Is it crazy to edit 4k video on a lap top

[Vince Wilcox]

It’s not as black and white as yes or no, some desktops will be slower than your laptop but cost wise a desktop equivalent would typically be faster, have more storage, etc.

With that said if the company doesn’t value time saved with a faster machine than you can help your workflow out by transcoding footage to formats like ProRes that are more forgiving to the editing process. “Proxy” files are typically some sort of intermediate codec like ProRes combined with a reduction in resolution / bitrate. This makes it easier for the computer to edit.

Most software will be able to use the original files or the original high quality transcoded files for export. Try to save these tasks for overnight or lunch when you don’t use the computer for anything else. Restart often, close other apps, and document your export times to justify a new computer ; )

[Michael Zombro]

Thanks Vince. I have begun using the proxy files for editing.

[Bill Celnick]

My experience with IT Departments is that if they feel a computer is fast enough for MS Office, it’s fast enough for editing video…for the most part they’re of a different mindset and not focused on video work.

[Vince Wilcox]

Also, may be worth downloading something like Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, not sure what the Windows/PC equivalent is but an old forum mentioned it being part of a larger Blackmagic software package. This may help you determine which disk is faster if you have multiple drives, and/or help you bring receipts to the IT department.

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Michael,

Adding my 5 cents to all of the other great advice that you’ve already got.

When editing 4K on my HP Laptop (ZBook Pro, i9, 64GB Ram, NVidia Quatro RTX 3000, 1 x 500GB C SSD for boot & 1 x 2TB SSD for media). It works fine without going to proxy.

However, I run my Adobe project of the main drive, and all media of the secondary drive, or external SSD (tend to favour Samsung T7 @ up to 1050Mbps, USB-3 on a USB-C/Thunderbolt connector).

If it is a large scale project, I would recommend external raid or similar.

I still use the old adage of keeping at least 25% of free space on my drives for faster read/write.

On very large projects, even in HD, I save a new project version, and delete old time-lines from that just to keep the file-size down on the project itself.

You might also find it helpful to delete all of your rendered files, just to clear out the system.
WARNING: If in proxy editing mode, be careful that you do NOT delete the proxies.

Hope that this helps – Good Luck

Atb
Mads

[Michael Zombro]

Thanks Everyone. Mads, I have been keeping everything on the internal hard drive. Using the external one they gave me was even worse. We have talked about getting an external raid…. hopefully that happens. Thanks for your other advice. I will give it a try.