Time to invest on new laptop for 4K editing

[lolonisadie]

Guys, I feel I am losing out on not being able to record 4K on my P3P and Mavic since I only have a laptop that can only handle 1080P resolution. What laptops are you guys using and specs that can handle 4K editing. I prefer to stay with the Windows platform.

Second question - How do you play the 4K video on your TV? Do you just upload to YOUTUBE and view it from there? I have a Western Digital Media player that outputs all my video from my hard drive but all in 1080 resolution only. How do you output your 4K files to the TV from your computer?

Third question - Suggestion on 4K editing software.

Any comments are appreciated.

 

[HeavensAbove]

Yoga3 Touch Screen with 4K res.

You don't need to have a 4K screen video card on laptop, just right click the file and click cast to on the pull down. If your smart TV can handle the format, it'll play it.


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[HeavensAbove]

Editing on Windows? GoPro studio is fine (and free!)


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[nickpimenta]

I would highly recommend you save your money and don't buy a new machine just to edit 4K (unless you have a very old machine right now)
I have a pretty powerful editing rig, but it still fails to handle the 4K footage, I'm using Adobe Premiere CC. My specs are Windows 10, Core i5-3470, 8GB Ram, Radeon R9 380.
I am able to playback 4K footage using a media player VLC or the built in Windows 10 one "Films & TV" works well, but as soon as I start editing in Premiere the playback is terrible, looks like 2fps or something.
What I recommend is you change your editing workflow, even pro's will be doing this when editing 4K. You basically want to tell your editing program to create much smaller versions of your files, down scaling the 4K to say 720p or something, you use the 720p files to edit, then the application switches back to the 4K files when you render out. This guy has a helpful tutorial if you're using Premiere Pro CC:

 

[ElGuapo]

Second question - How do you play the 4K video on your TV? Do you just upload to YOUTUBE and view it from there? I have a Western Digital Media player that outputs all my video from my hard drive but all in 1080 resolution only. How do you output your 4K files to the TV from your computer?
Any comments are appreciated.

The way I play 4K footage out of the Mavic or the P4Pro in our 4K TV is from a Hard drive physically attached to a USB port of a Netgear Nighthawk X6 router. For home presentation to friends and family I output the video in 4K in my iMac, btw it can handle all the way up to 5K resoultion. From the iMac I save it to a folder in the portable hard drive. The footage in the TV looks nothing but amazingly clear.

The above can easily be attained in a Windows environment, providing you have any router with a USB 3.0 port for fast flow of data and a TV capable of outputting 4K media.

Can't comment on Windows hardware for editing your footage in 4K since all I use is an iMac or a Macbook Pro.

 

[safala89]

I would highly recommend you save your money and don't buy a new machine just to edit 4K (unless you have a very old machine right now)
I have a pretty powerful editing rig, but it still fails to handle the 4K footage, I'm using Adobe Premiere CC. My specs are Windows 10, Core i5-3470, 8GB Ram, Radeon R9 380.
I am able to playback 4K footage using a media player VLC or the built in Windows 10 one "Films & TV" works well, but as soon as I start editing in Premiere the playback is terrible, looks like 2fps or something.
What I recommend is you change your editing workflow, even pro's will be doing this when editing 4K. You basically want to tell your editing program to create much smaller versions of your files, down scaling the 4K to say 720p or something, you use the 720p files to edit, then the application switches back to the 4K files when you render out. This guy has a helpful tutorial if you're using Premiere Pro CC:

Thanks for this link. I have been having the same issues with premier pro cc and thought I was going mad. [emoji1303]


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[fizzlefish]

Ask yourself if you really need a laptop. A desktop is going to FAR cheaper to build to handle 4k. You are likely able to build one for under $400.

 

[lolonisadie]

Wow thanks for all the comments about using proxy for editing 4K. I might be able to use my 4 year old desktop to edit 4K.

 

[Kymadn]

Laptops don't really have enough grunt for 4K editing. It will do the job but your patience will be tested while rendering. I have a powerful laptop and desktop but all my projects are done on the desktop.

 

[Gary]

I bought a Macbook Pro Retina quad core i7 16gb ram, refurbished from Apple about a year ago.. For me just using Quicktime or iMovie is pretty darned quick. I try not to transcode to different codecs. Checking the Activity monitor I can drive 5 4k videos with Quicktime, have Chrome, and Firefox with several tabs open, and use only 25% cpu and 6gb ram. I know it cost slightly more, but I had my last Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo for 7 years also refurbished without any problems, my granddaughter is now using it.
The one limitation is the Iris Pro Graphics will only drive a 4k monitor at 30Hz over hdmi. It will drive an SST display at 60 with 2 displayport (thunderbolt 2) cables, but I am not familiar with sst. If I had to do it over I would have bought the model with Nvidia graphics card, faster for encoding to different codecs, but still the same 30Hz (HDMI 1.4) limitation over HDMI.