What computer is everyone using to edit 4K video?

[tcope]

Lots of information on this subject (in this thread and prior threads). But I'll add my 2 cents. I was editing 4k video with an older laptop with an i5 and 6GB of RAM. It choked on 4k content. I bought a tower with a 6th gen i5-6400 and 12GB RAM. It has an intergraded lower end video GPU. It does just fine with 4k content. But something to also consider... I'm only using a 1080 monitor. This can make a big difference. If I were to edit on a 4k monitor I'm sure my system would slow down. I'm in the process of installing an exteral lower end video card but with 4GB of RAM. This should do just fine with a 4k monitor.

So editing 4k content on a 4k monitor is different than edting 4k content on a 4k monitor.

 

[mnewxcv]

So editing 4k content on a 4k monitor is different than edting 4k content on a 4k monitor.

not necessarily.

In Adobe premiere, for instance, in the preview window, you can select full, 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8 in regards to preview resolution. Whether you are on a 4k screen or a 1080p screen, if you select full, it will render 4k for the preview, regardless of if your monitor can display it pixel for pixel.

 

[tcope]

not necessarily.

In Adobe premiere, for instance, in the preview window, you can select full, 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8 in regards to preview resolution. Whether you are on a 4k screen or a 1080p screen, if you select full, it will render 4k for the preview, regardless of if your monitor can display it pixel for pixel.

If you have your OS set to push 4k, it's going to push 4k data to your monitor. It should not matter what resolution you have a preview window set to. To put this another way, I can use a 4k monitor and have Youtube set to display a video on 1080. The monitor is still going to display 4k but only the video from YT will be shown in 1080 resolution (i.e 1920x1080). But again, the computer (and video card is still pushing 4k data).

 

[GadgetGuy]

not necessarily.

In Adobe premiere, for instance, in the preview window, you can select full, 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8 in regards to preview resolution. Whether you are on a 4k screen or a 1080p screen, if you select full, it will render 4k for the preview, regardless of if your monitor can display it pixel for pixel.

Agreed. Lowering the preview resolution setting is the key to editing 4K video on a slower computer. It's similar to having the 720p FPV display through Lightbridge for composition and framing, while having the full 4K video being recorded to the onboard Micro SD card. Once your editing is complete at the lower preview resolution, the actual rendering of the final video uses the full 4K video files, but never needs to display them in the process. It's essentially a proxy file edit on a lower resolution preview of the original 4K file.

 

[Tom Connell]

i7 4770k
16gb Corsair Dominator RAM
500GB SSD drive
Nvidia 780ti

It churns outs 4k like a dream

- Adam

Adam that's the cleanest machine I have ever seen on the inside. Please tell me more about it.

 

[Harris Crayton]

My main machine has i7@5ghz,32gb DDR3, 8gb RAMDisk, Dual SSD RaidO, Dual 1TB HDD's, 7950.

I run Sony Vegas 14 and 4k encodes very efficiently.

 

[Tom Connell]

Well, I quickly decided that the old HP, even with 32g's of Ram wasn't going to cut it anymore. So, searching for deals on the web, I came across a place that had several 'open box' Dell, XPS-8900's with the i7 chip, a 1tb hard drive and Win 10 64bit Home and 16g's of DDR4 RAM. I opted for one at 3.4, and it came with a GT-745 card. That with shipping for $645.
Pretty good deal in my estimation with lots of room to make it better.

Got it last week and it's brand new. Still with all the peel off plastic on the front, well packed in form fitting foam and in a Dell box, just not that particular Dell and no CD. Everything I needed was on Dell's side and I got that in a few minutes so that's no problem.

Since that time, I have gotten in and installed a Samsung 500gb SSD and migrated the system over from the HD into the SSD as a system drive. Very fast as opposed to the startup with the HP. I added in another 250 EVO SSD as a working drive for editing and I'll import all the files from the P3Pro to that drive for the edit. Finished renderings will go off to another drive so keep it clean. All the 'stuff' off the HP went onto the Hard Drive and 2 USB Passport drive of about 1gb each as backups. Not the fastest backups, but Second Copy will do all that automatically at night when I'm sleeping

I put Photoshop CS2 and related things and also Premiere Elements 14 and related music files over on the system SSD as there was loads of space left. Where as a couple of weeks ago on the HP I rendered a 15 minute movie in 4k and it took about 5.xx hours, the first one I did on this new machine of about the same edit for a test, took less than an hour. I have thoughts of getting in another 250gb SSD as a Scratch Drive for both Photoshop and Elements as soon as New Egg has a Christmas or New Years sale on again. I got all the RAM and the SSD's and holders from them on Black Friday. You can't have enough fuel, air speed or altitude... or Storage Space!

I like it, and for the money I saved so far, it won't break the bank to move up to a better Video card for Christmas. Now to go back to 2 monitors like I had for years in working with Photoshop for about 3/4 hours a day.

And at almost 79 I thought I'd retired. But this is just too much fun.... flying and photography, both of which I have done for well over half my life already.

Later...

 

[Flyin Fun]

I use windows 10 pinnacle studio 20 for editing 4K and yes it's makes a huge difference dropping the preview setting.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

 

[hedonist222]

Whats the point of dropping preview resolution?
I mean other than faster preview.
Any downsides?

 

[Adamation]

Whats the point of dropping preview resolution?
I mean other than faster preview.
Any downsides?

There is no other reason, I usually drop it when editing on my surface pro as it doesn't have a dedicated GPU. The only downside is not being able to accurately view any edits made.

It's ideal for when composing a project such as dropping/dragging/cutting files etc as it allows for a faster workflow.

 

[Phantomix]

I'm using a custom built computer with a gtx 1080, 32gb of ddr3 and an i7

 

[macoman]

I edit 2K videos in a 2010 MacPro with 16GB of RAM and 2GB graphics video. Works without any lag. I am pretty sure it can handle 4K but I only have a phantom 3 standard.

 

[GadgetGuy]

Proxies are the key to editing on any machine that is having difficulty with 4K 60 from the P4P.

 

[monica66]

In order to get a fluent workflow, I usually downscale 4K to 1080p for editing.

 

[GadgetGuy]

In order to get a fluent workflow, I usually downscale 4K to 1080p for editing.

Why not use proxies instead, and preserve your original 4K quality?

 

[ravedog]

If you're shooting at 4K why on earth would you transcode it down to 1080p? Use proxies As gadgetguy mentioned. The final video will then render out the footage at 4K when you finalize things.

 

[Calsun]

Check the specs from the software company. Even high end software like DaVinci's Resolve the recommended RAM is 8GB. The emphasis is on the CPU and GPU and the VRAM on the GPU board. Having the operating system, especially if it is Windows, and the application running on a SSD can help but I would never trust a SSD with my data. Dual internal hard drives set up as RAID1 give me automatic redundancy for my working data and output goes to a fourth drive which is also a hard disk and not an SSD.

A powerful GPU is where you will get the most gain for the money spent. A dual Xeon machine will also boost performance as with a single CPU a lot of its performance is tied up with decompressing the video and this is with H.264. With H.265 the workload on the processor is literally 10x as great which is why it is not going to be adopted for quite a while despite its ability to compress video a great deal more than H.264.

The Xeon processors have double the L3 cache of the i7which is why they are much faster with high demand applications like video processing of 4K files. With 4k the computer is having to decompress 4x as much data as compared to HD video.

For optimum performance a motherboard that accommodates multiple graphics cards enable the use of one slot for the UI card and the other for the video image processing GPU.

Off the shelf computers that work well include the HP Z840 workstation and the Lenovo P700 workstations. A bonus of sorts is that these also include hardware to support a high performance internal RAID setup at no extra cost for a RAID card. What I like very much is that these come with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and and Windows 10 pre-installed. I can set the workstation up to run Windows 7 and if in the future I have nothing to do with my time I can migrate to Windows 10.

 

[ViperJ07]

Very good info here Recommended System: Recommended Systems for Adobe Premiere Pro

My system was geared toward gaming 1st, then video editing (hence the i7 quad core instead of six, eight or ten core CPU)
i7 - 4790K
1080 Ti
20GB RAM

 

[beads555]

My current laptop is a Asus windows 7 which has an older I7 cpu running a 2 ghz. I know the issue is with the type of memory and video card. What type of OS is best to edit 4K video? I am looking for a laptop but not sure which OS Apple or Microsoft? And which model laptop?

Buy a $4600 Mac and you'll have no issues

 

[beads555]

My current laptop is a Asus windows 7 which has an older I7 cpu running a 2 ghz. I know the issue is with the type of memory and video card. What type of OS is best to edit 4K video? I am looking for a laptop but not sure which OS Apple or Microsoft? And which model laptop?

If you know how to proxy edit, your PC will be fine