New Mac Mini with 4K monitor and video editing

[Gherkin]

I sold my Surface Book 2 last night and I'm back to the Mac! Bought my iPad Pro for drawing and now I'm planning on getting a Mac Mini.

My plan is to get the base Mini with i7 upgrade. So it would be the 128 GB SSD (for OS + apps) with 8 GB RAM (I'll upgrade to 16 or 32 later). I'm going to buy the Samsung T5 1 TB external SSD to store all my photos and video.

My two "power" uses with my computer are editing RAW photos (~25 MB per photo) in Lightroom. I don't expect any issues here. I've used slower computers that work just fine.

What are your thoughts on using this set-up with a 4K monitor and video editing though? I use Premiere Pro and I'm reading the newer Intel chips have something called "Quick Sync" which speeds up exporting video so that's encouraging.

Will the Mini have issues though using the integrated Intel graphics and pushing a 4K monitor? I only edit 1080p now but could see going 4K sometime in the future.

I could always get an eGPU but I'm not going to for now as money is a bit tight.

any thoughts? Or should I spend a bit more and get an iMac that has a dedicated graphics card??

 

[archer75]

It will be fine for now. Get the egpu later as needed.
We did the same thing. Picked up the mini and a new ipad pro 12.9" for my wifes photography work. I have 2 drobos connected to it for storage. I got the 512gb storage option and the i7 and added 32gb ram myself. Lightroom catalogs and cache will stay on the internal storage but the library will be on a drobo. That will work out great.
My monitor is a 34" ultra wide 3440x1440 and I love it.

I don't know if it's viable for you but look at final cut pro. It is much faster than premeire and compressor can use the new hardware encoding built in to the mini.

 

[xylitol]

Well, you can proxy edit in Premiere Pro, so you can edit 4K using 1080p temporary files.

 

[stratokaster]

Regarding RAW editing in Lightroom. Try Lightroom CC on your new iPad Pro. Even on my "old" 10.5-inch iPad Pro Lightroom is much faster than on any desktop or laptop I have ever seen. It opens files instantly, renders changes instantly and exports photos in full resolution extremely fast. I also use Affinity Photo with Apple Pencil for more elaborate editing and I absolutely love it. I haven't touched Lightroom or Photoshop on my Mac in 6 months. Right now I plan to switch from CC "Photographer" subscription (Photoshop + Lightroom) to Lightroom CC subscription which will give me 1TB of cloud storage for my photos.

 

[archer75]

My wife has been using lightroom on our old ipad air 2 and it runs well. But she said there's things missing from the ipad and online version that the desktop version has. And other things that take much longer on the ipad/online version due to changes or missing features. This is all her deal so I don't really know. But the program does run very well.