Video editing computer

[KingRat]

I have discovered why I can't do any video editing from the drone. It would seem my computer is not up to the task, it only has an i3 chip (I know nothing about them - it is a glorified typewriter as far as I am concerned) The main chip is 120GB, and the RAM only has 2GB horns. It copes with my photography, but it cannot hold video, it crashes when I try to do anything with one. It just locks up.

As things are going more and more down the 4k route, I need to get myself some computery thing that will edit 4k footage. I am sitting down and preparing for a shock, but what should I be asking the computer salesman please? I have never played a video game in my life and I am not going to start now - any new computer will be for communicating, photo and video editing and that's it. I will ask for anything else that is included to be removed. I don't want it, it is purely for working on. Oh and I have never seen a Mac, let alone used one, so I wouldn't know where to start with how to turn one of those on. It has been suggested by a friend that a Mac would be better, but I am fearful I won't know how to use it and won't be able to ask anyone about it either.

Any help you can advise greatfully received.

 

[Thomas B]

Use what your comfortable using, Mac or PC.
Get a multiprocessor i5 or better IMHO. Others will chime in I’m sure.

 

[KingRat]

Use what your comfortable using, Mac or PC.
Get a multiprocessor i5 or better IMHO. Others will chime in I’m sure.

I had an Acer Travelmate years ago. It was a decent, rugged laptop. I they still as well built? Or have they also gone down the cheap and cheerful route?

 

[Johnmcl7]

What sort of budget do you have in mind and are you thinking desktop or laptop? Pretty much any PC can encode video but the more powerful they are, the faster they can complete the render.

PC hardware choice is slightly more complicated than it used to be because graphics cards can significantly improve video encoding so even though you're not gaming, you're likely to want a discrete graphics card. Video editing is demanding so there's not much you can really exclude or cut down on.

 

[RadioFlyerMan]

I have discovered why I can't do any video editing from the drone. It would seem my computer is not up to the task, it only has an i3 chip (I know nothing about them - it is a glorified typewriter as far as I am concerned) The main chip is 120GB, and the RAM only has 2GB horns. It copes with my photography, but it cannot hold video, it crashes when I try to do anything with one. It just locks up.

As things are going more and more down the 4k route, I need to get myself some computery thing that will edit 4k footage. I am sitting down and preparing for a shock, but what should I be asking the computer salesman please? I have never played a video game in my life and I am not going to start now - any new computer will be for communicating, photo and video editing and that's it. I will ask for anything else that is included to be removed. I don't want it, it is purely for working on. Oh and I have never seen a Mac, let alone used one, so I wouldn't know where to start with how to turn one of those on. It has been suggested by a friend that a Mac would be better, but I am fearful I won't know how to use it and won't be able to ask anyone about it either.

Any help you can advise greatfully received.

Being a Windows guy ever since there was dirt, I had your fear of the unknown Mac. But I wanted to do video editing too while my old windows machine couldn’t do it.

I did buy an IMac Pro, and I’ll never look back. Mac and it’s operating system is tuned to handle visual media efficiently. After one year with a Mac, I love it. It provides a seamless platform for handling 4k videos, and files from my iPhone.
At least that’s my take on the topic.

 

[JamieK]

If you do buy a Mac, check out their refurbished units. You can find the link at the bottom of the apple.com page. They are treated as new by Apple and you can get pretty significant discounts. I haven’t had any issues with the 3 units that I’ve purchased from the refurb site.

 

[tck444]

Quite a bit of advice on YouTube about buying or building 4K editing system as I was just doing some research myself. But, be prepared to spend about $1000. My experience is that you try to go cheap on any single component you will be disappointed.

 

[Jet skier]

I have discovered why I can't do any video editing from the drone. It would seem my computer is not up to the task, it only has an i3 chip (I know nothing about them - it is a glorified typewriter as far as I am concerned) The main chip is 120GB, and the RAM only has 2GB horns. It copes with my photography, but it cannot hold video, it crashes when I try to do anything with one. It just locks up.

As things are going more and more down the 4k route, I need to get myself some computery thing that will edit 4k footage. I am sitting down and preparing for a shock, but what should I be asking the computer salesman please? I have never played a video game in my life and I am not going to start now - any new computer will be for communicating, photo and video editing and that's it. I will ask for anything else that is included to be removed. I don't want it, it is purely for working on. Oh and I have never seen a Mac, let alone used one, so I wouldn't know where to start with how to turn one of those on. It has been suggested by a friend that a Mac would be better, but I am fearful I won't know how to use it and won't be able to ask anyone about it either.

Any help you can advise greatfully received.

I started out with a PC years ago and never liked it I never got the hang of all the errors it put out so I salesman talk me into a Mac it it was the best thing I ever did it was totally intuitive and that old PC went to the garbage heap but I hear nowadays they are both systems are somewhat similar that’s America’s always been very intuitive I thought

 

[Made2Phly]

I have discovered why I can't do any video editing from the drone. It would seem my computer is not up to the task, it only has an i3 chip (I know nothing about them - it is a glorified typewriter as far as I am concerned) The main chip is 120GB, and the RAM only has 2GB horns. It copes with my photography, but it cannot hold video, it crashes when I try to do anything with one. It just locks up.

As things are going more and more down the 4k route, I need to get myself some computery thing that will edit 4k footage. I am sitting down and preparing for a shock, but what should I be asking the computer salesman please? I have never played a video game in my life and I am not going to start now - any new computer will be for communicating, photo and video editing and that's it. I will ask for anything else that is included to be removed. I don't want it, it is purely for working on. Oh and I have never seen a Mac, let alone used one, so I wouldn't know where to start with how to turn one of those on. It has been suggested by a friend that a Mac would be better, but I am fearful I won't know how to use it and won't be able to ask anyone about it either.

Any help you can advise greatfully received.

The pros use Macs typically. Re-furbs are a great value. Apple has refurbs on its site, but the selection is quite limited and the prices aren't great. And you have to figure out yourself what you need/want.

I bought my 2018 macbook pro last year, with only 30 charge cycles on it from

Sell your used Mac, Macbook pro, Mac Pro, iMac and Apple products - SellYourMac.com

Their selection is huge and the prices quite good. Call 'em and they are extremely helpful. Tell 'em you want a computer to process 4K video and they will steer you straight.

I'm sure you know that 4K files are enormous. So the bigger hard disk the better But even a 2TB drive can get filled up pretty quickly. Mine has a 512 Gig hard drive, and I use out an out board SSD drives, which are about the size of a Zippo lighter.

Not sure if sellyourmac will ship across the pond, but it is definitely worth a call.
ed

 

[Tolly]

I don't think you need the high end and high prices for Mac and Mac software and personally I think you would be happy with a windows10 PC or laptop. Anything with an i5 or higher will fit the bill and you can get a pretty good video editor for free (Davinci Resolve) a budget of $300-500 should do it or less second user.

 

[Jet skier]

I don't think you need the high end and high prices for Mac and Mac software and personally I think you would be happy with a windows10 PC or laptop. Anything with an i5 or higher will fit the bill and you can get a pretty good video editor for free (Davinci Resolve) a budget of $300-500 should do it or less second user.

There’s no better value than that Mac when you consider everything plus you also get the free iMovie

 

[MavicMan64]

I have discovered why I can't do any video editing from the drone. It would seem my computer is not up to the task, it only has an i3 chip (I know nothing about them - it is a glorified typewriter as far as I am concerned) The main chip is 120GB, and the RAM only has 2GB horns. It copes with my photography, but it cannot hold video, it crashes when I try to do anything with one. It just locks up.

As things are going more and more down the 4k route, I need to get myself some computery thing that will edit 4k footage. I am sitting down and preparing for a shock, but what should I be asking the computer salesman please? I have never played a video game in my life and I am not going to start now - any new computer will be for communicating, photo and video editing and that's it. I will ask for anything else that is included to be removed. I don't want it, it is purely for working on. Oh and I have never seen a Mac, let alone used one, so I wouldn't know where to start with how to turn one of those on. It has been suggested by a friend that a Mac would be better, but I am fearful I won't know how to use it and won't be able to ask anyone about it either.

Any help you can advise greatfully received.

If you're comfortable with your PC, then go ahead and purchase a new one. You may need to look at a Gamer PC. But they are also sometimes very inexpensive. A few things to look for when purchasing a new PC are a good video graphics card and plenty of RAM. I would also recommend your OS running on a SSD drive and comes with a secondary onboard storage.

In summary. Intel i5 or i7 processor, Graphics card with at least 4GB RAM, SSD drive for Windows 10 and plenty of RAM.

 

[Dale D]

I have discovered why I can't do any video editing from the drone. It would seem my computer is not up to the task, it only has an i3 chip (I know nothing about them - it is a glorified typewriter as far as I am concerned) The main chip is 120GB, and the RAM only has 2GB horns. It copes with my photography, but it cannot hold video, it crashes when I try to do anything with one. It just locks up.

As things are going more and more down the 4k route, I need to get myself some computery thing that will edit 4k footage. I am sitting down and preparing for a shock, but what should I be asking the computer salesman please? I have never played a video game in my life and I am not going to start now - any new computer will be for communicating, photo and video editing and that's it. I will ask for anything else that is included to be removed. I don't want it, it is purely for working on. Oh and I have never seen a Mac, let alone used one, so I wouldn't know where to start with how to turn one of those on. It has been suggested by a friend that a Mac would be better, but I am fearful I won't know how to use it and won't be able to ask anyone about it either.

Any help you can advise greatfully received.

I have mentioned this numerous times in this forum but it bears repeating.

For many, many years, I stubbornly stayed with my trusty DELL PC. I found that I had the computer tech at my house about once a month for problems. Then, I got into video, at first with timelapse photography in November, 2015. This virtually forced me into video editing. The Dell was hopelessly out of its class. So I went to the Apple store (when Covid was not around) and got a Mac Book Pro (laptop). That was great for editing images on my travels, but NOT for video. I have found that. the MAC operating system is simply more capable when it comes to the visual arts such as photography, design, etc. It is just plain more user friendly for photography and video. I finally bit the bullet and spent what was needed for a high powered iMAC desk top. You need lots of RAM and good graphics card.

Here are the specs of my machine
Mac OS 27 inch desktop Retina Display 5K
Processor 4.2 GHz
Quad Core i7 chip
16GB Memory
2400 Mhz DD4
Graphic card Radeon Pro 580. 8 GB

Apple is no longer using Intel chips. They have gone to their own brand. As they said in the movie "JAWS"- you're gonna need a bigger boat!!! Get the fastest processors and most RAM possible and affordable. Then you can edit without out having to make PROXIES, or wait around for things to happen, which take forever.

 

[itsneedtokno]

External GPUs are an option with some PCs.

 

[bushie]

I have never used an Apple product and never will. Don't like their business model, their tax avoidance and treatment of developers. Have had PCs before IBM invented them (my first computer was a **** Smith system 80, a knock of of the Tandy model)

I now have a top end PC with a high end graphics card and it handles Davinci Resolve with no problems. Don't believe the Apple hype that all pros use Macs.

 

[Johnmcl7]

Apple is no longer using Intel chips. They have gone to their own brand.

They very much are still using Intel processors and you'll find every OSX device for sale currently uses Intel, they've announced they're going to be using ARM based processors but likely only for low power machines initially where compatibility isn't so much of an issue.

As they said in the movie "JAWS"- you're gonna need a bigger boat!!! Get the fastest processors and most RAM possible and affordable. Then you can edit without out having to make PROXIES, or wait around for things to happen, which take forever.

I agree with this advice but it basically means don't buy Apple, even putting the high cost aside Apple are paying the price for sticking with Intel who have been caught napping by AMD. The more cores the better and that's exactly what AMD offers with their consumer desktop processors offering a staggering 16 cores at an affordable price and you'd need to spend nearly £6,000 to get an imac with 14 cores to get close to that. It scales down as well so the six and eight core Ryzen processors can make for a very cheap build with more power than Apple devices costing many, many times more. Also these days GPU's can make a big difference in encoding performance and Apple again offer very little choice and mostly low powered graphics cards.

I have no problems photo and video editing on a Windows PC and can have a vastly more powerful machine (currently 12 core, 64GB ram, 2TB SSD and 44TB HDD) than an equivalent OSX machine which makes for a very noticeable difference in the time it takes to encode video.

 

[Dale D]

They very much are still using Intel processors and you'll find every OSX device for sale currently uses Intel, they've announced they're going to be using ARM based processors but likely only for low power machines initially where compatibility isn't so much of an issue.




I agree with this advice but it basically means don't buy Apple, even putting the high cost aside Apple are paying the price for sticking with Intel who have been caught napping by AMD. The more cores the better and that's exactly what AMD offers with their consumer desktop processors offering a staggering 16 cores at an affordable price and you'd need to spend nearly £6,000 to get an imac with 14 cores to get close to that. It scales down as well so the six and eight core Ryzen processors can make for a very cheap build with more power than Apple devices costing many, many times more. Also these days GPU's can make a big difference in encoding performance and Apple again offer very little choice and mostly low powered graphics cards.

I have no problems photo and video editing on a Windows PC and can have a vastly more powerful machine (currently 12 core, 64GB ram, 2TB SSD and 44TB HDD) than an equivalent OSX machine which makes for a very noticeable difference in the time it takes to encode video.

You are probably right, Apple is frightfully expensive, but as I have mentioned before, with PC's I had the tech guy at my house every month It was like he was part of the family after a while! I am fairly computer savvy but I still needed him for things that went wrong and that I couldn't fix, such as e-mail. I always had a fairly new top of the line Dell desktop with plenty of RAM and a good graphics card, but the last two computers gradually slowed down despite all sorts of anti-Malware software, and anti-virus programs, and bots attacking my PC.

 

[KingRat]

They very much are still using Intel processors and you'll find every OSX device for sale currently uses Intel, they've announced they're going to be using ARM based processors but likely only for low power machines initially where compatibility isn't so much of an issue.




I agree with this advice but it basically means don't buy Apple, even putting the high cost aside Apple are paying the price for sticking with Intel who have been caught napping by AMD. The more cores the better and that's exactly what AMD offers with their consumer desktop processors offering a staggering 16 cores at an affordable price and you'd need to spend nearly £6,000 to get an imac with 14 cores to get close to that. It scales down as well so the six and eight core Ryzen processors can make for a very cheap build with more power than Apple devices costing many, many times more. Also these days GPU's can make a big difference in encoding performance and Apple again offer very little choice and mostly low powered graphics cards.

I have no problems photo and video editing on a Windows PC and can have a vastly more powerful machine (currently 12 core, 64GB ram, 2TB SSD and 44TB HDD) than an equivalent OSX machine which makes for a very noticeable difference in the time it takes to encode video.

Where do I go to find this type of computer? I doubt it is the sort of thing Curries would sell.

 

[SkyeHigh]

Macs used to be the standard in video editing platforms for broadcast use and I certainly installed plenty of them over the past 24-years. Several reasons for their popularity; a stable hardware platform from a single manufacturer & OS developer, a secure and reliable OS, hardware reliability - a major requirement for broadcasters where support costs would outstrip purchase price and significant software support for graphics and video use.

However, performance hasn’t kept up and all the broadcasters I worked with have moved to a Windows PC platform - usually high-end HP or Dell workstations and all of them with XEON processors.

For home use I would never recommend an i5 but an i7 always. An SSD for the OS drive, spinning disk for long term storage, the best graphics board you can afford and a minimum of 16GB RAM.

The number of cores has little impact on video editing unless the software is written to make specific use of them. Rendering can benefit but again it will only use the number of cores the code was written for.

With the H.265 codec for higher resolution video the CPU and GPU are the most important components to research before purchase.

Apple will eventually move away from Intel to the ARM platform as it gives them more control over their hardware and future development plans.

I gave up with Windows a while back after repeated and pointless UI changes, poor security and constant updates. I’ve been using a MacBook Pro since 2012 and have never had an issue with it, never had an app crash and never locked-up. And the user interface has barely changed - it doesn’t need to.

 

[Dale D]

Where do I go to find this type of computer? I doubt it is the sort of thing Curries would sell.

I just Googled this term;

"What is the best computer for video editing?"

There were thousands of results. It really depends on your budget. One of the computers listed was $9,000 USD!!! You should check out the specs (specifications) and brands. I also found this listing;