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Video editing

S

sachman

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 30, 2010
38
0
so I've got a new camcorder and go pro. Both shoot 4K
I'm amateur level. Have done some edits go FCP yrs ago (but only basic stuff) and looking for a good video editing app.
iMovie is just a pain with importing and also timeline annoys me - if you can call it that.

I've tried lightworks which is better but still has it's annoying things - mainly because I can't view back 4K video it just skips so prolongs editing by a long time. I'm not sure if that's my computer or lightworks. I have an 21inch iMac with i5 and 16gb RAM. Nothing else running. Hard drive is nearly full but 70gb free 1tb size.

So are there any other apps similar to lightworks?
Do you think it's my computer or lightworks causing the stuttering on 4K playback whilst editing?
Also I can't see how to create a signature on my profile info

Thanks
 
August 2011

70gb after import.
I have got more to upload though so will need to free up.
Would it be possible to run it off an external or will that just make things slower? I know iMovie can do that
 
As a general rule, 4K demands lots and lots of resources, including CPU, RAM, and disk - from relatively recent systems. FCPX and iMovie are close cousins, and the workflows are similar. Apple has made a design decision that if you can use older systems with these editors, and have a good experience, but you will need to wait for import while proxy media is generated. The other by-product of this is you will need lots of disk. Yes, you can use external drives - a general use case for 4K video.
 
kohlson said:
but you will need to wait for import while proxy media is generated.
Click to expand...

This is really annoying and makes no sense and why I don't like either. If I have 2hrs of video. After editing I have 1hr as I've cut and trimmed the rubbish bits.
Doing it at the start means the rendering /conversion etc. Is double than if done at the end which is why I like lightworks.


kohlson said:
Yes, you can use external drives - a general use case for 4K video.
Click to expand...

If I edit directly from external HD how much does that slow down editing importing and exporting etc?
 
Some thoughts...

First, it's time to give your internal drive a good "cleaning out".
'Nuff said about that.

Next, I think the fastest way to -edit- 4k would be with Final Cut Pro using "proxy" media (instead of direct editing of 4k).
It will take some time to -generate- the proxy media, but, once done, everything will go faster and easier.
 
sachman said:
This is really annoying and makes no sense and why I don't like either. If I have 2hrs of video. After editing I have 1hr as I've cut and trimmed the rubbish bits.
Doing it at the start means the rendering /conversion etc. Is double than if done at the end which is why I like lightworks.
If I edit directly from external HD how much does that slow down editing importing and exporting etc?
Click to expand...

Its not that simple to explain.

As someone mentioned, you don't have the computer to view and edit 4K video at the same time. Its going to be choppy regardless of the software you use.

FCP solves this by creating proximedia that can be viewed and edited at the same time without artifacts. This proxi sumarizes the RAW movie and is much smaller/less demanding. Converting takes some time, exporting the edited movie back to a 4K file also takes awhile. exporting takes the edits you made to the proxi video, applies them to the original 4K video and exports the results as a 4K video.

I can't tell what vintage your iMac is

Is your internal iMac drive rotational or solid state/flash?

Does the iMac have TB ports, USBC, or just USB2

An external SSD drive on a TB port will be faster than a rotational internal drive.
 
Haha I have already cut 100s of go over the last yr or so. I seem to be constantly trimming data.

I would be willing to buy FCP if I can watch it real time but I've heard the new version isn't as good as previous.

I do not have a SSD inside my iMac. An external one is quite expensive for a big one that's the problem. It has 6770m graphics card
 
I use FCPX with a 1TB and 500GB Samsung T3 external SSD on a quad core mini. Works really well, these are fast disks, about 400MB/sec. The 500gb model is about $200 which isn't too bad. There are other brands that are cheaper. But I don't work with 4k footage. Seems to me that you are going to have to spend some money to do this properly.

There's a free trial of FCPX, it is completely functional for 30 days. So why not just download and see how it works for you? You could get a cheap external disk and move a bunch of stuff off your internal drive temporarily to make room. https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/trial/
 
sachman said:
Haha I have already cut 100s of go over the last yr or so. I seem to be constantly trimming data.

I would be willing to buy FCP if I can watch it real time but I've heard the new version isn't as good as previous.

I do not have a SSD inside my iMac. An external one is quite expensive for a big one that's the problem. It has 6770m graphics card
Click to expand...

There is no editing software, period, that is not going to studder on your machine.

Editing 4K on any machine can be expensive compared to 1080, but then expensive is subjective. Capturing is the inexpensive part. FCP allows you to go cheap on hardware at the expense of longer import/export timelines. Thats not an issue for thousands of 4K hobbyists. Just the nature of 4k at the moment.

Dunno where you've heard that the new version of FCP is not as good, you may want to stop reading that source as thats not the case. Its now different for sure, but has much better performance. Try it out for free.
 
ColdCase said:
Dunno where you've heard that the new version of FCP is not as good, you may want to stop reading that source as thats not the case. Its now different for sure, but has much better performance.
Click to expand...

I used the legacy version of FCP since 2002 and since I could work fast, was reluctant to upgrade until a couple months ago. I totally agree, FCPX is very nice and the performance is noticeably better and it also crashes less often. I think that's just a simple case of old software not being optimized for new hardware. Also, the legacy version is a 32 bit program that can only use 4GB of memory total. That's a big handicap for starters.

At $300 FCPX is a bargain IMO, especially when I think about the thousands I spent on legacy versions and upgrades.
 
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I will try it out. £300 a bit much though for basic editing maybe once or twice a year.
Is FCP proxy formation faster than iMovie importing. I basically want to get editing as fast as possible. Don't mind if afterwards export is long
 
Not sure if it's been explained this way, so my apologies if I missed it. FCPX offers a few ways to bring media into projects. Depending on what media you have, and what resources your working with, and what you're planning to do with the clips in FCPX, you make different choices: camera native, optimized, or proxy. See https://larryjordan.com/articles/fcpx-when-to-optimize-media/ and https://support.apple.com/kb/PH12702.

Note that iMovie and FCPX are close in design and UX. So if you're unhappy with iMovie, try out the 3-day trial for FCPX first, to make sure it's what you want.
 
sachman said:
....Is FCP proxy formation faster than iMovie importing. I basically want to get editing as fast as possible. Don't mind if afterwards export is long
Click to expand...

Importing to FCPX with proxy creation takes a little while, but you have no other choice. Any other video editing software -- Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, etc. requires proxy creation to edit H264 4k smoothly. FCPX creates proxies 2x faster than Premiere.

If you only have 70GB free out of a 1TB drive, you are fortunate your system is even running. Ideally you want at least 20% free space on a rotating hard drive. You actually need two additional hard drives, one to offload your system drive and another one to back everything up on.

Proxies take considerable space, roughly 60% of the original H264 file size. So for every 100MB if video, you'll need at least 60MB for proxy storage. Again -- you have no choice, no matter what software you use. This is the cost of shooting and editing 4k.
 
joema2 said:
If you only have 70GB free out of a 1TB drive, you are fortunate your system is even running. Ideally you want at least 20% free space on a rotating hard drive. You actually need two additional hard drives, one to offload your system drive and another one to back everything up o
Click to expand...

Spot on. It still works even with 15gb free lol. I have 2 hard drives exactly for that which I am slowly offloading on. Problem is I am adding more files at the same rate. Takes a long time to offload as I am doing it in a very organised way to make sure I don't duplicate etc.

Looks like FCP trial is my next step (after freeing up space) though I might try straight off the external hard drive
Thanks guys
 
Out of interest. Do you guys delete all your original videos and photos once you've edited and saved them?
 
I have a library for originals I want to keep, like family videos, and use FCPX to media manage (index) them by a bunch of different criteria Faces, dates, location, subject). A nice powerful feature of FCPX.

I also have a library for source material I want to keep, if you ever want to re-edit. The best quality is editing from the original files.

Otherwise they are of no future use and trashed.

I have about 50TB of storage, so I'm not all that concerned about storage space yet. Your mileage may vary.
 
I keep my current projects on a 1tb external SSD and constantly have to do housecleaning to keep enough free space. When I'm done with original media, I move it to an big external hard drive. I have an ongoing project to capture about 200 legacy DV, DVCAM an HDV tapes going back to 2001 which I'm archiving on external drives. Back then disks were expensive and small, so I generally deleted files after I was finished editing. But there are many things there worth saving and no reason not to get them off the tapes and onto disk now.

If you plan to work with 4k (or even HD) you will just need to accept the fact you'll need to spend on a number of external drives. I have two 5tb drives just for video and two more as backups. As I capture all this legacy footage, I'm getting to the point where I will want two more drives so that I can have another layer of backup.
 
sachman: Posted from Apple, below, just in case you didn't read it yet lol:

Create optimized media: This option transcodes video to the Apple ProRes 422 codec format, which provides better performance during editing, faster render times, and better color quality for compositing. If the original camera format can be edited with good performance, this option is dimmed.

Create proxy media: This option creates video and still-image proxy files. Video is transcoded to the Apple ProRes 422 Proxy codec format, which provides high-quality files useful for offline editing at the original frame size, frame rate, and aspect ratio. Final Cut Pro creates medium-quality (one-half resolution) proxy versions that increase editing performance and take up considerably less storage space than optimized files.
Click to expand...
Just noticed it wasn't linked, and probably explains it best to me ;)

Also, I find it funny that people don't like the new version of FCPX. I will admit it reminds me of the DAW interface more than any other editor I've used over years (which can be confusing to some people, I know), so it was fairly simple for me to pick up and use without much effort on my part. The storyline is a great concept, and it's just a workflow adjustment to get real fluent with the layout. Hotkeys, shortcuts, and macros (I assume but need to test), will likely be your best friend if you use it a lot. More often than not I find myself thinking "that makes sense" when learning new things on FCPX, with the opposite thought watching people use Premiere/etc......... but that's how it's been for me.

I especially like how in-depth it goes for being a software that's only $300 (or $200 with their education bundle lol). I'll probably switch to Avid for software down the road, but that will be after things develop on my end. I've used a lot of lower-grade software prior to this, and nothing else could match what I'm doing now. It is very capable software, it's just a matter of how badly you care to learn the software, I think.

edit: if you didn't know about the education bundle from Apple, click here for link
 
Last edited:
sachman said:
August 2011

70gb after import.
I have got more to upload though so will need to free up.
Would it be possible to run it off an external or will that just make things slower? I know iMovie can do that
Click to expand...


70gb is not enough for 4k

Ive had temp files of 200gb for a very short 4k clip before now, espically if your using stabilisation or any other effects that require analysis before rendering
 
Philcox19842013 said:
Ive had temp files of 200gb for a very short 4k clip before now, espically if your using stabilisation or any other effects that require analysis before rendering
Click to expand...
Now I'm curious how much storage video stabilization is going to cost me.... I mean, I can always clean it up but damn lol, I'll need to keep an eye on that in the future
 
thizisweird said:
Now I'm curious how much storage video stabilization is going to cost me....
Click to expand...

Have you ever tried this with 4k footage? I don't use 4k, but just based on my use with HD, I hope you have a very fast computer. Just last night I tried applying stabilization to a an 8 minute 720p30 clip. I'm using a 16gb, 1tb ssd 2.6ghz quad core i7 Mini with a geekbench rating around 12,500. I ended up taking a dinner break after about 10 minutes and I don't think it was even half finished yet. ;)

If you've never used it, also realize that it will zoom in on your footage, since the scaling and rotation that it does leaves you with a smaller usuable window. The shakier your original clip is and the longer it is, the more it will be zoomed. This typically creates a very noticeable drop in resolution.
 
Boyd01 said:
Have you ever tried this with 4k footage? I don't use 4k, but just based on my use with HD, I hope you have a very fast computer. Just last night I tried applying stabilization to a an 8 minute 720p30 clip. I'm using a 16gb, 1tb ssd 2.6ghz quad core i7 Mini with a geekbench rating around 12,500. I ended up taking a dinner break after about 10 minutes and I don't think it was even half finished yet. ;)

If you've never used it, also realize that it will zoom in on your footage, since the scaling and rotation that it does leaves you with a smaller usuable window. The shakier your original clip is and the longer it is, the more it will be zoomed. This typically creates a very noticeable drop in resolution.
Click to expand...
I've done "4k editing" in the sense that the source footage was supplied 4k res, it was then imported to a 1080p project as proxy and/or optimised media lol. So.... I wouldn't really count that lol

Stabilization is a necessary evil, sadly. Not ideal, but it helps immensely with certain shots. Would be nice to use the cut footage to redraw the picture, but I'm sure that's not on the level of software I'm look at haha
 
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