GHz. There's room to push it to 4.5 or even more but I didn't want to push things and reduce reliability and increase noise very much. I went with a pretty spendy GPU and could probably have saved some money by going a bit cheaper there. The EVGA GeForce 980 Ti Hybrid is a very high performance consumer GPU but certainly not in the range of the high end GPU's used by pros -- GPU's that can cost $4K USD each.

You can build a workable video editing rig for not much over $1K and it will do OK but to get much better than that you're in the $2K to $4K range. A high end system can go for well over $20K.

It would be nice to have the money for a dual socket 16-core each Xeon based box with 3 high end GPU's and 128GB of RAM as well as a total SSD drive system for both OS/programs and storage, but such a system would probably start around $15K and likely well north of $20K.


Brian

 

[Jacky Poon]

I don't know what prices you're paying in China, but a 12-core Xeon is going to run about $2600 USD here in the states -- and that's just the CPU. More cores is an advantage but the price delta when you step up to a Xeon is huge.

My rig, which I completed the build just a couple weeks ago, is based on the i7-5820K CPU that I've over clocked to 4.2GHz. There's room to push it to 4.5 or even more but I didn't want to push things and reduce reliability and increase noise very much. I went with a pretty spendy GPU and could probably have saved some money by going a bit cheaper there. The EVGA GeForce 980 Ti Hybrid is a very high performance consumer GPU but certainly not in the range of the high end GPU's used by pros -- GPU's that can cost $4K USD each.

You can build a workable video editing rig for not much over $1K and it will do OK but to get much better than that you're in the $2K to $4K range. A high end system can go for well over $20K.

It would be nice to have the money for a dual socket 16-core each Xeon based box with 3 high end GPU's and 128GB of RAM as well as a total SSD drive system for both OS/programs and storage, but such a system would probably start around $15K and likely well north of $20K.


Brian

Great, noted with thanks.

Definitely not going to spend a fortune on an editing system just for my side projects... The money can go to a X5R instead! Then, let's how much would a system cost to handle those shinny .dngs... That's likely going to take an arm and a leg!