4K video edit- iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)

[jordirobert]

Hi there,
I had the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014) for a couple of years and its good. I do lots of video editing (Premiere pro CC) and recently have been working on a 4K resolution project with many layers of video and the Imac seems to struggle. I can't play back the timeline without rendering constantly.
What do you suggest? Upgrade RAM? Processor? Graphics card?
My spechs
Processor: 4 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 (2x8)
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB

Thank you
Jordi

 

[Bryan Bowler]

Use your system's Activity Monitor to see how much RAM you are utilizing and if your 16GB of RAM is being stretched, then an upgrade to 32GB could inject new life into your machine.

Perhaps an even more important consideration is the storage in which your media is kept. Are you using a SSD drive in your system? If not, that is likely the biggest bottleneck.

And the third question is are you editing your video with proxy files? If not, using proxy files will make a huge difference in speed.

 

[Fishrrman]

There is a dedicated "digital video" forum here at macrumors where you might better pose this question.

I believe that Bryan Bowler is right in reply 2.
Does the version of Premier that you have permit proxy creation/editing for 4k?
If so, try using that.
Otherwise, trying to edit the native files may be .... slow.

Option 2:
Change to Final Cut Pro X and use the proxy media option there.
I've never done 4k editing, but others report it runs very smoothly when using the proxy media option.