help me spend my money imac for 4k footage

[norton.rider]

Hiya everyone,

Struggling to decide on what spec to choose for a new Imac previously just done still's stuff,

Just purchased a new GoPro Hero 6 for doing some 4k footage it records in Hevc.265

Been looking at the following specs

27" 5k retina with 575 with a 2tb fusion £2,129

27" 5k retina with the 580 i5 and the fusion drive £2,249

27" 5k with the 580 i5 and a 512 GB SSD £2,429

+ factoring in the cost of final cut

just wondering what spec would you go for and what would actually handle the footage?

getting an i7 would be a stretch but not which way to go

Ideally wanted to stay around the 2k mark but guess thats gone outta the window already haha
Thanks in advance,

 

[tubeexperience]

Well, the memory and storage is upgradable, but the graphics is not.

So, just get the graphics you want and you can upgrade the memory and storage later.

 

[jerwin]

I have a sneaking suspicion that the 570 with ssd will be faster, out of the box, than the 580 with fusion drive for FCP. pci-e flash drives are wicked fast, and final cut pro takes full advantage of them. However, you do miss out on the i7 (not upgradeable) and the faster video card (sort of upgradeable, at great expense, through a TB3 box).

 

[EugW]

27" 5K Retina with 512 GB SSD and hex-core Core i5-8500 and ??? GPU, in October (hopefully).

However, even then, you will probably need to convert to proxy to get a smooth experience. (I'm not a video editor, but nonetheless, the point is HEVC can be very, very hard on a machine.)

 

[norton.rider]

Got a go on the 570 model today wasn't to bad actually which surprised me
Currently thinking the mid range one i7 with 575 card and and the SSD which takes it up to around 2,400

Then it got me thinking about Mac book pros haha choices

 

[EugW]

Got a go on the 570 model today wasn't to bad actually which surprised me
Currently thinking the mid range one i7 with 575 card and and the SSD which takes it up to around 2,400

Then it got me thinking about Mac book pros haha choices

Let us know how the scrubbing is on it with the 4K h.265 HEVC footage from your GoPro. I'm thinking it would be quite jumpy, but then again I'm not sure how much better it would be (if any better) with the new 2018 iMac models likely coming this fall, with hex-core CPUs and updated GPUs.

 

[norton.rider]

I converted it to the apple format on import ran pretty well then, bit of frame jumping scrubbing on it about 4 mins to export a 1 min clip on h.264

Am seriously considering the higher end Mac book Pro tbh spec wise seems good

 

[EugW]

I converted it to the apple format on import ran pretty well then, bit of frame jumping scrubbing on it about 4 mins to export a 1 min clip on h.264

Am seriously considering the higher end Mac book Pro tbh spec wise seems good

Ah OK, so I guess you're using a proxy.

 

[ChopinGuy]

Not to suggest that the 580 upgrade isn't worth it - if you can swing that and the i7 upgrade definitely do it for video work. But look at this video, and specifically they benchmark section (5:27-7:30) on the machines which suggest that the processor might be the more key factor than how the systems are utilizing the GPU (or lack thereof):

 

[norton.rider]

Oo

Not to suggest that the 580 upgrade isn't worth it - if you can swing that and the i7 upgrade definitely do it for video work. But look at this video, and specifically they benchmark section (5:27-7:30) on the machines which suggest that the processor might be the more key factor than how the systems are utilizing the GPU (or lack thereof):

Thanks I'll have a watch of that now was just reading about the keyboard issue on the Mac book Pro so might give that one a miss and edit footage after the trips rather than while on them
[doublepost=1528389714][/doublepost]Really interesting clip thanks for sharing!