I have a 250 GBn SSD installed , with 22 GB RAM , ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB graphics card , Sierra OS 10.12.6., don't want to upgrade my OS as I have several third party plugins and apps that will stop working.
I felt it was almost impossible to edit 4k as computer becomes extremely slow , so if I want to use the same machine for editing 4k , what upgrades you suggest or is it even possible ?
Mac Pro
What about editing with proxies? This won't require any hardware upgrades with a tradeoff being the time (and a little more drive space) to create the proxies. Once you're done editing, change the project back to Original/Optimized media and export.
You might be able to if the system can run a Metal capable graphics card and boot off an external drive connected to the fiber channel, which I think is your fastest connection. I don’t know what that would cost. Getting a second computer with more recent Metal graphics card and faster ports might be more cost effects.
For a while I edited a few 4K projects on a Mac mini late 2009 with a HDD in OS X 10.11 El Capitan FCP.
Only max 2 minutes projects with Background render ON and a wait for it to finish. Export to H.264 took about 1 hour. So it can be done. HD projects were more tolerable.
My current Mac mini 2018 with a SSD is a lot faster.
After putting a SSD to the Mac mini 2009 it is still OK for light browsing.
Similar to Matti, I have a basic 2012 Mac mini which has had no problems editing simple 4K videos.
If you want to know how well it will work you can download the free 90 day trial of Final Cut Pro with no strings attached . . . it just stops working after 90 days if you decide not to buy it . . . you don't have to remember to cancel anything.
Final Cut Pro - Free Trial - Apple (UK)
I already have fcpx installed so that is not a problem I just wanted to know if someone can suggest hardware upgrades. My problem is ... either Mac pro 2012 is too old or less sold so hardly have people working on them who can confirm if they are able to edit 4k footage on these machines with some hardware upgrades.
The computer is 10 years old and came out less than a year after FCP was created. Consequently the vast majority of users are working with newer systems and have no experience with using this system with this application. I think any recommendations, mine included, are based solely in the tech specs of the system and the what is needed to work with 4K efficiently.
I think Apple only offers a trial of the current version of the software.
Can we edit 4k videos on a mac pro 2012 ?
