System Build for Editing 4k 60 FPS H265

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Hi all,

I'm long overdue for an computer upgrade. My desktop was built in 2011 and, in terms of editing videos, is easily out-performed by my iPad Pro 9.7. I'll likely build a new rig sometime in January. Any of you have any insight on specs needed to smoothly edit 4k 60 FPS H265?

At minimum, I was thinking something along these lines:

Intel Core i5 6600k
Gigabyte GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 MoBo
Nvidia GTX 1070
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4-2666 32GB
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB

Thoughts?

Many thanks!
 
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Is the h.265 codec available on any computer yet for use playback/ editing?
Some of the higher-end editing packages support it, i.e. Adobe Premiere Pro and there are probably others. Otherwise you will need to transcode to Prores or MPEG-2 for high-quality editing. In that case you may be better off shooting in H.264.
 
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Don't forget... LOTS of RAM. As much as you can get into your build. Take that from experience with TB's of 4K video. I found a happy medium at 48 gigs on my editing machine.
 
Unless you want to do slow motion there is no need for 60fps. The high frame rate will significantly impact the original recording quality even when using H265 encoding. If you want to reduce motion blur you need to go for higher shutter speeds removing ND filters etc.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots
 
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Unless you want to do slow motion there is no need for 60fps. The high frame rate will significantly impact the original recording quality even when using H265 encoding.
This has been demonstrated to be definitely true with the Mavic due to the lack of a shutter and the use of CCD binning which results in aliasing artifacts above 30 fps, but the camera system in the P4P is completely different and should be capable of high quality at faster framerates.
 
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This has been demonstrated to be definitely true with the Mavic due to the lack of a shutter and the use of CCD binning which results in aliasing artifacts above 30 fps, but the camera system in the P4P is completely different and should be capable of high quality at faster framerates.
Sure, the cameras are completely different. What I was referring to is the mpeg compression. At 60 fps, the amount of data to compress is twice as high as at 30 fps, hence the amount of loss is more significant given the same resulting bit rate. That fact has nothing to do with the camera. I have been testing the compression quality and limitations on the P3P using different frame rates filming a test pattern. The qualitative difference at 60mb/s between recording 2160p at 30fps versus 2160p at 24fps is significant. 24fps quality is much better because it results in about 25% less image data to compress.
 
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But that is with a P3. Given the vastly improved sensor, higher bandwidth, and HVEC compression I'm not sure why you would assume that the P4P would not be better, unless you have some P4P test footage that indicates otherwise. It would be interesting to see a test with the P4P though (unless you meant that you tested with a P4P and the P3P in your message is a typo.)
 
But that is with a P3. Given the vastly improved sensor, higher bandwidth, and HVEC compression I'm not sure why you would assume that the P4P would not be better, unless you have some P4P test footage that indicates otherwise. It would be interesting to see a test with the P4P though (unless you meant that you tested with a P4P and the P3P in your message is a typo.)

Again, I am not suggesting that the P4P would not be vastly better than the P3P. That's a given. However EVEN with the P4P, if you record 4K video at let's say 100mb/s (no matter which encoder), the resulting quality of an individual frame given 24 or 30 or 60 fps is still directly affected by the amount of data to encode into 100mb/s. At 60fps, the amount of data is nearly 3 times higher than at 24fps.
 
Again, I am not suggesting that the P4P would not be vastly better than the P3P. That's a given. However EVEN with the P4P, if you record 4K video at let's say 100mb/s (no matter which encoder), the resulting quality of an individual frame given 24 or 30 or 60 fps is still directly affected by the amount of data to encode into 100mb/s. At 60fps, the amount of data is nearly 3 times higher than at 24fps.
Yes, sure, since the maximum bandwidth doesn't change then a higher frame rate must result in less data per frame per se, but how visible the difference may actually be to a viewer is dependent on a host of variables. I don't think one can make a blanket statement that because the difference is readily apparent with one camera system that it will necessarily be on another. That can really only be determined by testing.
 
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FCPX supports h.265 but I still haven't seen any real world examples (including my own tests) of how it benefits you over h.264. As a delivery format maybe but as far as capture quality - 8 bit is 8 bit.
 
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Hi all,

I'm long overdue for an computer upgrade. My desktop was built in 2011 and, in terms of editing videos, is easily out-performed by my iPad Pro 9.7. I'll likely build a new rig sometime in January. Any of you have any insight on specs needed to smoothly edit 4k 60 FPS H265?

At minimum, I was thinking something along these lines:

Intel Core i5 6600k
Gigabyte GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 MoBo
Nvidia GTX 1070
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4-2666 32GB
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB

Thoughts?

Many thanks!
If you're able to buils your own PC, which is the way to go(very easy these days), I would suggest the following as a bare minimum for 4K:
CPU: Intel Core i7 8700K
GPU: 1080ti
RAM: 32Gb(64Gb is better, especially for After Effects)
Monitor: Biggest, high quality 4K monitor you can swing
Boot Drive: Minimum of 1TB M.2 SSD(2TB is a big advantage)
Internal Memory: 2-10TB High quality hard drives in RAID 1 or 10
 
Frankly, I don't think we're close to being able to play back h.265 at even 24FPS with the current and upcoming generation of hardware. 60FPS is way out there.
I have a dual Xeon E5-2667 workstation with Quadro M6000 GPU and 128GB RAM, all SSD drives throughout, and it drops a lot of frames at 24FPS 4K playback. Especially Phantom footage. I originally built the workstation for editing video from my 35mm format cinema cameras, which shoot in RAW and Prores HQ. So editing a distribution CODEC like h.264 and HEVC isn't something normally done in the professional environment. Those are distribution CODECs, not for acquisition use. Because they are long GOP CODECs, they are difficult to decode and work with.
Maybe in 5-7 years, we'll have computers capable of HEVC playback at frame rates higher than 7-8 FPS, but for now, I just stick with h.264 for shooting on the Phantom and render to HEVC for distribution to Youtube. It makes a big difference there.
I can't stress enough the value of a DCI 4K production monitor. Sadly, they are in the $25K price range. But there is a cheap solution: LG makes a pretty decent display that does DCI 4K for about $1400. The only problem is that there's an IC chip that fails when there is a power failure and the monitor shuts off from no power. I found replacement ICs for $10 and it takes me about 30 mins to take apart the monitor to replace the IC and I'm good til the next power failure.
 
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