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Mac for go pro 4k

U

unixphone

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 25, 2008
133
4
Hello,

I have an entry MacBook 2015... it is a perfect laptop for me.
However, it is very laggy when I try to do some video editing on my go pro 4k 120FPS. I tried to play them on iPhoto, Go Pro Quik and iMove. No luck.

Do you think an iPad pro can handle 4k with 120FPS or 960 with 240FPS?
Can Mac mini or iMac handle it?
I am pretty new on the video editing...
 
I don't do 4k editing.
There are some here who do, and who are very knowledgeable, perhaps they'll enter the conversation.

Having said that...
For 4k, you probably want a 27" 5k i7 iMac.
Or perhaps a 2018 Mac Mini with an i7.

You'll want to use Final Cut Pro X and use the "create proxy media" option.

Trying to edit 4k WITHOUT creating proxy media must be unbelievably slow on a 2015 MBP...
 
As a data point, I have an iMac Pro with FCPX and work with 4k 30fps go pro video now and then. Thats the limit of my camera. The Mac doesn't break a sweat editing, no stutter, no lag, no need for proxy. I routinely work with 2K, however, as the intended destination works well with 720p and 2k gives me the best scaling/cropping compromise for my workflow.

If you intend to stabilize or use other CPU intensive effects, you'd appreciate as much CPU horsepower as you can afford.
 
The current GoPro 7 can record in 4K at 50/60 frames per second and in 1080p the fps are 200/240, depending on regional setting.

Where do you get the 4K 120fps from?

As an aside, my 2016 MacBook struggle with the HEVC encoded 4k 50fps material, but if you have the time, you can let FPC X create proxies.
 
Gwendolini said:
The current GoPro 7 can record in 4K at 50/60 frames per second and in 1080p the fps are 200/240, depending on regional setting.

Where do you get the 4K 120fps from?

As an aside, my 2016 MacBook struggle with the HEVC encoded 4k 50fps material, but if you have the time, you can let FPC X create proxies.
Click to expand...
My bad.. it is 1440 with 120 and 960 with 240.

Maybe I am not supposed to use 4k? Sorry, I am kind of new at this. I heard 2.7k with 60 is good for snowboarding.
I have 2015 early MacBook. What settings can it handle? Do I need a new mac?
 
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unixphone said:
Hello,

I have an entry MacBook 2015... it is a perfect laptop for me.
However, it is very laggy when I try to do some video editing on my go pro 4k 120FPS. I tried to play them on iPhoto, Go Pro Quik and iMove. No luck.

Do you think an iPad pro can handle 4k with 120FPS or 960 with 240FPS?
Can Mac mini or iMac handle it?
I am pretty new on the video editing...
Click to expand...

You need a video editing software that supports built-in GPU and none of the software you described do so effectively.

Which is why I use VideoProc as it supports 4K and supposedly 8K editing (I haven't tried this) and works with Macs that support a GPU even with my 8 year old Mac Mini. Prior to VideoProc, I could not even play a 4K footage recorded with my Lumix camera with my 2011 Mac Mini. But when I use VideoProc, it not only played the footage perfectly, it also converts 4K to high quality 1080p really fast. It can up and downscale video formats really fast as it supports GPU rendering. VideoProc will analyze what GPU you have and will tell you what video resolution that it could render effectively, or it'll use proxies. Obviously the better the GPU, the higher video resolution it can render.

I use VideoProc to basically downscale the 4K video to 1080p or Full HD, which is pretty high quality and then use for iMovie with 720p footage (my older Contour) to make action movies. Work really well! Wish I have a better GPU than what I got now so I could take even better advantage with VideoProc. The beauty of VideoProc is that it is very friendly to older hardware. You can get a really old Mac Pro with a power GPU (Radeon or GeForce with lots of video RAM) as it runs even on Snow Leopard, Mavericks and needs only 1Gb of ram. It's not resource intensive.

If you like VideoProc, they are offering free giveaway licensing with no further updates to that software until this end of April. You need to look for the giveaway portal to earn your free copy so to speak.
 
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"If you like VideoProc, they are offering free giveaway licensing with no further updates to that software until this end of April. You need to look for the giveaway portal to earn your free copy so to speak."

What's the URL for this?
 
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if you want a mac, then you are probably going to get a speced out mini or higher end iMac. neither of them are going to be amazing for that. if you truly only care about editing, and you are happy using your laptop for your main computer you should just buy a PC tower. anything with a new desktop i7 or i9 - 8th or 9th gen, along with desktop RAM, and a desktop GPU will do great. you'll also have the luxury of having multiple HDD bays so you can just install cheap storage.
 
I am in exact situation as OP;

Have a Late-2013 MBP (2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 / 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3)

After picking up a GOPRO Hero 9 and shooting 4k 60FPS - video does not even play on my Mac!

It just stutters - showing I guess how outdated my once powerhouse Mac is.

Any MacBook Pro's you can edit 4k on right now?
 
Sam5281 said:
I am in exact situation as OP;

Have a Late-2013 MBP (2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 / 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3)

After picking up a GOPRO Hero 9 and shooting 4k 60FPS - video does not even play on my Mac!

It just stutters - showing I guess how outdated my once powerhouse Mac is.

Any MacBook Pro's you can edit 4k on right now?
Click to expand...

The M1 Macs can do so with ease and silence and the latest Intel Macs with more noise.

What NLE are you using?
 
Gwendolini said:
The M1 Macs can do so with ease and silence and the latest Intel Macs with more noise.

What NLE are you using?
Click to expand...
Great info! Thank you!

Software ive used; GoPro Quick - QuickTime - and that's it?

Do you think I should try a dedicated Video Editing program? Though not sure that'd help my cause with my machine.
 
The GoPro 9 might use HEVC for encoding their videos, a computer from 2013 will struggle regardless of what NLE you use, unless the NLE offers some kind of proxy workflow. FCP and DaVinci Resolve (free) offer that, as for iMovie (free) I don't know.

In other words, to properly edit your 4K footage, which is most likely using HEVC/H.265 as codec, you might have to transcode the footage to an optimised codec (ProRes 422 for example, but it will take up to five times more storage than the original MP4) or a proxy codec (ProRes LT, takes a bit more storage than the original, but is a smaller resolution and less compute heavy). Both can be done within FCP, but DaVinci Resolve also offers similar workflows you can read up upon.

There is no real advantage to buying FCP if DaVinci Resolve and its Cut Page can do similar things for your needs.
 
Gwendolini said:
The GoPro 9 might use HEVC for encoding their videos, a computer from 2013 will struggle regardless of what NLE you use, unless the NLE offers some kind of proxy workflow. FCP and DaVinci Resolve (free) offer that, as for iMovie (free) I don't know.

In other words, to properly edit your 4K footage, which is most likely using HEVC/H.265 as codec, you might have to transcode the footage to an optimised codec (ProRes 422 for example, but it will take up to five times more storage than the original MP4) or a proxy codec (ProRes LT, takes a bit more storage than the original, but is a smaller resolution and less compute heavy). Both can be done within FCP, but DaVinci Resolve also offers similar workflows you can read up upon.

There is no real advantage to buying FCP if DaVinci Resolve and its Cut Page can do similar things for your needs.
Click to expand...

It certain does use HEVC.



Message prompted from GoPro: "Some footage may not play correctly. Some videos we imported use HEVC encoding. Your computer may not meet the minimum system requirements to play HEVC Media"

Ive started using the program Handbrake - which does exactly that - renders them to lower resolution. But not exactly the reason why I got a 4k 60FPS go pro to begin with!

Even in handbrake - 4min videos take upwards of 20min or more to encode- and the whole time computers fans are going wild. So assume it could be no long term good for this machine.

Should I just be looking into a new MBP?

Thanks guys!
 
While HandBrake is a good application, it might not be the best solution to use, as it compresses the image further using whatever H.264 setting you have.

Like I wrote before, you could give DaVinci Resolve a go, it is free, and look into its Proxy and Optimised workflow.

Or you could get a newer Mac, any M1 Mac will do, even the base one. I have the base MBA and the 16GB Mac mini, both have no problem decoding HEVC/H265 in 4K, which I hardly use, as only my iPhone uses that codec consistently.
 
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