4K & 1080p processing power???

Miller_Drone · Mar 14, 2018

Ok. So, I've been messing with Adobe Premier, learning the ins and outs with my Mavic Pro. Lots of YouTube tutorials and such. I prefer shooting video in 4k... I know it's big files, but I would sooner have the material and back down the res. than not have it at all.

My question, (I'm new to editing, so please be gentle)... I'm running the latest version of Premier on my Microsoft Surface, trying to edit... 256GB storage, Intel i5, 8GB of RAM... and Adobe is lagging soooooo sllllooooowww, then crashing. Is it the fact that I'm recording in 4K, or trying to edit and splice in 4K... or what am I doing wrong? My Surface kicks butt otherwise, I've never seen it act like this...

Miller_Drone · Mar 14, 2018

Miller_Drone said:
Ok. So, I've been messing with Adobe Premier, learning the ins and outs with my Mavic Pro. Lots of YouTube tutorials and such. I prefer shooting video in 4k... I know it's big files, but I would sooner have the material and back down the res. than not have it at all.

My question, (I'm new to editing, so please be gentle)... I'm running the latest version of Premier on my Microsoft Surface Pro 4, trying to edit... 256GB storage, Intel i5, 8GB of RAM... and Adobe is lagging soooooo sllllooooowww, then crashing. Is it the fact that I'm recording in 4K, or trying to edit and splice in 4K... or what am I doing wrong? My Surface kicks butt otherwise, I've never seen it act like this...

Lake_Flyer · Mar 14, 2018

i5 and 8GB is really not up to editing in 4K timeline resolution. Not even i7 and 16GB, unless you also have a beefy 4-6GB heavily cooled graphics processor (GPU), which physically only fit in a full blown PC cabinet.
But you can edit from a proxy of a lesser resolution and after that render in 4K. There are a lot of PP tutorials on Youtube about this.

Drone on · Mar 14, 2018

I agree with Lake_Flyer, and add that you have to have a 4K monitor to make the 4K end product worth while

Kilrah · Mar 14, 2018

Lake_Flyer said:
which physically only fit in a full blown PC cabinet.

Or small form factor.

I travel quite a bit so have built myself a nice "transportable" Mini-ITX SFF PC to carry with me (just store monitors locally in the different places). i7-7700K, 16GB, GTX1070 in 7l volume and 4.5kg. Does 4K in Premiere and 4K gaming with no issues.

4wd · Mar 14, 2018

If this is a recent version of Premiere you can create proxy files.
These are much smaller in size.
You do the editing with these and the program renders using the original but with synchronised changes.
Rendering will likely still take hours but can be run overnight or in the background while you do other things if not too demanding. You could also consider recording at 2.7K.
To edit 4K and see live preview of your changes you need cutting edge high power machine, it's overkill for most users.

Miller_Drone · Mar 14, 2018

Ok. That explains some things! I have a custom rig that I've needed to get fired up (recently moved). It's got the beefier specs, but a few years old...

256 WD Raptor drive
1TB storage drive
i5 2.7 ghz quad core processor
32 Gb RAM
Nvidia G-force with 16GB on board

I hope that'll be enough. I was hoping the Surface would do, it's so portable and can do so much on the fly... I guess it's just not there yet and I don't really feel comfortable on dropping $2.5K on a new machine. Wife wasn't too thrilled about the drone...

Oh well... either 1080p or 2.7K for now! Thanks for the feedback!

4wd · Mar 14, 2018

That should be good, I have something similar, the only annoyance is Premiere doesn't seem to use the Graphics Card half as efficiently as Da Vinci Resolve so that (free) program is actually faster.
Having used Premiere for several years I just find Resolve too strange and time consuming to get to grips with. It does do a nice job of Noise Reduction though.