• Adobe Premiere Pro

  4k editing – do I really need a better computer?

  Posted by Sabrina Inderbitzi on November 18, 2017 at 1:44 pm

  Hi everybody

  I know my imac is old, but I think its still a decent machine.
  My imac is a 27″, Mid 2010, 2.93 GHz Intel Core i7. I upgraded the RAM to 12gb and put in an 1TB SSD.

  I think that with these specs it should be possible to edit 4k (XAVC from a Sony A6300) in Premiere Pro or is it definitely too slow? Or is there a bottleneck or maybe some other idea? (with proxys it works perfectly, but it needs a lot of time converting)

  Thanks in advance for ideas, thought etc.
  Sabrina

  David Payne replied 8 years, 5 months ago 7 Members · 7 Replies
• 7 Replies

• 

  Ann Bens

  November 18, 2017 at 10:55 pm

  Descent but old and too slow for 4K native.
  Proxies is the way to go.

  ———————————————–
  Adobe Certified Expert Premiere Pro CS2/CS6/CC
  Adobe Community Professional
• 

  Greg Janza

  November 19, 2017 at 3:11 am

  that old imac is decent but not for 4k editing. Upgrade to a new computer with a fast CPU, a high end GPU , plenty of RAM (32 gigs) and 4k editing will work just fine.

  I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
  – Orson Welles
• 

  Olivier Prudhomme

  November 23, 2017 at 3:18 pm

  I have a brand new 27 inch IMAC 3.4mghz 32gb of ram and 4K is very painful
  Make sure to store the footage on external drive

  Los Angeles – TV Promo Editor – FCP – AVID
• 

  Sabrina Inderbitzi

  November 24, 2017 at 12:18 pm

  Hi! Thanks a lot for your evaluation it helped a lot.

  Only one question at Olivier Prudhomme: Why storing the footage on an external drive? I wont be faster, will it?

  Thanks!
• 

  Eric Santiago

  November 24, 2017 at 8:13 pm

  [Sabrina Inderbitzi] “Only one question at Olivier Prudhomme: Why storing the footage on an external drive? I wont be faster, will it?
  “

  Yes.
  Offloading your data to an external creates less stress to your internal HD which your CPU has to deal with.
• 

  John Weaver

  November 27, 2017 at 5:56 am

  I will second the use of proxies if you aren’t already using them. I didn’t have issues until I started using 4K video with a high bitrate. Even after building a custom rig, things would slow down after adding edits, effects, and more. So I create proxies for everything now.

  You can do that in your project window by selecting the videos you’re working with, right clicking and choose “Create Proxies”. I recommend finding a resolution that is the same ratio as the video you’re using or creating a custom preset, otherwise you will get black bars around the edges. You can also go into File>Project Settings & set the ingest settings to create proxies so it will always create proxies on anything you import (at least to that project).

  Hope that helps!
• 

  David Payne

  November 29, 2017 at 10:19 am

  I tried 2 different 2015 iMacs and a top spec Mac Pro and neither could handle 4k.

  I am back on my PC which handles it more (despite costing a third of the mac pro) however when I have a lot of 4k to edit, as others have suggested, I proxy all the way to the bank.

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