4K video editing machine

Author
Discussion

Crippo

Original Poster:

1,249 posts

227 months

Tuesday 14th May
quotequote all
I currently use a Microsoft Surface 7 with i7 1065 processor and 16Gb to edit my videos. It’s a brilliant machine for work but it gets very hot when rendering and it takes ages.
Now I’m shooting 10bit and want to do some colour grading the machine has slowed to such a crawl it’s basically unusable. However I really don’t want to spend much money. I also want something small as the office I use is tiny and rather full. I have a nice space for a Mac Mini. I really want a Mac Studio but do t want to pay £1400 for a second hand one. I’ve looked a Geekom and other mini pcs but concerned that they have cut a lot of corners and the spec isn’t as good as advertised and also worried about thermal throttling.
I’ve done loads of reading but just going around in circles….I know the answer is spend more money and get a larger PC but I really don’t want to.
Anyone got a good experience of doing 4K editing with one of these?

Mr Pointy

11,844 posts

166 months

Tuesday 14th May
quotequote all
Might this be of interest (the cost is £999)?
https://www.costco.co.uk/Computers/Desktops-PCs-iM...

Turtle Shed

1,762 posts

33 months

Tuesday 14th May
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Is there not an option to work with low-res proxies? Doesn't speed up the final render of course.

thebraketester

14,709 posts

145 months

Tuesday 14th May
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Mac Mini M2 Pro?

Crippo

Original Poster:

1,249 posts

227 months

Tuesday 14th May
quotequote all
One of my customers who is a very good photographer was telling me he does 4K video editing on his iPad Pro with m3 chip….such conflicting info about.

ATG

21,362 posts

279 months

Tuesday 14th May
quotequote all
I know nothing about the software options for this sort of thing in practice, but I'd have thought they'd be trying to offload this sort of computational burden onto the GPU given GPUs are designed to parallelise this sort of task using custom silicon. I'd have thought you'd want a machine with a fair bit of RAM, good I/O bandwidth, a beefy GPU, a fairly ordinary CPU. That doesn't sound much like a tablet, surface or a standard mini computer, as none of those seem likely to have a beefy GPU. If the software in practice doesn't try to exploit the GPU, then forget everything I've said.

Bob_The_Builder

3,012 posts

200 months

Tuesday 14th May
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Crippo said:
One of my customers who is a very good photographer was telling me he does 4K video editing on his iPad Pro with m3 chip….such conflicting info about.
I don't mean to be an arse, but 4k is not all the same.

Are we talking 4k 4:2:0/4:2:2 8bit, or 4k 12bit raw as it makes a huge difference.

Also when you say editing, are you just conforming or adding effects etc?

BlueMR2

8,732 posts

209 months

Tuesday 14th May
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Last week the M1 MAX 32gb studio was £300 off at costco so £1299 for a new one with 2 year warranty.

mikef

5,247 posts

258 months

Tuesday 14th May
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thebraketester said:
Mac Mini M2 Pro?
That’s what I use. Factor in Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premier if you don’t already have a Mac NLE

Crippo

Original Poster:

1,249 posts

227 months

Wednesday 15th May
quotequote all
One of my customers who is a very good photographer was telling me he does 4K video editing on his iPad Pro with m3 chip….such conflicting info about.

Crippo

Original Poster:

1,249 posts

227 months

Wednesday 15th May
quotequote all
Bob_The_Builder said:
Crippo said:
One of my customers who is a very good photographer was telling me he does 4K video editing on his iPad Pro with m3 chip….such conflicting info about.
I don't mean to be an arse, but 4k is not all the same.

Are we talking 4k 4:2:0/4:2:2 8bit, or 4k 12bit raw as it makes a huge difference.

Also when you say editing, are you just conforming or adding effects etc?
I’m just looking at making Mountain Bike movies using a drone and Action Camera. I’m shooting in 10bit D-log. I’m not really looking to do anything too clever.

Derek Smith

46,497 posts

255 months

Wednesday 15th May
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I have some amateur experience in video editing over the last 25+ years. And a little doing it as a pro, but that was years ago.

Software varies in demands it places on the CPU and the GPU. Certain software allows you to choose which is used the most. I've used a number of software offerings, but most recently Power Director up until 2020, and Resolve Free for a couple of years and then Resolve Studio since 2020. The most noticeable change in efficiency was the increase in RAM to 64gb. Rendering, both with PD and Studio, has speeded up, with temperatures being kept at a reasonable level. Following advice from various PHers, I reseated my CPU - much improved - and I clean the muck out of my desktop once a year.

Since the change to RAM, I've only had one blue screen.

I edit my videos in a way that reduces the demands on my computer following advice on YT and FB pages.

Magnum 475

3,650 posts

139 months

Wednesday 15th May
quotequote all
Crippo said:
One of my customers who is a very good photographer was telling me he does 4K video editing on his iPad Pro with m3 chip….such conflicting info about.
The M3 is entirely capable of this type of work, even in an iPad. The higher end M3 Pro chips are another level entirely. I use an M1 Pro MBP for many tasks, including 4k editing. It never gets warm, never runs the fans, no hang-ups or slow-downs - just gets on with the job.

Money no object, I'd be using either a high end MBP or Mac Studio, with an Apple Studio display or two for this purpose, especially if it was a key part of my day job.