What's your ideal setup and workflow for 4K?

[Robotti]

I'm thinking about slowly getting ready for 4K video editing. I can do small projects with my current setup, which is a 15" rMBP and a Windows PC (i7, SSDs, 970GTX). I'm running out of disk space and external monitor resolution, and basically everything, so if I'm going to do it properly, I have to upgrade a lot.

So, my question to you is, what's your ideal HW & SW setup for editing 4K video? If you already do it, can you share some tips about the workflow?

 

[DavidDoyle]

Larry Jordan has a great article here that may help.

Though I only capture 1920x1080 I do multi cam and my captured files require a lot of disk space - my advice would be to have an external drive for all storage/editing. Considering the sizes of 4K video using the internal disk on any machine probably isn't suitable.

In terms of monitors and CPU/memory etc one thing to note is that you don't need to edit natively in 4K with all the associated overhead - you can generate proxy media (Final Cut X terminology) or similar for editing using smaller files. This can make editing using your internal disk possible (for example if on the road) and reduce strain on your system. Once edited you can then use the original files if you need to check final quality etc and output in 4K.

 

[Robotti]

Thanks for the link, I will read it through.
I'm already struggling with USB3 drive speeds when editing photos and full hd video. I wonder what that will feel like with 4K. Thunderbolt drives are unbelievably expensive compared to USB3. I guess proxy editing is way to go in any case, so basically it comes down to storage space and bandwidth for moving files around.