Buying Video Editing Laptop Help

K

Kyle Kearns

Active member
Hey guys,

I'm looking to get a new laptop to edit video using premiere pro.

I'll mostly be working with 1080 files from a sony a7ii and a 5d mark III, but I'd like to get something that I could edit 4k raw on in the future.

I've got a budget of about $1,000 and have been doing a lot of research, but can't seem to come to any good conclusions.

In my research I've seen that some people have been editing 4 and 6k raw on the 2015 macbook pros, but there has to be a windows computer out there that can do that for cheaper....right?


My current setup is A 2012 Acer Aspire, 8gb of ram and a i7-2670qm @2.2ghz.
 
Sorry to say it, but if you're planning on doing any type of serious editing, no laptop under $1000 is going to be suitable for 4K raw. Anybody who says they are editing 4K raw on a 2015 Macbook is either lying, having a very frustrating time of it, or only working on very short test clips. And you can forget about 6K - I recently worked on a job which had bought brand new, fully-specced iMacs at the start of this year and they had trouble even playing back 6K Red raw smoothly on the timeline, let alone editing 45 minute episodes. They told the shooters to switch back to 4K after the first few days of shooting/editing.

The good news is that pretty much any half decent laptop with a dedicated GPU will handle 1080p h.264 just fine these days. So use/buy what you can for now and then upgrade later when you need actually need 4K raw. It's also worth pointing out that any project which demands 4K raw should have a high enough budget to cover a proper editing system. If not, you (or the producer, director, etc) need to accept the realities of the situation and shoot whatever format the budget can afford.
 
You can do it...but it depends on your workflow and what your expectations are for editing.

I personally use FCP X with a 2015 MBP, and have worked with CinemaDNG, REDCODE RAW and CRL, but never played anything back in real-time, no multi-cam, and no heavy effects. Transcoding to proxies is very helpful. The editing was always painless...at least for me. It's the playback that was impossible without the proxies and/or even exporting a proxy master and watching it in QT.

I also edited CinemaDNG via photography software and it was very easy as it was just editing one frame and then copying and pasting the effects to everything else and then exporting it all (which just took a long time). This was technically editing 4K RAW.

Here's a popular video regarding maybe even editing 8K on a lower-end computer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw2HFu5xAeA

I don't know anything about Windows/Microsoft, but I'm sure you can find something that can do the job for around that price.
 
Premiere also takes advantage of video acceleration so performs better with whizz video cards. It also benefits hugely from twin or 3 monitors, decent sound and other input and output devices. My new MacBook - 7 months old now has two USB-C connectors and I have to use all kinds of extra gadgets to add facilities - and I'm not sure how much of a hindrance to the workflow speed that is. One socket is now a bit loose - and occasional, a drive gets dropped when the cable wiggles. I do a bit of editing on it, but my real edit machine is Windows, with loads of things permanently plugged in. The Mac does edit fine - it's just not the most useful thing to do it on.
 
I don't know anything about the reviewer, but if I had to make two assumptions, I am almost positive he has not applied anything to that 8K footage (or any of the footage for that matter) in which real time playback is more possible, and the default setting of "Better Performance" is selected in FCP X, which plays the footage very well in real time but at a lower-resolution. Much less processor-intensive. I think of it as proxy playback but not as efficient as if you were to transcode to proxies.

My honest opinion is the second you would start working on that footage or adding LUTs or effects, forget about it. Impossible, period. At least on that system he's using. You can do the task, but wouldn't get anywhere with playback of 6K, 8K footage. Not sure you even could with transcoding everything. Again, on that system.

(I even use a better computer and 4.5K REDCODE RAW footage from the Raven will break it if you tried to get cute with it.)

But for normal playback and just cutting - I agree 100%. It's a beautiful experience and you can cut and playback all you want just like that until you're ready to export.

Again though, if you're into heavy post work, definitely do not expect that kind of performance.

---

As far as the computers, those specs are better than the Apple in the video, but I just can't recommend a Windows/Premiere combo because I truly don't have any experience with it and I'm not sure about the performance.

If you choose a Mac, you can of course use either software on it.
 
Just ordered an Acer Predator 300 Helios to replace my 2012 Macbook Pro (my first PC in 11 years). Refurbished, they are going for around $900 on NewEgg: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834316212

The specs are impressive for the price:

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB
Intel Core i7 7th Gen 7700HQ (2.80 GHz)
16 GB Memory 256 GB SSD
15.6" Full HD 1920 x 1080
15.40" x 10.50" x 1.05" 5.95 lbs.
1 x HDMI

I haven't had it for long enough to put it through it's paces yet, but first impressions are generally good. Once I covered up the "Predator" logo with a sticker and turned off the glowing red keyboard, it looks and feels more like a regular laptop. I have no expectation that it will be able to handle 4K raw, but I don't usually have a need for that. The LCD is definitely a big step down from any Mac I have ever owned, so I'll have to plug it into another monitor if I ever want to color grade with it.
 
The GTX 1060 is not on the official list - so you lose it's onboard processing as Premiere won't use it.
 
paulears said:
The GTX 1060 is not on the official list - so you lose it's onboard processing as Premiere won't use it.
Click to expand...

I though they supported all CUDA cards now since a few versions ago, making the "official list" moot?

My GTX1060 is working just fine with Premiere.
 
Can’t really provide any input on a Premiere laptop but I will say this is one reason why I switched to Macs and FCPX. That initial sticker shock is only the upfront cost but FCPX is so well optimized that I can edit native HD no problem at all on a 2011 MBP. The problem with Premiere and a PC is the initial cost may be low but Premiere just isn’t as well optimized and in the end you may end up buying another laptop in a year or two. By the time you buy two laptops you might as well just invest in a good MBP.

That’s my view at least.

It terms of raw for,arts you may be reading about ProRes raw which does perform insanely well. Apple designed it to be well optimized with FCPX and Mac hardware. The new 6 core MBP for example can playback 9 streams of ProRes raw. Productivity is about format and workflow and not about computer specs and if you want to work with raw then FCPX and ProRes raw is where it’s at for a solid workflow that doesn’t need an 18 core machine.
 
Could you guys list the specs of your machine and say when playback starts to get choppy?

I'm still trying to get an idea for what specs can do what
 
It's not that simple...as mentioned, specs are not always the answer for everything.

Working in one piece of software on a lower-end computer may provide better performance with the same high-resolution processor-intensive footage than working in another piece of software with different higher-end hardware.

Someone with computer A and footage A (codec/format) may tell you this is when it starts getting choppy but someone else with computer B and footage B may tell you differently.
 
That's the main difficulty everyone faces in the computer universe...not every computer may do everything you want it to efficiently if you're on a budget.

Some people specialize in everything and require top-of-the-line power and speed - everything - and each piece of software they use may benefit from only one part of the computer or from multiple parts of the computer.

This is a very simple explanation, but that's the best way to look at it if you have $1,000 to spend...because you need to buy what works best for the type of editing you do on Premiere with a Windows computer if you choose to go that route.

Going back to that playback question...it's simply impossible to answer if people treat their footage. There are hundreds of things they can do to it which may severely affect the playback performance.

If you're truly looking for a specific answer, maybe ask a more detailed question such as:

"I'll be editing 4K DCI CinemaDNG from the Blackmagic URSA 4K camera. Which software does everyone use? What are the specs of your computer?"

"I'm planning on working with 8K REDCODE RAW in Premiere in the near future...how does Adobe handle the footage? What's your clock speed? How much RAM? GPU? Cores?"

ETC. ETC.

Technology gets more complicated every day and the answer isn't so simple anymore with so many different types of video and post-production options.

I personally (biased-opinion) think FCP X would do better on a lower-end machine than Premiere on a higher-end machine, so that's something to consider as well depending on what you decide to go with.
 
Also meant to add more to the question list...like if any grading is done? What kind of storage setup? Multi-cam editing? ETC.

All of these little bits and pieces factor in.
 
I’m not editing RAW these days but I think most laptops are going to struggle with native raw edits in the $1000 range. The best mobile workflow and devices for RAW is going to depend on a few things.

FCP or Premiere. If you are on FCP it’s simple. You need a MacBook Pro and the new 6 cores and eventually you will want an eGPU. I would expect it would probably let you do Prores RAW edits natively with simple stuff without the eGPU and get you close to desktop performance with the eGPU support. It’s an expensive choice but probably the most reliable and portable choice out there today.

If I was focused on Premiere I’d stay in the Windows world. If you want Apple reliability in that world the best choice is Razer is my opinion. I’d probably get a used razor and edit with proxies over getting a newer offbrand machine. I’d just make sure I could add a eGPU later. Which most Razers should support. Search for Razer laptops on eBay to get an idea. Then look for Razer eGPU docks.
 
I'm surprised nobody on this thread has brought up the subject of drives. In my opinion, your external drives play a much more critical role in performance than does the computer itself. I edit and grade huge Sony 4K 16-bit RAW and 4K XAVC-I files with Premiere CC and DaVinci Resolve on my two 2015 MacBook Pros without too much trouble. I'm also feeding video to five monitors at the same time. But my editing drives are 4TB SSDs that deliver 1300Mbps performance via Thunderbolt. Those drives make all the difference. I don't care what computer you have, if you're going to be editing to UBS-3.0 drives, or ordinary Thunderbolt drives that aren't fast enough, or something else even worse, you're probably going to have pain.
 
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Doug, interesting...so you think I should get something with thunderbolt ports? Do you think editing off of the internal SSD is better than using a usb 3.0 drive?
 
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