Since owning my Mavic, I've come to the harsh reality that to edit video, my current computer is too slow. Found this site that offers sound advice on computer builds for editing video. It's a good, site to bookmark for later too, because they update the site as technology changes.http://www.logicalincrements.com/articles/videoediting

I have an old 2011 Macbook Pro and it would not play/edit 4k.
I installed a 500GB SSD and 16GB of RAM, it works now but just barely.

DJI-Ken Posted at 2017-2-8 09:53
I have an old 2011 Macbook Pro and it would not play/edit 4k.
I installed a 500GB SSD and 16GB of RAM, it works now but just barely.

THIS. I have a 2013 MBP (256 SSD and 8GB Ram) and I have a hard time doing anything in 4K. Davinci Resolve won't even run. With 2.7K footage, I can run FCP and just barely make it by.

2 parts in this one, nice pointers...

What You need for 4K editing without getting nuts watching the snail of the prerender and render-process:

preferably a 6-core i7 Skylake, better 8-core i7 Skylake at 3 GHz (rendering in most editing softwares needs CPU-power)
a SSD
a Nvidia 1070 or 1080

I may be on my own here, but for me as someone that doesn't edit or produce movies for a living, the cost-benefit analysis of spending an additional $1K to edit videos natively without a proxy vs. editing them with a proxy just isn't there to me.  My $1,200 laptop is as much as I'm willing to fork out.  It works great.

In fact, I often find it easier just to edit in 1080 right now, as I have no great use case for editing tons of stuff in 4K.  I guess I'm not that user.  Yet.

By the time I need it I'm guessing the hardware will have more than caught up.

I can't remember who, but someone here said they edited most stuff on their iPad Pro with (maybe) Pinnacle?  I thought that was genius.  I've been editing some clips on my business flights using iMovie and my iPhone.  It's basic, but it's so quick and intuitive, and it gets the job done as I learn the craft.

Honestly, no amount of advanced editing skills IMO can have the same positive effect as me practicing better shot composition and storytelling right now.  I still have way too much to learn on the front end.

To op.. That's a good link. The guy knows his stuff. The video with the $2500 dollar rig video above is trippin.

I built two rigs recently because I needed to upgrade anyway. Went with a 40" 4k native curved display, i7 6700@4.5ghz using noctua D15, 16gb ddr4 on asus z170e and rx480 8gb, ssd and that does 4k realtime. You have to put it in half realtime playback when mixing 4 video tracks but the 4 cores do not max otherwise.

My i7 6800 on asrock x99 taichi rips 4k ass like bill clinton on epstiens island. It's really overkill. I like the guy in the first link of yours, his recommended hardware is from someone who actually does the work and doesn't pretend to know what the minimum specs needed are (you know the guy- buys the most expensive everything, nvidia heads usually)

I use alienware destop to edit 5.2k PRORES and raw. It have i7-7700k, two GTX1080 with 64GB RAM. It works perfectly!

WYHSniper1007 Posted at 2017-2-8 12:01
I use alienware destop to edit 5.2k PRORES and raw. It have i7-7700k, two GTX1080 with 64GB RAM. It works perfectly!

I've been thinking about the Aurora system with the GTX 1080 in it.  In your opinion is a I7-6800 or higher needed or can the 4 core 7700 handle things in 4K well?  Right now the only way to get the 6800 or higher CPU in Alienware is to choose the monster sized Area 51 (over 60 pounds worth!).  I prefer the mid tower size of the Aurora, but was worried about the 4 cores on the 7700 CPU.

Petroboy Posted at 2017-2-8 13:29
I've been thinking about the Aurora system with the GTX 1080 in it.  In your opinion is a I7-6800 or higher needed or can the 4 core 7700 handle things in 4K well?  Right now the only way to get the 6800 or higher CPU in Alienware is to choose the monster sized Area 51 (over 60 pounds worth!).  I prefer the mid tower size of the Aurora, but was worried about the 4 cores on the 7700 CPU.

Build it yourself. My 4 core i6700 rig cost me about ~$1400 with the monitor. I used a lot of mail in rebates and deals during black friday. That link the op posted is good imo. The 6800 is overkill for 4k, but if you have the money.

Get a 256gb ssd and use that as the windows install/scratch disk for premiere too. Install all apps on the gpt partitioned hd (3tb going for a good price, around 70-80 on ebay, 7200 rpm for servers)

Should add, to rookie builders, building is only challenging the first time you do it. There's a whole section on reddit dedicated to helping new installers. Pre built can't touch self built rigs because you can use things like coolabs liquid pro on the cpu and gpu. You know that's not going to fail. I would avoid water on your first build, because things can leak and go wrong if you don't know what you're doing- or even just a bad loop. Noctua makes the D15 now, that fits the bill for overclocking on air. The guy in the 2500 dollar video has a fan blowing in and one blowing out right on top- talk about canceling xd. Now days too overclocking is so easy. The bus is disconnected from bclk so it's very easy to overclock these chips. I still wouldn't mess with auto overclocking. It always ends up higher than you actually need.)

thehippoz Posted at 2017-2-8 13:41
Build it yourself. My 4 core i6700 rig cost me about ~$1400 with the monitor. I used a lot of mail in rebates and deals during black friday. That link the op posted is good imo. The 6800 is overkill for 4k, but if you have the money.

Get a 256gb ssd and use that as the windows install/scratch disk for premiere too. Install all apps on the gpt partitioned hd (3tb going for a good price, around 70-80 on ebay, 7200 rpm for servers)

Yep sounds exciting if you're young and energetic, but for those of us who are old and lazy, not so much.

Back to my question though, it looks like you have 2 systems, one with the I7-6700 and one with the I7-6800?  So, in your opinion the 6800 doesn't help much over the 6700?  You say overkill.

Petroboy Posted at 2017-2-8 13:54
Yep sounds exciting if you're young and energetic, but for those of us who are old and lazy, not so much.

Back to my question though, it looks like you have 2 systems, one with the I7-6700 and one with the I7-6800?  So, in your opinion the 6800 doesn't help much over the 6700?  You say overkill.

Yeah the 7700 should be fine, also quad. I went with the 6700 because got on sale new for 275 over thanksgiving. The 6800 handles 4k realtime without any playback res reduction. So what you see is what you get in the timeline. It's pretty nice. But the 7700 or 6700 overclocked does the job.

thehippoz Posted at 2017-2-8 13:55
Yeah the 7700 should be fine, also quad. I went with the 6700 because got on sale new for 275 over thanksgiving. The 6800 handles 4k realtime without any playback res reduction. So what you see is what you get in the timeline. It's pretty nice. But the 7700 or 6700 overclocked does the job.

Appreciate the input, thanks.

Is it true that a more recent Macbook should not have any issues? With Apple writing the Final Cut Pro software they are better able to optimize the software to the Apple laptop itself so 4k editing should not be an issue. Is that too much to assume?

OhOhDrone Posted at 2017-2-8 15:08
Is it true that a more recent Macbook should not have any issues? With Apple writing the Final Cut Pro software they are better able to optimize the software to the Apple laptop itself so 4k editing should not be an issue. Is that too much to assume?

Don't touch apple. Everything is so controlled, even rolling back versions on your phone is enough to pull your hair out And when you buy, say a used macbook, it's limited to the older versions of the OS even though they are capable of running the latest. You can go in the apple store and have one of the geniuses there demo for you. Bring it in and ask them if they could setup a demo editing the 4k footage.

Make sure your wearing skinney jeans though. The beards help too!

Petroboy Posted at 2017-2-8 13:29
I've been thinking about the Aurora system with the GTX 1080 in it.  In your opinion is a I7-6800 or higher needed or can the 4 core 7700 handle things in 4K well?  Right now the only way to get the 6800 or higher CPU in Alienware is to choose the monster sized Area 51 (over 60 pounds worth!).  I prefer the mid tower size of the Aurora, but was worried about the 4 cores on the 7700 CPU.

I was trying to buy an alternate i7-6950x to install. But I don't know whether it will work

Petroboy Posted at 2017-2-8 13:29
I've been thinking about the Aurora system with the GTX 1080 in it.  In your opinion is a I7-6800 or higher needed or can the 4 core 7700 handle things in 4K well?  Right now the only way to get the 6800 or higher CPU in Alienware is to choose the monster sized Area 51 (over 60 pounds worth!).  I prefer the mid tower size of the Aurora, but was worried about the 4 cores on the 7700 CPU.

7700 can handle 4k too

thehippoz Posted at 2017-2-8 16:23
Don't touch apple. Everything is so controlled, even rolling back versions on your phone is enough to pull your hair out  And when you buy, say a used macbook, it's limited to the older versions of the OS even though they are capable of running the latest. You can go in the apple store and have one of the geniuses there demo for you. Bring it in and ask them if they could setup a demo editing the 4k footage.

Make sure your wearing skinney jeans though. The beards help too!

Yes I will for sure put on my emo jeans and see what they say. I will get the biggest most color intensive 4k video I have shot.