Hello

I am looking to upgrade my current iMac which has become noticably slow with the editing of 4K video from the phantom 3.

Anybody using the iMac retina display for video editing?

Can you please post your imac specifications and how well it functions when editing 4K video.

Thanks!

Did you see the new iMac 5K specs (especially the graphic cards) ? A shame for an iMac.
I have no problems at all with my late 2013 iMac 27, fusion drive 3TB and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M.

I have the iMac i7 5K and it works absolutely great using FCPX. The best bit about the 5K is the still images from the P3 and many DSLRs are displayed close to 1:1 scale so no zooming in and out.

The 5K is a great piece of kit but expensive, not quite sure what Ulysses is referring to but my concerns about the AMD video card has so far been unwarranted, it works a treat.

steven.sdharris Posted at 2015-5-21 03:38
I have the iMac i7 5K and it works absolutely great using FCPX. The best bit about the 5K is the sti ...

I have one, the 5k.  It handles it just fine.  Lots of SSD space, fast memory, and a big gorgeous display.

I just got the 5K and it works like a champ. I got 16K RAM in it.
The problem is that almost no one else can see the 4K anyway, so I am back to using 1080 for now.....too much trouble to distribute the 4K when few can see it in it's glory.

The iMac line has been changed this week ! Go and check the new graphic card specs...

Ulysse Posted at 2015-5-21 04:35
The iMac line has been changed this week ! Go and check the new graphic card specs...

Are you saying this one was changed?
http://www.apple.com/imac-with-retina/specs/

1) I don't see the specs with iMac 5K changed?  

2) what specs do you need or worth while to get with 5K iMac..
16 gig memory?  
1 TB SSD?
R9 M295X 4GB video card?  

I have played around with Final Cut to be able to use 4k, but it's just not a good bit of software,  iMovie is simplistic but works well and as stated on here 1080 is what most people can view, and the upload times for 4k are not great for most sites.

I use a standard ret and the speeds are great, even compaired to a normal mac with SSDs

I have one spec below this is flying like  phantom iMovie better to handle  than Final Cut crystal clear picture.Cost a lot but will use for years not for a day.
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
4 GHz Intel Core i7
32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB

I have the Retina 5K iMac with the following specs:
4GHz Intel Core i7
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon R9 M295X - 4GB
3 TB Fusion Drive

I handles the 4K footage just fine. It stutters a little bit (with playback) when I import a lot of clips onto the timeline (Premiere Pro CS6) - This may be due to the 8GB of RAM being the bottle neck of my system.
I purchased my iMac like this - intending to upgrade the RAM after (because Apple charges to much for RAM) but I never got around to it, and I don't feel like spending the money right now. Especially since it handles what I throw at it right now, I guess it would just be a little smoother if it had more RAM.

On a slightly unrelated topic:  Does anyone edit with Premiere Pro - and know how to export in 4K?  I've tried several times with the first video I made with my P3P and it either Stretched/smooshed the aspect ratio. So I finally gave up, and exported in 1080.  Which is kind of a waste of the 4K footage....

I edit 4K on a late model 15" Macbook Pro Retina (GPU 2GB 750M, i7 quad CPU, 16GB, SSD) in Final Cut Pro X. It works well, but obviously it is a lot heavier to work with 4K - 4x the pixels of 1080P, but it is absolutely doable.
In my opinion there is a huge advantage in shooting in 4K, even if your output will be 1080P. It is a lot sharper and you will have more room to correct the dreaded unlevel horizon (level+zoom in a bit) and even zoom in and reposition your shots a bit without a visible quality loss.

An important advice is to not add your effects and color corrections, lens corrections etc. untill you've done your cut. It gets substantially heavier if it has to deal with a bunch of effects every time you tweak something.

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I have the following iMac which I hope will be ok for 4K editing (I just need a fast scratch disk I think)

Model Name:        iMac late 2013
Processor Name:        Intel Core i7 3.5 GHz
Memory:        24 GB
Graphics        NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB
512GB SSD

Anyone with a similar iMac build offer any feedback?

You benefit dramatically recording in 4k and playing it on a 1080p display..  Vs recording in 1080p and playing it on a 1080p display

Are you importing your footage at the full 4K resolution, or are you offline editing?  Offline editing involves importing your initial raw footage at a much lower resolution, as to save drive space as well as make less work for the processor and RAM.  Once you’ve got Everything edited at low resolution, then you take all the video offline, and THEN reimport only the completed timeline at the full 4K resolution.  

fireburst Posted at 2015-5-25 07:22
I have the following iMac which I hope will be ok for 4K editing (I just need a fast scratch disk I think)

Model Name:        iMac late 2013

What software are you using?  Having the i7 and as much ram as you have should make editing pretty seamless.  Ive found that most people who edit 4K are unfamiliar with editing offline, and therefor they tend to import all of their 4K video at full resolution, and that’s most of the problem.  If you aren’t aware of how to edit offline, google it, or google the difference between online and offline editing, and you’ll see that your setup should handle it just fine.