Best laptop for video editing

[redsectora]

Hello

I'm after some advice please if anyone can help? I have a DJI Phantom 4 drone which can record video at:

UHD 4096 x 2160 (4K) 24/25 FPS

3840 x 2160 (4K) 24/25/30 FPS

2704 x 1520 (2.7K) 24/25/30 FPS

FHD 1920 x 1080 24/25/30/48/50/60/120 FPS

HD 1280 X720 24/25/30/48/50/60/120 FPS



My question is im after a laptop to edit videos and the laptop MUST be able to cope with the above resolutions easily.If you could suggest a range of makes and models I would appreciate it as I'm a novice at this laptop malaki.I don't want a desktop pc as I want to be able to edit my videos on the move so laptops the way forward I think.I don't mind if they are windows or Apple but I'm looking to spend £1000 - £1500 ($1300 -$1900)



Thanks

Andy



Sent from my SM-T533 using PhantomPilots mobile app

 

[Flying V]

There's not A laptop for that..there are several..its about the composition. Not sure about 4 screens but you do want a 1080 screen at least, a good graphics card with dedicated memory (not shared) and plenty of RAM (8 mini mal).. a good I7 processor would definately help.. althoug la ast generation i5 could do the trick as well. Good luck with the p4p, got mine 2 days ago..waiting for decent weathet :-s

Sent from my SM-G935F using PhantomPilots mobile app

 

[Flying V]

I ment 4K screens... ;-)

Sent from my SM-G935F using PhantomPilots mobile app

 

[tml4191]

yea just found out my computer likes to play all my h265 files in slow mo...even if it's 24fps

 

[redsectora]

Thanks for the advice

 

[Erised]

Hello

I'm after some advice please if anyone can help? I have a DJI Phantom 4 drone which can record video at:

UHD 4096 x 2160 (4K) 24/25 FPS

3840 x 2160 (4K) 24/25/30 FPS

2704 x 1520 (2.7K) 24/25/30 FPS

FHD 1920 x 1080 24/25/30/48/50/60/120 FPS

HD 1280 X720 24/25/30/48/50/60/120 FPS



My question is im after a laptop to edit videos and the laptop MUST be able to cope with the above resolutions easily.If you could suggest a range of makes and models I would appreciate it as I'm a novice at this laptop malaki.I don't want a desktop pc as I want to be able to edit my videos on the move so laptops the way forward I think.I don't mind if they are windows or Apple but I'm looking to spend £1000 - £1500 ($1300 -$1900)



Thanks

Andy



Sent from my SM-T533 using PhantomPilots mobile app

At work we have Lenovos, they are well built and dependable workhorses, my company changes the staffs laptops every 3 years and
I have never seen any fails in any of our laptops exept for some sofware issues. When I got my P4 shooting in 4K my home system could not do anything over 1080p with difficulties. So I got a higher end lenovo because I know they are tuff and our IT guy likes them alot. To get high res and speed I got a gamming machine. Ideapad Y700. It has a 17 inche screen that is so crisp and true to colours it will amaze you. i7 processor 16 gig ram .nvidia graphics card ssd drive, and more. Cost me 1800.00 Canadian on sale from Newegg. I can run 4K smoothly. I can run other applications when rendering 4k videos without a glitch. So far so good for the price. There is better systems out there for twice the price that wont give you twice the quality. I found for me and my budget this laptop delivers.

 

[redsectora]

Thanks for the detailed tip I will check em out

 

[DeweyAXD]

I thought I'd throw some advice in here too.

As other suggest there is no one laptop that does the job and therefore a minimum spec is probably more useful. Personally I would go for this as a minimum:

Intel Core i7 5th (or preferably) 6th gen chips. Generally stay above 2.2ghz. 5th gen chips don't have massive speed boosts over 5th gen but they are much more efficient with use of power (so if you work of battery they tend to last longer).

Graphics card needs to be at least an Nvidia 980m but if you can find one, 1060 or 1070m is a LOT better.

'Ram' is very important for editing too. You don't want to go lower than 16gb and if you can you want 32gb. The faster the 'clock speed' of the ram the better (and higher the price).

Next thing is the hard drive. CRITICAL to get a solid state drive. You will also need at least 500gb in size but be warned. 4k footage is massive in file size and you will fill 500gb very quickly. For that reason having a backup drive that you can hold footage on is a very good investment. This doesn't need to be Solid State (SSD) as you won't be editing from it.

What you will find with any laptop when editing 4k is that it will get very hot and very loud. For this reason a heavy machine is often better because it tends to have more space inside its chassis which means better airflow, better cooling etc.

In my opinion avoid the current Apple macbooks. I own a 2010 Macbook Pro which was one of the last of the Macbooks using 2.5inch hard drives. This meant I could upgrade to a large SSD easily but it still won't do 4k editing. The new 'retina' machines are undeniably awesome units for general use but you have to spec them so high out of the factory now to make it a 4k edit suite. Especially bare in mind many of the new type of SSD drives mac's just aren't economical to upgrade as no third parties make them.

A really good choice in my opinion is a gaming laptop. Check out Dell's Alienware machines. You might struggle a bit on your budget but you should be able to get close to the above spec. These are solid units that are well spec'd and have excellent cooling. They are however pretty weighty and a little over priced.

Other places to look would be ASUS and MSI. The one thing that I think you will struggle with at this budget is the full 4k screen. You will probably find a trade off between a good graphics card + 1920x1080 screen vs a lesser graphics card with a 3840 x 2160 (4k) screen. One thing however to remember is you can still edit 4k video on a 1920 x 1080 screen (I still do). It does however mean that you can only view it in 1080 so you will not get to see your work in full glory until you see it on a 4k screen. External screens and 4k TV's are down in price now so for me, I just edit on the 1080 screen and watch it back on the 4k TV if I want to see it in full detail.

Hope that is of some help.... you probably need some aspirin now

 

[John Locke]

If it was me, I would only record 4K for a customer, if they insisted. In that case I would want to spend time with editing at home, on my desktop. Most people watch and are happy with 1080, but that will change over time I'm sure. For personal fun and vacation 1080 is much easier to work with. Editing 1080 on a laptop is a piece of cake, uploading to YouTube from a hotel room is quick and easy. Yes, it would be nice to do all this easily with 4K, but from a practical point of view the added cost, time, hassle, disk space, and publishing logistics is not worth to result IMO.

 

[DeweyAXD]

If it was me, I would only record 4K for a customer, if they insisted. In that case I would want to spend time with editing at home, on my desktop. Most people watch and are happy with 1080, but that will change over time I'm sure. For personal fun and vacation 1080 is much easier to work with. Editing 1080 on a laptop is a piece of cake, uploading to YouTube from a hotel room is quick and easy. Yes, it would be nice to do all this easily with 4K, but from a practical point of view the added cost, time, hassle, disk space, and publishing logistics is not worth to result IMO.

I have to agree. To a point at least. 4k is amazing but it is a huge p.i.t.a most of the time to work with. I have an i7 5960x 12 core PC with 32gb ram and it still takes a lot of time to render my 4k review videos. Plus you have the added time it takes to transfer files from SD to computer and the silly amount of space it all takes up on the machine. Granted I am only running a rather rubbish GTX 960 graphics card (nothing wrong with it but it is hugely lacking compared to the rest of the machine). Getting close to that kind of power from a laptop would be insanely expensive (£3k+).

With all that being said I still tend to shoot my Phantom work in 4k still. Every time I do switch to 1080 and I get a nice shot I get that nagging feeling of knowing that in 5 years time it'll look less amazing on everyones 4/5/6k screens (or whatever is standard by then!). The only exception to that is the nice butter smooth 60fps or slow-mos of course.

 

[Mamta65]

The new ASUS ZenBook Pro 550 comes with the best 4K display, latest i7 quad core processor, NVIDIA GTX 1050 graphics and Windows 10. So it's good for edit videos.

Also see the below top laptop for video editing,

ASUS Zenbook Pro
Apple MacBook Pro
ASUS VivoBook Pro N580VD-DB74T

Reference: best video editing laptop featured on wiknix

 

[DocDiggler]

I thought I'd throw some advice in here too.

As other suggest there is no one laptop that does the job and therefore a minimum spec is probably more useful. Personally I would go for this as a minimum:

Intel Core i7 5th (or preferably) 6th gen chips. Generally stay above 2.2ghz. 5th gen chips don't have massive speed boosts over 5th gen but they are much more efficient with use of power (so if you work of battery they tend to last longer).

Graphics card needs to be at least an Nvidia 980m but if you can find one, 1060 or 1070m is a LOT better.

'Ram' is very important for editing too. You don't want to go lower than 16gb and if you can you want 32gb. The faster the 'clock speed' of the ram the better (and higher the price).

Next thing is the hard drive. CRITICAL to get a solid state drive. You will also need at least 500gb in size but be warned. 4k footage is massive in file size and you will fill 500gb very quickly. For that reason having a backup drive that you can hold footage on is a very good investment. This doesn't need to be Solid State (SSD) as you won't be editing from it.

What you will find with any laptop when editing 4k is that it will get very hot and very loud. For this reason a heavy machine is often better because it tends to have more space inside its chassis which means better airflow, better cooling etc.

In my opinion avoid the current Apple macbooks. I own a 2010 Macbook Pro which was one of the last of the Macbooks using 2.5inch hard drives. This meant I could upgrade to a large SSD easily but it still won't do 4k editing. The new 'retina' machines are undeniably awesome units for general use but you have to spec them so high out of the factory now to make it a 4k edit suite. Especially bare in mind many of the new type of SSD drives mac's just aren't economical to upgrade as no third parties make them.

A really good choice in my opinion is a gaming laptop. Check out Dell's Alienware machines. You might struggle a bit on your budget but you should be able to get close to the above spec. These are solid units that are well spec'd and have excellent cooling. They are however pretty weighty and a little over priced.

Other places to look would be ASUS and MSI. The one thing that I think you will struggle with at this budget is the full 4k screen. You will probably find a trade off between a good graphics card + 1920x1080 screen vs a lesser graphics card with a 3840 x 2160 (4k) screen. One thing however to remember is you can still edit 4k video on a 1920 x 1080 screen (I still do). It does however mean that you can only view it in 1080 so you will not get to see your work in full glory until you see it on a 4k screen. External screens and 4k TV's are down in price now so for me, I just edit on the 1080 screen and watch it back on the 4k TV if I want to see it in full detail.

Hope that is of some help.... you probably need some aspirin now

Hey
I was just about to pull the trigger on the MacBook pro top of the range with turboboost and final cut pro equipped with 1 terabyte ssd
Not so sure now
Yes 4k videos are great but not a must
Don't know how the new macs cope with heat issues

 

[tonykakkar]

Check Acer Aspire VX Laptop. It will come under $1000 and you can install and use video editing software without facing any hassle.

Also, check the below top laptop for editing video.

Acer Aspire VX
Apple MacBook Pro
ASUS VivoBook Pro

Reference: best video editing laptop featured on thecrazybuyers.

 

[Madars]

I have to agree. To a point at least. 4k is amazing but it is a huge p.i.t.a most of the time to work with. I have an i7 5960x 12 core PC with 32gb ram and it still takes a lot of time to render my 4k review videos. Plus you have the added time it takes to transfer files from SD to computer and the silly amount of space it all takes up on the machine. Granted I am only running a rather rubbish GTX 960 graphics card (nothing wrong with it but it is hugely lacking compared to the rest of the machine). Getting close to that kind of power from a laptop would be insanely expensive (£3k+).

With all that being said I still tend to shoot my Phantom work in 4k still. Every time I do switch to 1080 and I get a nice shot I get that nagging feeling of knowing that in 5 years time it'll look less amazing on everyones 4/5/6k screens (or whatever is standard by then!). The only exception to that is the nice butter smooth 60fps or slow-mos of course.

Well, then what is the REAL use of having 4k camera drone? If everything is being filmed in 1080p, why extra spend money and use a bulky P4P if Spark could do that all?
In my opinion, everything has to be filmed in 4k, but edited either thru Proxy in 1080p or after conversion to 1080p.To me, having spent $$$ for P4P and not pulling maximum out f it is not worth the deal.
As you said, in 4 to 5 years, those 1080p will be something like 640x480 today. Who likes that res nowadays? But having the video originally filmed in 4k, you have that opportunity to edit or not edit it later on (tech gets cheaper).

Also, I have been thinking about the use of filming in 4k if there are still only 1080p MONITORS all around. Have found some stuff that tells about the difference:
4K VS 1080P on screen (1080P) SEE THE DIFFERENCE when water splashes. How bad is 1080p and WAY better is in 4K:

and waterfall:

or here

 

[carolphantompro]

As per your requirements, you will need a high-end 4K laptop for editing UHD videos taken from drone. Along with 4K display, various other factors to look for while choosing a good video editing laptop are Processor, Graphics, RAM and Storage. Today, lots of high-end laptops are available in the market that can handle any type of tasks. So, check out the whole guide on choosing a video editing laptop and the best laptops for video editing here.