Near impossible to edit on a Mac

[chrisd7646432]

Hi

I have just got a GoPro 7 and been playing around with it in 4k and 2.7k. Previously I did all my editing at 1080 and my mac was fine. I cannot view the playback, even knocking it down to a 1/8 or 1/2. I am using Premiere Pro CC 2018. All other programmes are shut down.

Attached are screens showing the spec of my Mac, is this a bit low when it comes to editing videos? I am also having issues watching the videos without the editing on a player, I am getting very choppy playback.

It is currently exporting an 11 min file of a mix of 2.7k and 4k footage and it is going to take an hour to do! This is before any effects, sound etc.

Any ideas?

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[Peru Bob · Accepted solution]

According to your screen shots:

You have too little free hard drive space available.

Your processor is too slow.

You need more RAM.

Get more hard drive space and try using proxies.

[jasontcox]

Peru Bob is right about your hard drive space. Could be making a small impact on performance. I'd make sure you have 25-50 GB free. But as to the other parts, I politely offer a counter argument. I've edited 4K H.264 video fine on a Mac with 16 GB of RAM. I dont think RAM is your issue, especially if you are closing other apps while running Premiere (although more always helps). Your processor is not lightning fast, true, but it's not awful either. Again, I've worked with it with similar footage.

Have you added ANY effects to these clips? Or do they literally play back poorly on their own, even in the Source Monitor? As Bob suggested, a proxy workflow is always an option, converting to something like quarter res ProRes or DNX files.

[rodneyb56060189]

everyone is gonna give you questions and opinions. Is the cool thing about this forum.

Basic info is that you have to determine your hardware ability to handle different codecs ( the stress on your cpu, graphic card, hard drives, monitors, etc.). Is kinda like hardware hell, in my opinion, cause I'm going through the same upgrade stuff on custom PC ( including OS upgrade). Luckily I only shoot full HD and if someone gives me higher I can use proxies on the fly.

Don't despair, or get bummed out. It's normal.

But it will take time cause nobody but YOU knows what exactly you got and what you're trying to DO.

[chrisd7646432]

Hi, no effects, no LUTS, literally just threw them in and had a look and then saw that my Mac was struggling to do it. I used proxies in the end at 50% editing quality and seemed to be OK, not sure how it will be with effects on etc. I think I am due an upgrade, any advice on which mac will make 4k editing fun and not painful?

[chrisd7646432]

I have used proxies yesterday, which seemed to improve it and could edit smoothly at 50% quality. What mac would you think will do the job? I have posted on this thread more about this, any help would be appreciated.

[chrisd7646432]

Hi Guys

Thanks for getting back to me, I appreciate it. Yes, I am thinking an upgrade could be on the cards. I went into Apple yesterday to have a look and try and speak to someone but I should know at weekends this is near impossible.

I am a web designer, so use Sketch, Photoshop and VS Code, I use Premiere Pro to edit my holiday videos, so not in it all the time and use Parallels a lot to use Visual Studio as the Mac version does not work as well. I did look into Proxies and I managed to get them all to 1280x720 with a Quality of 1 to be able to edit at 1/2 quality, which is annoying, this is without any effects or Luts etc.

I am just not sure the major differences between each option and not really that sure which would be suitable for what I do. For example, if I look at getting another MacBook Pro, the processors are all 2.3ghz, but 2 are dual and 2 are quad i5. Would I be best to go for the quad option for something like this sort of stuff or is an iMac a better option? Also, then as soon as you are on buy mode, you can then upgrade again.

Which MacBook Pro or iMac would be a good option? Like, what would you be looking at getting if you were in my position?

MacBook Pro - Apple (UK)

Buy iMac - Apple (UK)

I believe a new iMac could be on its way shortly, so I would probably wait on that before buying if I am honest, not sure if I would pick a Fusion Drive, probably a pure SSD and plug and external SSD into it too. It is pretty disappointing you can no longer use it as a monitor with a MacBook Pro as my work machine could connect to use the screen easily which would be a big bonus for me.

Any help would be appreciated so I am not pulling my hair out trying to edit videos.