iMac specs to cut GH4's 4K in Premiere?

J

jesteves

New member
Greetings,

Anyone editing GH4's 4K footage natively with Premiere Pro CC (2015) on a iMac?

I'm investing in a new 27'' iMac soon and as much as I would like to just max out all the specs, choices will have to be made.

My question is - from the following - what is the most crucial upgrade(s)?
Processor: i5 (3.2GHz) vs i7 (4.0GHz)
RAM: 16 GB vs 32 GB
Storage: 1 TB Fusion Drive vs 256 GB SSD drive
Graphics (no upgrade option): AMD Radeon R9 M390 (2 GB)

Cheers,
J
 
RAM you can always upgrade yourself later so that's no point doing when you order it.
I would go with the i7 and Fusion Drive.

If it's not super urgent, I would hold out a bit as Apple is most likely updating the iMacs this fall...
 
I can say from experience on one particular PC that an i7 with 16GB of high speed RAM and an R9 family GFX card can play 4k footage from a GH4 with moderate effects just fine. Prices will drop when the next generation releases, so it might be best to wait. Or go PC, where the prices dropped a long time ago.
 
Last edited:
I transcode any native footage before editing.

Something else to consider... Apple is getting set to release new iMac models soon.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the help. I can't wait much longer and as much as I would like to get the bang-for-buck that a PC could offer, it's not an option in our Mac workflow.
I'll hold for now and keep transcoding footage so I can work on my Macbook Pro.

Cheers.
 
Note that with the 3.3GHz/2TB Fusion version of the 27-inch iMac you can choose between two GPUs:

AMD Radeon R9 M395 graphics processor with 2GB of GDDR5 memory
Configurable to AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory

http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac?product=MK482LL/A&step=config

However, an Adobe engineer who works on GPU optimizations told me at NAB (April this year) that the current batch of iMacs can't handle much 4K processing. HD is no problem, but he said the GPU, even the optional 4GB one, ain't great editing and finishing 4K.

However, you could perhaps take advantage of the proxy editing features in the latest releases of Premiere Pro CC to get around some of that bottleneck.

However, pretty solid rumors suggest new Macbook Pros will be released in October, and the story goes they'll have. Less solid (at least that I've seen) say new iMacs aren't far behind.

As you've probably seen:
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top