Going to buy Gopro Hero 6 - but...

[cpnotebook80]

I have mac pro 5.1 and not sure if my specs will be able to encode the HEVC format of the 4k etc. Its been a while since I did any video editing maybe like 2-3 years. Usually it was just 1080p.
I haven't updated the mac pro to the newest OS fearing that something will go wrong.

Is there a place online i can test my system to see if it works with video editing of such formats or playback etc. Thank you

 

[h9826790]

Encoding is never an issue, just a matter of speed.

Decoding (play back) will very depends on the video's bitrate. For 1080P, your Mac should able to play a reasonable bitrate H265 video. All you need is just a correct player. Both IINA and VLC (V4.0 Nighty build) should able to do it properly.

 

[cpnotebook80]

Encoding is never an issue, just a matter of speed.

Decoding (play back) will very depends on the video's bitrate. For 1080P, your Mac should able to play a reasonable bitrate H265 video. All you need is just a correct player. Both IINA and VLC (V4.0 Nighty build) should able to do it properly.

will my system handle 4k res fine too?

 

[h9826790]

will my system handle 4k res fine too?

If you mean playback, it will very depends on bitrate. However, I didn't own your CPU, can't test what's the max bitrate it can handle.

If fact, there are lots of 4K demo videos on the net. You can simply download and try.

I suggest you download a high bitrate 8 bit video. And then encode it to difference lower bitrate H265 video. Then test them one by one. In my own test, for normal videos, anything above 20Mbps (average, variable bitrate) looks pretty much identical on the TV (my TV is 84", should be large enough to see the details). In fact, once above 12Mbps, the difference is very very small.

So, you may create few videos e.g. 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 22, 25, 28, 30 Mbps. And test them one by one. Then find out if your Mac can handle them all, and pick the quality that you believe is optimum for yourself. Of course, you can try higher bitrate if you want to.

 

[orph]

just grab some gopro hero 6 'sample files' (not from youtube but actual not changed files) then grab the video editor you want to use.
the go pro app (i think dont have one so not 100% but think you get this with a gopro)
Quik-Desktop
https://shop.gopro.com/EMEA/softwareandapp/quik-|-desktop/Quik-Desktop.html#
imovie (you have that)

even FCX has a 30 day demo

or more complex but free davinciresolve (can be scary for beginners but amazing app)
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/products/davinciresolve/

and just give it a go

edit
found a 1 min sample at 4K/60fps http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/701840/GoPro 4K60.mp4 , it's short but you can just past the same clip in to the time line a lot to get a longer duration to play with.
(from this video

link in description)

pps yes you can edit it but may be slow at times.