Optimizing Your Computer for 4K Editing and Colour Grading

4K Shooters by Vlady Radev

The ability to edit and colour grade 4K footage comes with certain technical requirements that every video editor should be aware of. If you are on the market for a new editing PC or Mac, here are some of the important component features that you should take into consideration.

In the first place, you will definitely need fast internal memory. Probably the best option you have currently is the Solid State Hard Drive Technology. With better overall build quality compared to the traditional spinning drives and considerably faster data transfer rates, SSDs will give you a great and efficient performance, and most importantly, enough speed to process 4K video in real-time. Generally, SSDs provide Read/Write Speed above 200 MB/s and up to 550 MB/s for cutting edge drives as with the standard single spinning drives the range can be anywhere from 50 ? 120MB /s.

The following video produced by Dave Dugdale from LearningDSLRvideo.com will give you some real life examples and better understanding what a single SSD can do for your video editing.

5x faster rendering than HDDs, 4x faster conforming of footage, full quality real-time playback of 4K video ? all of these results are quite impressive indeed, yet the internal memory isn?t going to be the only component that you will need to upgrade. Even more importantly for editing and colour grading is your CPU. read more...