Hey Guys,

as I'm going on travels and just having a Macbook Air (2011) with me I'm having trouble editing 4k material. (Actually, even playback 4k material is a pain on that device)

So I'm wondering what's the best option for my limited hardware. Should I still record 4k material (Which I could use once home and back at my powerful desktop) but compress it down to 1080p material for the video's that I'm going to create during travels? If so, what's the easiest and fastest way to compress the material coming from the Mavic SD down to 1080p.

What would be your recommendation?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Dan

Hello Dan,
Same problem here. I have a late 2010 iMac and it's imposible to work with 4K videos. I use QuickTime to downgrade them. Open the 4K video with QT and then save it or export it as, choose 1080p and save it. Hope this help!

Hey MAHD,

thanks for your feedback, that already sounds promising to me. I think what I'm going to do is, recording 2.7k videos (From what I read the difference between 4k and 2.7k is just minor) which allows me to cache 1080p material on my IPhone at the same time. I copy this 1080p material then from my IPhone to my Mac for pre-processing. Best trade off between quality and effort for my travels. Back home I still have the UHD 2.7k material that I could. Maybe that's a suitable option for you as well.

Or you can record in 4k, and make conversion with Handbreak (free on Mac) in 1080. Keep record in 4k for futur use

You can compress 4K video to 1080p for smooth editing with iMovie with a video converterCompress 4K Video with iMovie

Shooting 4K and scaling down to 1080 looks better because each final 1080p pixel is actually the average of 4 original 4K pixels. You can shoot 4K and then downscale Mavic Pro 4K to 1080p for easier editing.

christing Posted at 2017-9-25 00:35
Shooting 4K and scaling down to 1080 looks better because each final 1080p pixel is actually the average of 4 original 4K pixels. You can shoot 4K and then downscale Mavic Pro 4K to 1080p for easier editing.

Absolutely right, I use Windows 10 pro with a I7 4 core 1080 8 thread I Gig SSD gaming computer with 4K monitor it processes 4K just fine but guess what, I still compress my 4K videos to 1080p for editing, plus it allows you to zoom & crop your videos with no pixel loss and export to 1080p for uploading and the videos are much tighter.

There are many factors that will impact the final video file size, such as video codec, container, resolution, bit rate, frame rate. For video size, codec and bit rate of the video are the most crucial factors or reference indexes. In broad terms, the video size is determined by bit rate. Under the same definition, the higher bit rate the video possesses, the bigger the video size is. And remember, the resolution has no influence on video size if we don’t change bit rates.

Resolution affects the size of the video greatly, but the quality may not be greatly affected. Following are the commonly-used resolutions. Just compress Mavic Pro 4K video to 1080p (1920x1080) will helps to reduce the file size but not effect your final file size quality.

Maybe consider getting Final Cut Pro X, capture in 4k and then when you import your media, choose to create a proxy. This will create a lower resolution video for editing purposes. You can then edit your footage and output again at 4k.

Malakai_UK Posted at 2018-1-22 02:01
Maybe consider getting Final Cut Pro X, capture in 4k and then when you import your media, choose to create a proxy. This will create a lower resolution video for editing purposes. You can then edit your footage and output again at 4k.

That sounds ideal - do you use FCPX?

A CW Posted at 2018-1-22 03:08
That sounds ideal - do you use FCPX?

Yeah, I use both FCPX and premiere pro. I have to admit I use FCPX more now than I used to. Ingestion and output is easy, as well as editing. Oh and I love the background rendering!!

Malakai_UK Posted at 2018-1-22 03:24
Yeah, I use both FCPX and premiere pro. I have to admit I use FCPX more now than I used to. Ingestion and output is easy, as well as editing.

Thanks for the reply - what computer do you use - MacBook Pro or iMac? I don't want to drop £299 on editing software if my MacBook can't handle it. Got an MB Air

A CW Posted at 2018-1-22 03:26
Thanks for the reply - what computer do you use - MacBook Pro or iMac? I don't want to drop £299 on editing software if my MacBook can't handle it. Got an MB Air

I use a macbook pro retina late 2014, i7, 16gb.

Malakai_UK Posted at 2018-1-22 03:30
I use a macbook pro retina late 2014, i7, 16gb.

OK - I'll check it out as looks like it will work for me then. Thanks.

A CW Posted at 2018-1-22 03:26
Thanks for the reply - what computer do you use - MacBook Pro or iMac? I don't want to drop £299 on editing software if my MacBook can't handle it. Got an MB Air

Just download it off the internet mate, i just did in 10 minutes lol

I don't seem to have any trouble editing 4k with I movie and I'm running a 2012 MacBook pro