Mid 2012 Macbook Pro 13" i5 dual core 2.5ghz

[henrysephlai]

I am currently doing a video project with my non-retina mid 2012 Macbook Pro 13". It has the i5 2.5ghz dual core. I have upgraded it with two 4gb RAMs, and there is just the 500gb HDD for storage.

Now I know it's not super fast but I want to edit 4k videos or at least be capable of downscaling 4k video clips and produce a 1080 video with Premiere Pro CC 2017. I have video clips that are 120p 1080 and 60fps 4K. For the 120fps 1080 videos, I want to slow down the clips for some slow motion shots.

So far, my MBP can play the video clips smoothly after loading a few seconds but when put into Premiere Pro, they get super slow in playback.

So my question is, if I remove the optical drive and move my HDD there, buy a 250 Samsung 850 EVO SSD and make a fushion drive. Will I be able to edit the video clips and playback smoothly. If not, what should I do?

 

[Stefan johansson]

If it's a non retina screen,4K is useless. In your case,a 13 inch MacBook Pro with i7 processor,maxed out RAM and an SSD would do a far better job.

 

[fhturner]

So my question is, if I remove the optical drive and move my HDD there, buy a 250 Samsung 850 EVO SSD and make a fusion drive. Will I be able to edit the video clips and playback smoothly. If not, what should I do?

I would think it would help, but perhaps not completely alleviate the problem. First, you need to determine if you're indeed disk-bound when playing back in Premiere. My guess is that playback may be CPU/GPU-bound instead in your case. Open Activity Monitor and watch CPU usage while playing the clips back in Premiere. If CPU is pegged at 100% or 200%, you're likely CPU-bound. If so, see if you can turn down the playback resolution/quality to improve framerate.

Some of those 500GB HDs of that era seemed to be dogs to me (as a consultant working on these systems) for performance, with some even performing slowly like they were failing after a few years w/o actually showing concrete signs of failing. So an SSD (why not do 500GB so you can house more footage on it, BTW?) would help overall performance anyway, but you may be butting up against a limitation of your system's architecture trying to handle Premiere & 4K. Another thought...have you thought about Final Cut Pro X? It tends to do a very good job of handling larger media via proxy and playback down-res'ing.

 

[Unami]

a ssd will certainly make the machine faster, but a 5 year old i5 with 8 gb of ram is just not going to cut it for 4k HFR footage in premiere (it'll probably even struggle in fcpx). which codec are your videos in? if they are in an interframe codec (like h.264) you should at least try to transcode to an intraframe codec (e.g. prores 422) before editing. you won't fit much video on a 256gb ssd in that format, though - i think it will be about 15 minutes of 60fps 4k footage. if editing is still to slow (very likely) then you could try a proxy-workflow (e.g. in prores proxy). you can then edit "offline" using small and fast proxy files, and only "online" (use your original footage) for the final render.

 

[e1me5]

An SSD will make a difference but first I suggest to move all of your video files to an external USB 3 hard drive and check the playback again. If Premiere struggles then you should check how to edit using proxies (use a small resolution files in place for the originals files and then export the final master using the high quality material).

 

[fhturner]

An SSD will make a difference but first I suggest to move all of your video files to an external USB 3 hard drive and check the playback again. If Premiere struggles then you should check how to edit using proxies (use a small resolution files in place for the originals files and then export the final master using the high quality material).

I don't think that test will tell you much...but maybe I'm missing something. Sure, a newer hard drive will be marginally faster than the 2012-vintage stock drive, but it's still a hard drive, so it won't be several times faster and 2 orders of magnitude quicker like an SSD would be. If the OP is CPU-bound, he will continue to be whether footage is on the internal drive at, say 90MB/s, or an external at 130MB/s. The only condition I can think of where this might make a larger difference is if the internal drive is very close to full, and therefore very fragmented.

 

[e1me5]

I don't think that test will tell you much...but maybe I'm missing something. Sure, a newer hard drive will be marginally faster than the 2012-vintage stock drive, but it's still a hard drive, so it won't be several times faster and 2 orders of magnitude quicker like an SSD would be. If the OP is CPU-bound, he will continue to be whether footage is on the internal drive at, say 90MB/s, or an external at 130MB/s. The only condition I can think of where this might make a larger difference is if the internal drive is very close to full, and therefore very fragmented.

It's not about raw speed my friend, it is about the computer not accessing simultaneously video files, program files and paging files due to the low amount of ram this system has. I personally have no problems working with 4K footage saved on an external hard drive on my mid 12 15" mbp, although I am using fcpx and I believe there is a certain amount of apple magic involved. It's a rule to never edit with files stored to your startup disk.

 

[MSastre]

It's not about raw speed my friend, it is about the computer not accessing simultaneously video files, program files and paging files due to the low amount of ram this system has. I personally have no problems working with 4K footage saved on an external hard drive on my mid 12 15" mbp, although I am using fcpx and I believe there is a certain amount of apple magic involved. It's a rule to never edit with files stored to your startup disk.

I have to agree. It is always best practice to keep your media files on as large an external drive as you can afford, as opposed to keeping them on your internal drive. I'm using FCPX on a 2013 rmbp with 16gb of ram and have no problems with 4k. I always keep media files on a separate hard drive, USB3 or SSD. OWC is a great place for SSD external drives, or docks for externals.