4K video - and then what?

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So you come home with superb video, shot with the ultimate ISO, FPS, and shutter speed settings, having used the optimal filters...and now you want yo transfer and edit your genius aerial recordings in 4K.

Only...your hardware doesn't do 4K, so now you either have to convert to a less desirable format, or go spend your oldest kid's college tuition fond on the appropriate topgear.

What's the solution? What post production gear do you use - hardware, software? And why?
 
If its a short video, you can use YouTube to brighten it up and post it directly. For longer clips, you need to edit the video, in that case you need HW and SW.
 
I use Cyberlink Powerdirector 15. It's cheap at around £80/year. There's a simple check box in the settings that allows creation of far smaller proxy/shadow source files. The process is automated but takes a while - lets say 10min for a 3Gb 4K video (the time taken is massively hardware dependant).
You then make your edits and when you come to produce, the proxy/shadow files are substituted for the originals.
I've used it on 3 PCs.
1. i5 5th gen (dual core) 16GB DDR4 laptop. Even with shadow files that was painfully slow. But it can be done if you have lots of patience!
2. i7 4th generation (quad core) Desktop 20GB DDR4 with GeForce 960 4GB. This is fine using shadow files.
3. i7 5th gen 6800HQ (quad core) laptop 16GB DDR3 GeForce 950m (but the graphics card is not utilised by Cyberlink currently which is annoying). However-it's also works at a reasonable pace using shadow files.
All these pcs have SSD drives - a must really for 4K. So the latter 2 PCs are pretty much minimum spec if you want to edit at a vaguely respectable pace. Don't by a laptop unless u absolutely have to. It will cost 2-3 times the amount of an equal performance desktop.
This is just my experience with one software package. I haven't used anything else to edit with.
Most editing packages allow the use of proxy/shadow files in a similar way.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I use Cyberlink Powerdirector 15. It's cheap at around £80/year. There's a simple check box in the settings that allows creation of far smaller proxy/shadow source files. The process is automated but takes a while - lets say 10min for a 3Gb 4K video (the time taken is massively hardware dependant).
You then make your edits and when you come to produce, the proxy/shadow files are substituted for the originals.
I've used it on 3 PCs.
1. i5 5th gen (dual core) 16GB DDR4 laptop. Even with shadow files that was painfully slow. But it can be done if you have lots of patience!
2. i7 4th generation (quad core) Desktop 20GB DDR4 with GeForce 960 4GB. This is fine using shadow files.
3. i7 5th gen 6800HQ (quad core) laptop 16GB DDR3 GeForce 950m (but the graphics card is not utilised by Cyberlink currently which is annoying). However-it's also works at a reasonable pace using shadow files.
All these pcs have SSD drives - a must really for 4K. So the latter 2 PCs are pretty much minimum spec if you want to edit at a vaguely respectable pace. Don't by a laptop unless u absolutely have to. It will cost 2-3 times the amount of an equal performance desktop.
This is just my experience with one software package. I haven't used anything else to edit with.
Most editing packages allow the use of proxy/shadow files in a similar way.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Excellent! Sounds worth while. Just checked the site. Looks pro at a reasonable price.
 
Excellent! Sounds worth while. Just checked the site. Looks pro at a reasonable price.
I only paid $50 on Amazon for Cyberlink and its only to quickly edit h265 into clips that can be used eventually when I suck it up and buy Adobe PP (already have Final Cut but Apple doesn't seem to care about HEVC).
The Windows laptop I bought is an i5, upgrade to 32 GB RAM (it wasn't a lot last year, prices are jacked right now) and make sure you add an SSD for the application or it will take forever. You could probably get a good deal on a Skylake desktop now that Kaby Lake CPUs are coming out. In that case make sure you get one with an NVIDIA GPU from the last two gens (950 or better)
 
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I only paid $50 on Amazon for Cyberlink and its only to quickly edit h265 into clips that can be used eventually when I suck it up and buy Adobe PP (already have Final Cut but Apple doesn't seem to care about HEVC).
The Windows laptop I bought is an i5, upgrade to 32 GB RAM (it wasn't a lot last year, prices are jacked right now) and make sure you add an SSD for the application or it will take forever. You could probably get a good deal on a Skylake desktop now that Kaby Lake CPUs are coming out. In that case make sure you get one with an NVIDIA GPU from the last two gens (950 or better)
Thx JCKnows, I used to work with Final Cut myself, it's actually priced reasonably these days. One can only hope they get up to date on with the HEVC program soon!
 
Thx JCKnows, I used to work with Final Cut myself, it's actually priced reasonably these days. One can only hope they get up to date on with the HEVC program soon!
Yes Final Cut is a synch compared to PowerDirector but it'll do the job. Let's all hope Apple gets their head out of the iCloud.
 
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I use Cyberlink Powerdirector 15. It's cheap at around £80/year. There's a simple check box in the settings that allows creation of far smaller proxy/shadow source files. The process is automated but takes a while - lets say 10min for a 3Gb 4K video (the time taken is massively hardware dependant).
You then make your edits and when you come to produce, the proxy/shadow files are substituted for the originals.
I've used it on 3 PCs.
1. i5 5th gen (dual core) 16GB DDR4 laptop. Even with shadow files that was painfully slow. But it can be done if you have lots of patience!
2. i7 4th generation (quad core) Desktop 20GB DDR4 with GeForce 960 4GB. This is fine using shadow files.
3. i7 5th gen 6800HQ (quad core) laptop 16GB DDR3 GeForce 950m (but the graphics card is not utilised by Cyberlink currently which is annoying). However-it's also works at a reasonable pace using shadow files.
All these pcs have SSD drives - a must really for 4K. So the latter 2 PCs are pretty much minimum spec if you want to edit at a vaguely respectable pace. Don't by a laptop unless u absolutely have to. It will cost 2-3 times the amount of an equal performance desktop.
This is just my experience with one software package. I haven't used anything else to edit with.
Most editing packages allow the use of proxy/shadow files in a similar way.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm waiting for Apple to release an updated version of their 27" 5K iMac. Hopefully that will be in the next few months. At that point I'll order one that should be good for a few years. Looking at their current offerings, it would be something like -

3.3GHz Processor
2TB Storage

  • 3.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor
  • Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
  • 8GB (two 4GB) memory, configurable up to 32GB
  • 2TB Fusion Drive1
  • AMD Radeon R9 M395 with 2GB video memory
  • Retina 5K 5120-by-2880 P3 display
AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB video memory - Worth it?

I'll upgrade the RAM myself (much cheaper)

I'm currently using a 2012 i7 Mac Mini with 16GB RAM. It really gets a workout when I'm trying to process videos. And 4K videos jump while I'm watching them. Time for an upgrade!
 
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LOL. We were just talking about this on a diff thread DronePilorOne.
I have a gaming computer from Best Buy that I bought back in Aug maybe. It has an i-7 6700 CPU running at 3.4GHz. It is a 64 bit operating system with 32gb of ram. It has a GeForce GTX 1070 video card. I've had pretty fast home custom machines for my stufio for last 9-10 years. They were all good but this machine is smoking compared to the older processors. So it handles my 4K from the Phantom pretty sweet. I can play the footage straight off the card with almost no skip at all.
I use Premier Pro to do my video editing as of Nov. Big learning curve for me. So this forum and Youtube have been my friend for a while now. LOL I had to bite the bullet and subscribe to the cloud to get going with Premier Pro. I needed it for my new computer anyway because Windows 10 would not let me load another student version of Photoshop on it which it what I use 24/7 for my portrait business.
 
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I'm waiting for Apple to release an updated version of their 27" 5K iMac. Hopefully that will be in the next few months. At that point I'll order one that should be good for a few years. Looking at their current offerings, it would be something like -

3.3GHz Processor
2TB Storage

  • 3.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor
  • Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
  • 8GB (two 4GB) memory, configurable up to 32GB
  • 2TB Fusion Drive1
  • AMD Radeon R9 M395 with 2GB video memory
  • Retina 5K 5120-by-2880 P3 display
AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB video memory - Worth it?

I'll upgrade the RAM myself (much cheaper)

I'm currently using a 2012 i7 Mac Mini with 16GB RAM. It really gets a workout when I'm trying to process videos. And 4K videos jump while I'm watching them. Time for an upgrade!
Looking into the iMac 5K myself! Think that's the way to go.
 
LOL. We were just talking about this on a diff thread DronePilorOne.
I have a gaming computer from Best Buy that I bought back in Aug maybe. It has an i-7 6700 CPU running at 3.4GHz. It is a 64 bit operating system with 32gb of ram. It has a GeForce GTX 1070 video card. I've had pretty fast home custom machines for my stufio for last 9-10 years. They were all good but this machine is smoking compared to the older processors. So it handles my 4K from the Phantom pretty sweet. I can play the footage straight off the card with almost no skip at all.
I use Premier Pro to do my video editing as of Nov. Big learning curve for me. So this forum and Youtube have been my friend for a while now. LOL I had to bite the bullet and subscribe to the cloud to get going with Premier Pro. I needed it for my new computer anyway because Windows 10 would not let me load another student version of Photoshop on it which it what I use 24/7 for my portrait business.

That's a nice setup! I think whatever edititng software you're used to work with is what you'll buy hardware for, that matches. So me being used to Final Cut I'm doing Macs only. As the internet speeds get faster and faster, however, we might see high-end editing systems purely online based, in the future. That way the hardware becomes secondary. And my wallet not so light. ;)
 
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Why don't you shoot in a lower resolution like 1080?

Because if if you shoot everything in the highest resolution possible for future reference and use, you can always "downgrade" your resolution in post production, if needed. But you can't do it the other way around.
 
Because if if you shoot everything in the highest resolution possible for future reference and use, you can always "downgrade" your resolution in post production, if needed. But you can't do it the other way around.

Also shooting in 4K leaves some headroom in case you need to make any corrections in post, such as leveling the horizon.

Yes I am aware but if the hardware the OP has can't even edit 4k there is no point in shooting in 4k until they upgrade their workstation. Shoot in 1080 until they upgrade seems like the most logical solution.
 
Yes I am aware but if the hardware the OP has can't even edit 4k there is no point in shooting in 4k until they upgrade their workstation. Shoot in 1080 until they upgrade seems like the most logical solution.

I disagree. 4K will be the standard pretty soon, and if you plan on building a stock archive of your shots for later use it would be foolish not to have them in the highest resolution possible. Just my opinion.
 

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