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Photo and Video Editing hardware requirements
1965 11 2017-4-22
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NoSale
lvl.4
Flight distance : 460958 ft
United States
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I'm interested in editing photos and videos from my Mavic, but need to upgrade my current hardware.  Its simply too out of date and doesn't have the horsepower to render.  I'm not looking to build a top end machine, but rather want to find something that will handle light to moderate editing, and still render in reasonable length of time.

I am likely going to exclude desktop machines and will focus on laptops for their portability, but am finding a vast majority of mid priced laptops are only utilizing dual core i7 processors.

I understand the more cores, the faster and better for rendering video and photo edits, but for someone looking to do color grading and some basic editing for publishing on YouTube, as opposed to editing full blown 4k movies, is a dual core sufficient, or inadvisable?  Is it best to focus on quad core processors, or are some of the current dual core (U type, ie i7-7500U vs.HQ type i7-7700HQ) sufficient to run some of the more mainstream video and photo editing applications?

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.......
2017-4-22
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dronist
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My system has the following and works really good:

MSI - GT83VR-TitanSLI-212
       
Processor
7th Generation Intel Core i7-7920HQ
       
Graphics
Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB
       
Display
18.4" FHD (1920x1080) IPS-Level Matte
       
Memory
64GB DDR4 2400MHz
       
Hard Drive
(512GB x 2) M.2 NVMe + 1TB SATA Drive
       
Optical Drive
Blu-ray Burner
2017-4-22
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NoSale
lvl.4
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dronist Posted at 2017-4-22 18:50
My system has the following and works really good:

MSI - GT83VR-TitanSLI-212

That's a pretty top end system, with a quad core and leading edge dedicated graphics processor.  

I guess my question is if I'm not doing anything other than basic editing and color grading, will I regret a dual core?

Thanks for sharing your specs.......
2017-4-22
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dronist
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NoSale Posted at 2017-4-22 19:45
That's a pretty top end system, with a quad core and leading edge dedicated graphics processor.  

I guess my question is if I'm not doing anything other than basic editing and color grading, will I regret a dual core?

MHO, If you want to keep it for a few years you rather have the latest  processor because any new programs down the road would require more power and faster processor.

I use high end because I open several programs simultaneously while am working. I have been using www.pro-star.com for all my employees hardware. You can configure a system for as low or as high as you want it and they are pretty good.
2017-4-22
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BluePowerMF
Second Officer
Flight distance : 3576476 ft
Australia
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Just ditched my 2011 MBP because it was struggling with 1080p and wouldn't edit 4k.
Got myself a new MBP 2.9ghz i7, 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3, Radeon Pro 460 4096 MB, and 500gb SSD (will use a good quality external SSD for extra storage)
Running final cut pro, haven't tried editing anything yet, my Mavic is still coming back from the repair shop. Definitely seems powerful enough to do what I need it to do though.
2017-4-22
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NoSale
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dronist Posted at 2017-4-22 20:21
MHO, If you want to keep it for a few years you rather have the latest  processor because any new programs down the road would require more power and faster processor.

I use high end because I open several programs simultaneously while am working. I have been using www.pro-star.com for all my employees hardware. You can configure a system for as low or as high as you want it and they are pretty good.


I've considered these reasons as well.  Obviously, the more leading edge you utilize today, the greater you can take advantage of upgraded technologies down the road.
But....you pay a premium for leading edge.
And I'm trying to determine if I need leading edge technology today for the light editing, color grading, etc as an educated beginner.  That's why I'm primarily interested in determining if a dual core will reasonably handle less intensive video and photo editing efforts.
Most of the laptops I am considering are quad core, minimum of 256gb (512gb) PCIe M.2 SSD and preferably dedicated nVidia GPU in the 1xxx range (instead of 9xx).  However, I'm finding a mixture of other features that may have some application for an every day laptop; tilt/convertible, touchscreen, thunderbolt/USB-C ports.  And to get one, you often have to give up others.  For example, I might find a lightweight 6th or 7th gen quad core, but the GPU is of the 9xx flavor.  Or the laptop may have all of the nice features I want, but only a dual core processor.

Certainly if I double my budget and get a portable workstation, it will have most of the current leading edge technology, weigh twice as much, cost twice as much, and are designed with the professional video editor/gamer in mind.  I'm not that market.  Instead, I am looking for a hybrid video editing/every day use rig, if possible.  So I'm looking to others to help me determine if giving up some leading edge features is a compromise not worth taking for entry level video/photo editing.  

I appreciate the input provided and hope to hear from others on the usefulness of their current hardware......
2017-4-23
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dronist
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NoSale Posted at 2017-4-23 06:51
I've considered these reasons as well.  Obviously, the more leading edge you utilize today, the greater you can take advantage of upgraded technologies down the road.
But....you pay a premium for leading edge.
And I'm trying to determine if I need leading edge technology today for the light editing, color grading, etc as an educated beginner.  That's why I'm primarily interested in determining if a dual core will reasonably handle less intensive video and photo editing efforts.

Sorry, I won't be able to help you with this because all of my systems are high end and I don't want to steer you the wrong way.

Good luck and let us know!
2017-4-23
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BirdieMavic
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Germany
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I'm "editing" on a mid 2014 MacBook Air with i5 and it handles it quite good.. Even 4K files from the mavic. Rendering can take up to 1h for under 10 min video, but I'm doing it just for fun and not for buisness. Also using iMovies which can do basics. For me the biggest limitation is that this thing has only 4GB Ram so there has to be an update at some time. Fotos are not an issue at all. If you're not editing every day and have multiple 4k in parallel on your timeline you don't need high end. Just have one or two coffees during rendering
2017-4-23
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NoSale
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BirdieMavic Posted at 2017-4-23 20:34
I'm "editing" on a mid 2014 MacBook Air with i5 and it handles it quite good.. Even 4K files from the mavic. Rendering can take up to 1h for under 10 min video, but I'm doing it just for fun and not for buisness. Also using iMovies which can do basics. For me the biggest limitation is that this thing has only 4GB Ram so there has to be an update at some time. Fotos are not an issue at all. If you're not editing every day and have multiple 4k in parallel on your timeline you don't need high end. Just have one or two coffees during rendering

Thanks very much for the response and detailed information.  This helps a lot.
I understand that Final Cut Pro was optimized (exclusively) for Mac and performs some of its critical function during edits on the fly.

Most of my editing will be from a hobby perspective.  While it would be nice to acquire a top end video editing rig, the reality is that I will likely get a high end every day laptop that is capable of editing.  And I suspect I'll start focusing more on photo editing.

Again, many thanks........
2017-4-26
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SkySailorMan
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Flight distance : 2170768 ft
United States
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I'm using a 13-in Mid-2012 MBP with i5 and Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB. I swapped the original 500GB HDD with a 1TB Hybrid drive (quite an improvement in booting and loading), and 8GB DDR3. Using FCPX for all post processing.

It performs "ok" for 2K, and fine for 1080P, but I would prefer something more robust. When doing 2K, I'll convert to optimized media. However, processing 4K is a bit too much for this one - even though I convert the 4K media to proxy, it still takes too long.
2017-4-26
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laceyboy
lvl.4
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United States
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Since most video editing software with 4K capability utilize discrete graphics card, not too much to CPU, so you can go with quad core i5 or i7 if you want more power. 8GB RAM or higher, with Class 1 graphics cards would do 4K pretty good for you. Check out notebookcheck.net to see the list cards in Class 1. They have both desktop and laptop versions. One more thing to mention is SSD for fast files accessing.
2017-4-26
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Prism Video
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First decisions to be made are (1) Budget and (2) Mac or Windows....Just like buying a car.  They all have wheels and an engine. You could edit proxy files and render when you go to bed.   Making your mind up on these two criteria will be a good starting point.  Good Luck!
2017-4-26
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