4k footage editing

Hypohamish · 30 Apr 2013 at 19:19

Hallo! Long time lurker first time poster etc etc

Now, I usually consider myself pretty adept at basic computer hardware/construction knowledge, but I need y'all's help because I'm going into a new area.

I'm currently on a post production course at university (about to go into my third year), and my rig is unfortunately unable to keep up with the sheer volume of editing I have to do. Especially when it comes to 4k footage (in my case, captured from a Black Magic Cinema Camera).

My university also faces the problem that they also don't currently have a computer powerful enough to even preview the footage (for some reason, everything just breaks down and dies (i.e. functions hella slowly) due to the file sizes and quality.

So, what would you fine people recommend to build a decent rig for editing 4k footage? Cheers!

olivier renault · 30 Apr 2013 at 19:23

depends on budget, but the bigger the better.

Hypohamish · 30 Apr 2013 at 19:27

olivier renault said:
depends on budget, but the bigger the better.

Budget did cross my mind whilst creating the post, but I figured I'd give people a bit of free reign at first, but obviously, as per most things in life, cheap as possible without sacrificing quality tends to be the rule!

geuben · 30 Apr 2013 at 19:32

lots of RAM, lots of cores.

Also the Black Magic Cinema Camera is only 2.5K, the 4K version isn't out yet.

olivier renault · 30 Apr 2013 at 20:35

I'm no pro in video editing though, but I suspect a 2700K 3700K, FX-3850 at the bottom end, loads of RAM (32GB), and a decent motherboard to take the load, with a good fast-write SSD (256GB). £1000-£1500.

At the slightly more upper end, a 3960X, quad channel 32GB, with similar storage / scratch drive requirements. £2000.

At the top end, a dual Xeon, with a Asus Z9PE-WS, craploads of ram.

Maybe some Tesla, I dunno about GPGPU that much in terms of video rendering, encoding, transcoding.

So basically, get info from the pros.