What PC do I need?

[Hazco74]

Recently taken my M2P out for the first time as I’m new to the UAV world. When I got home to run the footage my laptop would not run smoothly the 4K footage but ran the 1080p footage fine.

So my question is, because I want to use the drone to its full capacity and work with is footage, is there there any level/type of PC/laptop I should be looking at without breaking the bank.

Currently I’m on a windows based i5 laptop which doesn’t support 4K which I assume I the reason I have choopy footage on the 4K. Am I right in thinking apple based products are better for 4K footage and editing than windows? Just something I have read.

Appreciate any guidance/suggestions you could throw my way.

Hazco

 

[msinger]

Before buying a new computer, you could try a different video player (like VLC).

 

[THE CYBORG]

I agree with msinger try VLC player

It makes no difference if you use PC or iMac you can install windows on a Mac, its not the operating system but the components inside that count.
You say you are using windows so if that is what you are used to stick with that, the Apple OS is completely different, personally I hate it.
You have an i5 processor but what RAM & GPU do you have ?

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

VLC player may help play the clips, but if you want to get into editing them together to produce a video, you're beyond just playback needs and start getting further into upgrading hardware requirements.

But another thing you can try first if you do get into editing: using a proxy. That is, before editing with the 4K footage that you can barely play back, transcode it down to a format that does play well and use that in the editor. Then when it comes time to produce a resulting video from your edited together parts (and possibly adding audio, such as music), then you can instruct the editor to render the final video using the full-sized 4K source.

But even then, you might feel the need to upgrade. As Cyborg said, it's not a Mac vs PC thing, but the strength of the components:

• HARD DRIVE: both the OS drive and the drive you will use to play/edit video should be SSD. Within SSD, there's also "good" and "much better". The latter means getting NVMe SSD, which is faster than SATA. Though even the SATA SSDs are faster than normal HHDs. Expect these SSDs to be smaller sized per dollar though, so you'll still need large regular spinning discs to archive video.
• VIDEO CARD: the best you can afford. The upper NVIDIA with 8GB of fast memory also have a GPU that's capable of encoding/decoding the H.265 10-bit video the M2P can produce. 4GB of memory wasn't enough for me (kept crashing the editor). See THIS NVIDIA matrix table of cards to see which are good for what encoding/decoding. **
• CPU: even with a killer graphics card, churning away on files can still peg the CPU, so the best you can afford (hopefully at least an i7-10th gen), especially when multi-tasking.
• MEMORY: I do 64GB in my main machine, 32GB in the laptop I use in the field. Yeah, rendering video will eat up the video card GB first, but do the best you can here -- your browser tabs will use it.
• MONITOR: get the best panel you can afford. Touch-screen still isn't worth it still IMO, not required for this work and another thing to break. Spend that money on larger 4K with as much Adobe RGB coverage as you can.

** A couple of notes on hardware: a) the NVIDIA 3000 series hopefully come out in the fall, so the 2000 series is going to be a big bargain (even now, it's probably cheaper than the new cards will be -- I just picked up an RTX2070). and b) hardware is getting harder to get due to dwindling supplies during the pandemic. Personally, that makes me want to act sooner than later on ordering these components

Also, if you don't want to spend too much time thinking about the upgrade or putting it all together, the video game machines often have the same requirements as video editing: better components and a killer video card with a lot of memory.

Chris

 

[Deleted member 103366]

I too would be interested in knowing the specs for a computer/laptop preferably that will successfully play the higher resolution outputs of the likes of the M2P?
I have video from both an M2P and an M2Zoom and the windows 7 native player will not video from the zoom full stop and VLC does not like it and the video initially went in and out, now (earlier today) it will not play.


Hmmmmm, I recently installed Windows 10 on this laptop and Win 10 plays the video with its default player with no problems yet Windows 7 can not, it's now a dual boot laptop. First post via Win 10, the post was drafted before Not a speck of cereal replied and I just added the win 10 bit when I got here again

 

[Hazco74]

VLC player may help play the clips, but if you want to get into editing them together to produce a video, you're beyond just playback needs and start getting further into upgrading hardware requirements.

But another thing you can try first if you do get into editing: using a proxy. That is, before editing with the 4K footage that you can barely play back, transcode it down to a format that does play well and use that in the editor. Then when it comes time to produce a resulting video from your edited together parts (and possibly adding audio, such as music), then you can instruct the editor to render the final video using the full-sized 4K source.

But even then, you might feel the need to upgrade. As Cyborg said, it's not a Mac vs PC thing, but the strength of the components:

• HARD DRIVE: both the OS drive and the drive you will use to play/edit video should be SSD. Within SSD, there's also "good" and "much better". The latter means getting NVMe SSD, which is faster than SATA. Though even the SATA SSDs are faster than normal HHDs. Expect these SSDs to be smaller sized per dollar though, so you'll still need large regular spinning discs to archive video.
• VIDEO CARD: the best you can afford. The upper NVIDIA with 8GB of fast memory also have a GPU that's capable of encoding/decoding the H.265 10-bit video the M2P can produce. 4GB of memory wasn't enough for me (kept crashing the editor). See THIS NVIDIA matrix table of cards to see which are good for what encoding/decoding. **
• CPU: even with a killer graphics card, churning away on files can still peg the CPU, so the best you can afford (hopefully at least an i7-10th gen), especially when multi-tasking.
• MEMORY: I do 64GB in my main machine, 32GB in the laptop I use in the field. Yeah, rendering video will eat up the video card GB first, but do the best you can here -- your browser tabs will use it.
• MONITOR: get the best panel you can afford. Touch-screen still isn't worth it still IMO, not required for this work and another thing to break. Spend that money on larger 4K with as much Adobe RGB coverage as you can.

** A couple of notes on hardware: a) the NVIDIA 3000 series hopefully come out in the fall, so the 2000 series is going to be a big bargain (even now, it's probably cheaper than the new cards will be -- I just picked up an RTX2070). and b) hardware is getting harder to get due to dwindling supplies during the pandemic. Personally, that makes me want to act sooner than later on ordering these components

Also, if you don't want to spend too much time thinking about the upgrade or putting it all together, the video game machines often have the same requirements as video editing: better components and a killer video card with a lot of memory.

Chris

Hi,

Thank you for the feedback its appreciated. My laptop is a i5-6300U CPU @ 2.4GHz with 8GB RAM on a 64 bit OS inc windows 10 and SSD.

To be honest its nothing special and serves a purpose as I have never needed anything more until now by the looks of it.

I have tried updating codecs, VLC, DIVX Pro etc but I always end up with choppy video footage when it comes to 4K.

Me personally I would prefer to stick to a Windows based laptop with a Suitable monitor as I want the flexibiltiy to take my computer into the field if required.

Once again many thanks for the guidance it all helps

Hazco 74

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

The trouble with laptops is that you can't customize many of them. Some of them even have parts glued in and you can't even (or easily) change out the battery when it dies.

But some you can customize. I built a laptop last year starting with a MSI GP-63. It already had a decent NVIDIA video card with 6GB of RAM, plus an NVMe SSD boot drive with a 1TB HDD, and a decent 15" monitor with decent color support. This one had a 2nd NVMe slot, so I added a 2nd SSD drive. I also upgraded the memory. And I noticed that the battery wasn't glued in like others, so I could replace it with a screw driver when it goes bad.

Same thing here re: gaming machines: it was mostly what I wanted already, but allowed upgrading of parts.

 

[Badgersurfer]

I use high end Dell workstations with Nvidia Quadro cards for Cad work and they work pretty hard with 4k. Before you consider spending a lot of money on high end computers consider as mentioned before ssd drive ( I recommend Samsung Evo 860 as they are good price for reliable performance and their ssd management software is the best I have seen, this will increase considerably the read/write speed if your files, a decent i7 Intel processor and minimum 8gb ram. It is better to have 1x 8gb rather than 2x 4gb strips and of course a quality Nvidia Graphics card to the most you can afford. Also if you are tight for cash always consider a refurbished machines you can get really good deals on these for a low price but always check out the trustpilot reviews of the refurbisher before parting with your money. Gamers tend to buy Graphics cards like they have gone out of fashion so there is always plenty for sale on auction sites. Also if you buy a refurbed machine make sure the PSU power output is enough for the hardware you are running.
Most importantly look into how you intend to publish your video. In most cases 1080p is fine and I find it services most requirements. I render my 4k files to 1080 first and then work on them from there. Even a reasonable i5 with moderate GC will handle it but in all instances an SSD is critical.