Computer Specs for Editing 4k Footage?

C

ChadN

Well-known member
Hey all,

What kind of specs are you looking at in order to actually work with the 4k footage from the Odyssey 7Q? I'm very interested in working with RAW due to the amazing ability to handle coloring, to re-frame or stabilize. Do some effects, etc.
But, i'm reluctant to jump in only to find that i can't even run or edit the footage on my PC.

I work at home, don't really have a "work station" as much as it's a gaming computer!
i7 2600k O.C.'d to 4.2ghz.
24GB 1600mhz DDR3 RAM
Geforce GTX 570 1.2GB

I would probably upgrade to a GTX 780 3GB video card, in the gaming world it's a beast. I dont' know how these compare to Quadro cards in workstations, however.

I currently work with the 1080p .MTS files right out of the FS700, no transcoding or anything. I just take the files right off the SD Card and edit those. I've heard these AVCHD files can be rough for a computer to handle, i don't have any problem.

Do you think i could handle the 4k RAW files? 2K RAW even?

Any imput would be appreciated. Thanks!
 
The 780 will be plenty. I use a 680, which works wonders. I have 16gb ram which sometimes feel like a bit strained from time to time, but the GPU is not to blame at all.
 
The current major issue with 4K raw is hard drive storage space. We are still a few years away for the average small production house being able to reliably and cheaply store 4k raw data. The largest commercially available HD's are 4TB, and that can get eaten up pretty fast. Current processing power should allow for 4K raw editing especially when coupled with NLE's that utilize your GPU card(s) for processing power
 
Without having done much 4k editing, I would also imagine that the 4TB drives are not exactly fast, and processing that much data will be rough on them. More often than not, I find that harddrives prove to be rather annoying bottlenecks in terms of performance.
 
You really need RAIDS, there are many RAID5 solutions out there, they are the best solution, they are secure if drives fail they just rebuild to the hot spare and you keep on working. They can consist of many inexpensive (relatively) 7200 or 5900 rpm drives.

Like the Pegasus lineup:
http://www.promise.com/promotion_page/promotion_page.aspx?region=en-global&rsn=100

Pegasus2 R8 : 8 x 4TB* Model = 32TB and you can Daisy chain up to six Thunderbolt™ 2 devices.

There are many others out there as well not just the new TB2 but for the money this is the fastest way to go, at least for now.

Remember if you start working in 4K you need to charge an appropriate amount more for your investment. Don't just give it away...
 
olof said:
You really need RAIDS, there are many RAID5 solutions out there, they are the best solution, they are secure if drives fail they just rebuild to the hot spare and you keep on working. They can consist of many inexpensive (relatively) 7200 or 5900 rpm drives.

Like the Pegasus lineup:
http://www.promise.com/promotion_page/promotion_page.aspx?region=en-global&rsn=100

Pegasus2 R8 : 8 x 4TB* Model = 32TB and you can Daisy chain up to six Thunderbolt™ 2 devices.

There are many others out there as well not just the new TB2 but for the money this is the fastest way to go, at least for now.

Remember if you start working in 4K you need to charge an appropriate amount more for your investment. Don't just give it away...
Click to expand...

Wouldnt using a 5900 rpm drive be gut wrenchingly slow in terms of data management, or will that not matter much? Or would you just use it for storage, and then move any given project which you're working on to a faster internal harddrive? I just know that even my F3, which is one of the faster 3.5 harddrives out there, can feel dreadfully slow when moving larger files, or searching the index database on it.
 
JensK said:
The 780 will be plenty. I use a 680, which works wonders. I have 16gb ram which sometimes feel like a bit strained from time to time, but the GPU is not to blame at all.
Click to expand...

Did you already play with the Sony 4K RAW DNG or DPX?
It's a huge difference to Sony 2k RAW or 1080 Blackmagic RAW files
2K RAW works like a charm on my iMac but 4K makes the engine stutter.
 
I had a couple of DNG files I borrowed from a friend. That said, this was from the new BlackMagic camera, but it was 4k all the same. I'm not claiming it couldn't have run smoother, and I'm not sure I would want to be using my setup for a feature film at all, but the small testing I did, the computer held up nicely. Again, I think the bottleneck for me was ram moreso than the GPU, but I would have to conduct some more testing to be sure, which I can sometime tomorrow, if I have time.

In any case, I still think the GTX 780 is a monster card which will be able to do pretty much anything you ask of it. I know its not a quadro, but if my 680 can hold up, the 780 should be able to run it smoothly, so long as the rest of the computer won't bottleneck it.

I should mention, I'm on a windows machine. Not sure if that changes anything. I know my girlfriends macbook pro seems to be able to do rather spectacular things performance-wise, even though its somewhat limited in terms of hardware.
 
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Processor, memory, gpu and raid. I have an i7 3930k, gtx 780ti (25% faster than reg 780), lsi 9271 raid card, in raid 6,With 8/2TB re4 wd drives (enterprise) and 64GB memory. I have no issues editing 12 bit 444, 2k or 4k (compressed). I would stay away from anything in raid0, definitely use a raid card (on board raid is shady). Lately with a decent video card, newer processor and relatively cheap memory, where most bottlenecks occur is drive speed. Get a decent raid and the rest is gravy. With a fast raid, gtx 680, 32GB raM should be enough for what you need but I can't overstate enough how important your drive set up is.
 
All you 4K guys are pretty funny...L0L. Uncompressed 4k RAW is about 325MB/s. Achievable with a decent RAID setup, but.....
We're talkin' a terabyte per hour. So, if you're running RAID5, that's 2 terabytes per hour. Not too unachievable...just hope you got the disks and the RAID arrays to back it up. And, I have to ask why? There's no demand for 4K. Average consumers don't even know what 2K is. OK, so, knowledgeable clients are starting to ask for it. The question is, are they willing to pay for it when they can have HD for much less?

And, I might add, will the talent be happy with the brutallly sharp appearance of their skin, or will the editor have to dumb down the footage, in post, to make them look better? And, finally, if you think focus was critical with HD, wait 'til you try to FF in 4K!
 
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Funny thing about technology and evolution. It's not linear. After 35 years in the business, I've seen a lot of change. Each step forward doesn't stay the same as the last step forward. It's a logarithmic progression, in terms of the step size. DV to HD is not the same as HD to 4k. But, you don't have to believe me.....time will tell, rightly or wrongly.

Why 4k? HD happened when people were fat with $$ in their wallets. The world has changed. It remains to be seen if 4k will be a consumer success. Obviously, Hollywood will embrace it, but, will indies? we'll see.
 
cuervo, 4K RAW might not be of benefit to us smaller outfits at the moment - you're right, the file sizes are simply unwieldy. But I look forward to shooting 4K compressed and finishing in HD. For me, 4K compressed is simply a great acquisition format for delivering in HD. While I do intend to capture the 10-bit HD from my O7Q for most work, my higher-end work will get shot in 4K - mainly for the flexibility in post.

Also, when I do camera tracking for graphics work, which I tend to do frequently... the extra resolution will help the tracking accuracy as well.

While I agree, 4K is a couple years off from in-the-home adoption with a good distribution network, I still think there's plenty of added benefit for us on a production side.
 
Alan,

I totally agree with you. No argument from me. I'm excited about playing around with 4K; and, being on the leading edge of the technology. All I'm sayin' is that it isn't all wonderfulness without it's drawbacks. And resolving htese very real drawbacks are part of what needs to evolve. Before HD became the defacto norm, a lot of computer technology had to be commercialized. It'll take a year or two for things like Thunderbolt to become de riguer. Instead of just jumping up and down for the glee of some kind of magical solution, things will evolve...if the market is there. Some of the younger people just don't think of these things. They'll drop a ton of $$ on some kind of panacea, expecting nirvana....hell, things just don't work that way. In a way, we're all beta testers. And who pays for it? well, hmmm....looks an awful like us.
 
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I don't have a reasonable argument either. But my gut feeling says we will be in the 4K thing faster than we can imagine.
 
From a hometheater standpoint, there is a lot of substantial hype in Denmark regarding 4k televisions in Denmark currently. Much more so than what 3D ever managed to get us hyped. I think we'll be much more adaptive to 4k. Especially because we already understand the HD concept, and its not difficult to phantom what 4 times that could potentially offer the end user. Most of our large media storehouses are featuring 4K televisions at reasonable prices already, and they are selling fairly nicely too.
 
Hey Cuervo, you're right in many ways but don't you remember when having 8GB ram was a lot, then having 16GB was like wow! It wasn't even that long ago, I have a feeling the next step for us is petabytes. Once prices come down to the level we're at now those big numbers won't mean a thing. I don't know if that's an effect of moores law but the next big revolution I believe will consist of bigger drive space for sure. For right now I agree most of us will struggle with the huge data rates but I can see sometime soon where that won't matter.
 
yeah, marino....i get it. You know, sometimes i wonder if manufacturers already have all this technology developed. and they wait for the applications to come along, and let the need and crescendo build, then release what they've had for 10 years.....
 
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