Is this MacBook Pro good for video editing?

[dawann423]

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-13-3-display-8gb-memory-128gb-flas...

im not sure as to which is a good option. i was told that processor is what matter. i do some work in Photoshop and also want to get into after effects also, but if this laptop  good enough.

[davidarbor]

Good enough is relative. What do you plan on editing? HD footage, 4K? What medium are you editing for, personal, social media, something else?

A powerful GPU is incredibly important these days, and that's not something this machine has. It's using integrated graphics, rather than a dedicated graphics card. GPUs can render (GPU-accelerated) effects in real-time, or at the very least, orders of magnitude faster than a CPU.

CPU and RAM matter the most for After Effects, although the GPU is slowly being utilized more.

The internal storage of this machine is also pretty paltry. Do you plan on connecting a fast drive via USB 3 or Thunderbolt for editing off of? If you use After Effects and your cache folder (which retains rendered frames for previewing) is set to the default folder, than your internal drive is going to fill up very quickly.

In short, I would not get this machine for editing or animating, as it's not upgradeable, and you'll be limiting yourself from the beginning.

[dawann423]

ok so what laptop regardless of brand would you recommend? that's in the $1000-1300 price range

[davidarbor]

It still depends what you're doing. Can you answer The first few questions, as well as whether you have any external storage, and if so, what are the specs (SSD, HDD, storage size, Bus type/connection to computer)?

[davidarbor]

Also, are you looking for a specific screen size? You listed a 13 inch one, so does that mean you want a smaller screen, or were you just trying to fit the machine into your price range?

[dawann423]

yea i'm just trying to find a screen within budget.

[davidarbor]

Editing 4K is an incredibly demanding task and music videos can have a ton of footage, so it's not unreasonable at all to have a storage solution for all this that costs around the same as your budget. Is the $1000-$1300 just for the machine, and you're willing to spend more on storage, or is it for everything total, including tax?

[dawann423]

how much more would i need? as of right now i'm not doing a lot of 4K editing.

[davidarbor]

What are your current issues, if any, while editing 4K? How are you editing it now? What's your current setup, and why are you looking to upgrade?

This looks like an incredibly capable machine for a great price: B&H Photo Video

The screen is 1920x1080, so you won't see your full res 4K footage, but you won't get that anyway in your price range. It has a quad-core processor, 16 GB of RAM, a powerful GPU, and a combination of a 256 GB SSD and 1 TB HDD. This is great for booting off of and installing programs, and then your data would live on the slower hard drive. I would still edit high resolution and multi-camera footage (if you're editing your music videos in a multi-cam setup) off of the internal drive. You should still have a fast RAID for that.

[dawann423]

i've only edited 4K once so far and 2.7K a lot. even  trying to view 1080 premiere on my laptop stutters and crashes a lot. i usually have to render it first before even viewing it. a 10 sec portion ales about 15 mins sometimes just to render so i can view a effect or anything. i can't view the full video without it stuttering real bad so i have to export it then check what changes i need to make and go from there.

i have a HP right now. i don't really know which specs to look for it has a long list on here.

Processor: Intel Core i5-4210U @ 1.70GHz

Ram: 4GB

ive used a friend's macbook pro and i think the processor was 2.67GHz and had a intel iris graphics card and it ran kind of smoothly when i used it to edit.

[davidarbor]

4K requires a ton of bandwidth to edit, and your drive speed is a huge factor too. The more compressed the footage is, the smaller the files will be, but the more computationally heavy it is to decode and play back smoothly. At the very least you shouldn't be viewing your 4K footage in full resolution if you're editing on a lower resolution monitor. I don't mean the size of your Program monitor, I mean the quality (Full, Half, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16). The machine I linked to above is a powerful gaming laptop for a good price. I would probably get 32 GB of RAM (but that laptop actually maxes out at 16 GB), and that GPU will be very helpful. A USB 3 RAID will be better for your footage. You just have to understand or read up on the requirements of editing 4K footage. You have a limited budget for a heavy workflow, so there will be compromises. You can also Google around to see what other people are doing to edit 4K on a budget. Have you considered using Premiere's proxy workflow? This can also help, even if you get a new machine: Work offline using proxy media |

[dawann423]

I edit music videos so they range anywhere from 4K to 1080p. it's for my business i have.

[tylerh89149221]

That laptop will not do you any good editing 4K. 1080 and lower resolutions it should run just fine though. Honestly with any laptop I highly suggest transcoding/using proxies even though I absolutely hate it. Either that or download and use FCP for any 4K work flows. Adobe Premiere Pro(updated version) sucks for 4K editing. Hopefully they will do something about it, but I don't recommend any laptop with PP and 4K footage. And by the way, I'm using the brand new 2017 iMac with all the specs completely maxed out and my 4K editing still lags in PP.

[Peru Bob]

I'm moving this to the Hardware Forum where the hardware experts hang out.

[Bill_Gehrke]

I have to disagree with some of the above I have a three-year old laptop with an i7-4700HQ and 24 GB of RAM with two SSD's installed and am able to smoothly edit 4K 100Mbit/s XAVC-S and GoPro 4K media.  Your ASUS candidate has slightly better CPU not quite as much RAM and a better GPU than I do at a reasonable price.  Now do not get me wrong not all 4K media will work smoothly.

The first thing you should do it you get it is get your self a Samsung T3 portable USB 3 SSD because that 1 TB 5400RPM drive is useless for video editing.  (Actually mine came with that same drive and I immediately removed it and install the second SSD) but if you do not feel comfortable making that change go the Samsung T3 route to get started.  Do not think of that suggested USB3 RAID solution as it is cumbersome, not as fast by any means as the single T3 and no real advantage this day and age, hard disk drives really should only be used for archiving and backup purposes.

Another very important action is to tune the new computer and turn off all necessary processes so they do not steal CPU cycles and use valuable memory.

EDIT

I just created a new project and loaded a GH5 4K 10-bit file with some very minimal cuts and effects (absolutely no CPU intensive Lumetri effects) and with one minute length I lost only 1 frame during playback at 1/2 resolution.

[Warren Heaton]

The 13-inch MacBook Pro is a good option, but you really want 16GB of RAM and 256BG of Flash Storage as the base (not the 8GB/128GB that you linked).  Of course, the larger the internal storage, the better.   You'll probably want a USB-C SSD drive for footage (Thunderbolt for high data transfer rate footage).

Since you mentioned that you also work in Photoshop and After Effects, I'd recommend a 15-inch MacBook Pro instead.