Your computer!
When starting out in the video production world, people often overlook their computers and go all-in on gear. This can be a huge mistake because modern cameras have tough 4k codecs that can only be efficiently processed on a decent computer.
Here are a few considerations when it comes to purchasing a computer for video editing.
I’ll start with the easy one, Apple. If you’re invested in the Apple ecosystem or you want to join, then you’re in luck. In the past, Mac devices, on paper, was overpriced. They used common Intel and AMD components, and their mark-up seemed to be only in their design and MacOS. But as of 2020, Apple has begun their transition to their custom silicon and pretty much delivered on all the promises. Faster and more power-efficient. Today they have a whole range of their custom silicon, the M1. It starts from their iPads (which is not recommended for video editing due to iPadOS) all the way to their iMacs and new Mac Studio. You can get their entry-level MacBook Air and you should be able to edit 4k footage. We own the 13 inch MacBook Pro, only for the extra RAM and thicker chassis for the fan. I have to say, it gives our main workhorse PC a run for its money at almost the same price!
If you intend on building a PC for video editing, it gets WAY more complicated because you have to handpick every component. I’m just going to highlight some important specs and if you want to learn more, check out Gerald Undone’s and WhoIsMattJohnson PC building videos.
So you are going to need a motherboard, power supply, RAM, CPU, graphics card, CPU cooler, fans and a case. Do not cheap out on your motherboard and power supply! You can get cheap versions of these but remember, the motherboard is the ‘brain’’ of your PC that connects and allows all your components to talk to each other. Your power supply, supplies everything with the magical power that comes from the wall. So you can imagine what could happen if you get a cheap power supply.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what components you will need:
- CPU: more cores the better. Recent AMD Ryzen CPUs are amazing.
- RAM: At least 32GB. Bigger projects eat up RAM, on all editing software.
- SSD: Avoid editing from a hard drive. SSDs are way faster and allow those big video files to be read a lot faster
- Fast graphics card: Highly recommend the RTX 3000 series from Nvidia. Their CUDA cores and NVENC encoder really accelerate overall render times.
So make sure you budget or save up for a decent computer!
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