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iMac 27 5k ram and drive

debric france

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Hi
to edit native 4K on fcp and feel I am editing hd :
How much ram should I get( of course not from Apple they are too expensive)

What is inside iMac 5k 27 best drive choice?
 
I have owned a lot of macs (a lot) and have only regretted not fully loading it from the start. I know it gets expensive but...

I just bought a new iMac 5K and got the fastest version with 16GB of RAM that I immediately upgraded to 32GB and the 2 TB fusion drive. I already have a 4TB external drive with thunderbolt so didn't need more hard disk.

The system is stunningly fast editing 4K with Premiere Pro.

As a tip, you can order the 16GB version from Apple which has two 8GB modules. You can then buy two more 8GB modules from Crucial for cheaper than Apple and get to 32 GB.
 
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I have owned a lot of macs (a lot) and have only regretted not fully loading it from the start. I know it gets expensive but...

I just bought a new iMac 5K and got the fastest version with 16GB of RAM that I immediately upgraded to 32GB and the 2 TB fusion drive. I already have a 4TB external drive with thunderbolt so didn't need more hard disk.

The system is stunningly fast editing 4K with Premiere Pro.

As a tip, you can order the 16GB version from Apple which has two 8GB modules. You can then buy two more 8GB modules from Crucial for cheaper than Apple and get to 32 GB.

Thank you for your reply,
May I have some infos about your external hard drive?
Thanks
 
Whatever you choose you'll be fine. I'm editing on my 2012 27" iMac and never ran into a hiccup on FCPX with 4k footage.

Good to know Jake!
Thank you.
I was wondering myself about buying 2 external hard drive for back up.
I had a Glyph one, unfortunately on raid0 (big mistake)and one day one of the drive died... I lost all my editing ...
What is the hard drive inside your iMac ?
Do you have external hard drive?
 
Good to know Jake!
Thank you.
I was wondering myself about buying 2 external hard drive for back up.
I had a Glyph one, unfortunately on raid0 (big mistake)and one day one of the drive died... I lost all my editing ...
What is the hard drive inside your iMac ?
Do you have external hard drive?

Happy to help! I currently have a 320GB SSD installed that I upgraded from the standard mechanical 500GB. And I have an external 1Tb drive thats plugged in for time machine backups.
 
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The hard drive I use is the 4TB G-Raid with Thunderbolt from G-Technology. For serious professional grade external storage, I can highly recommend G-Technology and any of their drives. The Thunderbolt drives are super fast.
 
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Inside the iMac >1TB Fusion vs 512GB SSD... any experience?

The Fusion drive will automatically load the most frequently used items to the SSD portion of the drive. The OS and other system files are always on the SSD portion. Things like songs, movies, documents and casually used applications will be stored on the mechanical portion of the drive. I believe the 1TB comes with an 128GB SSD, but they changed it at some point so it depends on your setup.

Now the only problem, I could think of is that FCPX will take up a sh&t ton of space when you're doing edits. A 3 minute video alone could result in a 50GB or so backup file thats automatically created for you. So the SSD portion of the Fusion drive would fill up quickly. Would it make a difference? Probably not since read/write isn't exactly the bottleneck we're concerned about more-so than say a GPU. I've used both a fusion drive and an SSD and both performed flawlessly. The only reason my preference is with the SSD was because its just nice to have everything quickly available, as well as the reliability of SSD over mechanical drives.
 
The Fusion drive will automatically load the most frequently used items to the SSD portion of the drive. The OS and other system files are always on the SSD portion. Things like songs, movies, documents and casually used applications will be stored on the mechanical portion of the drive. I believe the 1TB comes with an 128GB SSD, but they changed it at some point so it depends on your setup.

Now the only problem, I could think of is that FCPX will take up a sh&t ton of space when you're doing edits. A 3 minute video alone could result in a 50GB or so backup file thats automatically created for you. So the SSD portion of the Fusion drive would fill up quickly. Would it make a difference? Probably not since read/write isn't exactly the bottleneck we're concerned about more-so than say a GPU. I've used both a fusion drive and an SSD and both performed flawlessly. The only reason my preference is with the SSD was because its just nice to have everything quickly available, as well as the reliability of SSD over mechanical drives.

Jake
Thank you for your time and your reply.
I understand this better now.
My point is to edit a 52mn 4K documentary.
Do you think If I have intern 1TB ssd on the iMac it should be fine?
I will buy an external hard drive for back up( what is your preference regarding external hard drive)
Somebody told me to wait as apple seems to update IMac ( the only pb is when)
Anyway thanks for your help
 
Jake
Thank you for your time and your reply.
I understand this better now.
My point is to edit a 52mn 4K documentary.
Do you think If I have intern 1TB ssd on the iMac it should be fine?
I will buy an external hard drive for back up( what is your preference regarding external hard drive)
Somebody told me to wait as apple seems to update IMac ( the only pb is when)
Anyway thanks for your help

Yeah I think that would be okay. If you find that you're running out of space, or small changes like clipping and resizing are starting to slow you down you could always turn off background rendering, but with the hardware you'll be working with I don't think that'll be an issue.

In terms of external backups, I agree with SteelFlyer. I believe by default they're configured with RAID 0 (striping), which means it'll have a nice performance benefit. You can also configure them for RAID 1 (mirroring) so that if one of the drives fails, you still have your data on the other. Of course if you want to save some money you can always do what I do and just pickup a cheap 2+ TB external for less than $100. The chances that both my external and internal drives would fail at the same time are slim to none, and even if they did, I'm sure I can live with losing 3 minutes of edits.
 
Yeah I think that would be okay. If you find that you're running out of space, or small changes like clipping and resizing are starting to slow you down you could always turn off background rendering, but with the hardware you'll be working with I don't think that'll be an issue.

In terms of external backups, I agree with SteelFlyer. I believe by default they're configured with RAID 0 (striping), which means it'll have a nice performance benefit. You can also configure them for RAID 1 (mirroring) so that if one of the drives fails, you still have your data on the other. Of course if you want to save some money you can always do what I do and just pickup a cheap 2+ TB external for less than $100. The chances that both my external and internal drives would fail at the same time are slim to none, and even if they did, I'm sure I can live with losing 3 minutes of edits.

Great thanks
In the past,
I had a Glyph Production Technology of 2tb on raid 0, working great for a year and one day one of the disk die ... I loose everything....
I went to a shop to see if they could save my disk but as it was big it was a fortune...
That why this time I will be careful
 
Great thanks
In the past,
I had a Glyph Production Technology of 2tb on raid 0, working great for a year and one day one of the disk die ... I loose everything....
I went to a shop to see if they could save my disk but as it was big it was a fortune...
That why this time I will be careful

Yeah drive recovery can easily put you in the hundreds to thousands range! If you're using the drive to store things that you don't have a copy of on your internal drive, I'd configure the external for RAID 1 that way you at least have the redundancy of a second drive. The performance won't be as great (still very fast) and you'll have half the capacity as you would in RAID 0. But hey! backups for your backups!
 
The Mac I have is an Oct 2016 model, has an intel i7 3.0GHZ processor with 16GB RAM, a 4GB Radeon Vid Card and 1TB SSD. It does a pretty good job editing in 4K in FCPX. My only issue at this point is that I am unable to edit H.265 (HEVC) files from the P4 Pro. Surprised FCPX is not capable on editing those files. I guess I am heading back to Adobe Premier CC.
 
ElGuapo
Sorry to hear that.
Thanks for those who will read you, your advices can help futur editors.
I planning to edit 4K material from xdcam sony pxw-x70 4k and 4k footage from my Mavic Pro.
Do you think this will be problematic with FCPx?
 
ElGuapo
Sorry to hear that.
Thanks for those who will read you, your advices can help futur editors.
I planning to edit 4K material from xdcam sony pxw-x70 4k and 4k footage from my Mavic Pro.
Do you think this will be problematic with FCPx?

You should not have any issues editing 4K material in FCPx as long you are editing H.264 material. The Mavic Pro and Sony PXW-X70 shoot video in the standard format H.264 both in 4K.
 
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