imac M4 going to work for me? imovie

Your 2013 iMac was prehistoric.

If you get an M4 mini you will not know what hit you!

It will do most tasks at least 10 times faster and will breeze through editing 4K video. Most people use them with Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve . . . both fully fledged pro apps.

The 256 GB SSD is really too small for modern video editing but do not even think of buying a mini with a larger drive. Just doubling it to 512 GB will cost another £200 and for that money you can get a tiny plugin SSD with a 2 TB capacity . . . you can also get smaller ones much cheaper on Amazon.

Even a USB 3.0 HDD is perfectly fine for editing up to 4K

Assuming you don't intend to keep the iMovie library on the internal drive, it should be fine.

Otherwise, 256GB will get sucked up in no time by iMovie.

If you use an external drive for the iMovie library then 256GB may still be a bit tight, but not as much.

I would suggest bumping up the RAM to 24GB though.

With that sad if you do go for a Mac Mini, as mentioned you will need to consider a display to go with it (unless you already have one) as unlike the iMac, the Mac Mini does not have a built-in display.

You would still likely be well below the cost of a similarly specced iMac though, also you would be getting the newer CPU instead of the older one from 2 years ago on the iMac which incidentally might be getting updated at Apple's October event, no confirmation yet on that, so take it with a grain of salt.

You will also need a monitor . . . 27" 1080p ones are around £85 and 4K ones around £140 upwards BUT at a pinch you can always plug the mini into any TV with HDMI and use that as a massive monitor.

Unless you are working to top professional standards the cheapest ones from Amazon will be perfectly fine . . . just check they have decent reviews.

For £30 you can get a Ugreen 4K webcam again from Amazon . . . absolutely brilliant, not like the rubbish blurry one on the iMac.

Incidentally I have a 27" 2017 iMac which died a couple of years ago. Before it died I had bought an M2 mini (base model) and that blew my £1,600 iMac out of the water. A year later I added the base M4 to my collection.

I use 256 GB M4, and it is not sufficient for iMovie, as movies take a chunk of Macs storage, unless you spend some bucks on an external SSD.

You should always put video, music, photos etc. on an external and reserve the internal boot drive for Applications, Browsing and Mail.

Buying the 512 GB Mac drive only gives you an extra 256 GB (which still isn't enough) and costs an extra £200 for which you could get a 2 TB external Thunderbolt . . . 8 times the size for the same price.

You don't need Thunderbolt as USB 3.0 is fast enough for 4K and a 2 TB USB 3.0 will cost a mere £80.

Since SSDs came along people think that HDDs are useless but they are fine for most work. The only time they show their age is copying tens of gigabytes when of course they will take longer . . . but most people are not doing that on a daily basis.

For normal work including editing, the speed does not matter unless you are a top pro where every second counts to hitting that deadline.

It's an excellent choice of Mac . . . it's just unfortunate that your iMac didn't die at the beginning of the year when M4s were $300 cheaper. ☹️

You will be amazed at how fast and responsive it is. Look at this 1 minute video I made a couple of years ago on its predecessor the M2. The machine was actually booted from a super-slow 1 TB USB 3.0 SSD and as well as performing the edits in Final Cut Pro I was simultaneously recording the screen with Screenflow which reduces the performance even more. Just look at how slickly the old M2 worked.

Note that the video is as shot and completely unedited.

Invisibility Effect in Final Cut Pro

Remember that your M4 is even faster.

P.S. I realised after posting the video that it would have looked more impressive if I had used a Jungle clip for the background aka "Predator" movie with Arnie.

My invisibility effect was done on the base M2 which only has 8 GB RAM and it still works perfectly on the latest macOS editing 4K so going above 16 GB is not necessary even if you keep your computer for years . . . I have still got a 2008 24" iMac (rather slow!!!!!) and a 2012 i5 mini (not quite so slow) plus of course my dead 2017 iMac (DEAD SLOW).

There is a school of thought that says don't keep updating the OS unless it has something you absolutely require.

In any case after a few macOS updates you come to the end of your ability to update and have to buy a newer machine if you want to continue.

Should be good though 24 GB RAM is probably overkill for iMovie . . . I find 8 GB on my M2 is more than enough for Final Cut Pro which is a more demanding app.

When are you expecting to get it? I'd like to hear your reaction when you see it perform.

Hi, I recommend getting an M6 Mac Mini with 24GB unified memory, and get the absolute lowest base storage in it, spending the extra £200 for storage from Apple is too much, so you can spend them on an external SSD with MUCH higher capacity such as 1TB or 2TB, You can store your heavy iMovie files on it, and to add, get a monitor, keyboard and mouse to go with them, You may require an Apple keyboard with Touch ID in order to use Touch ID with the Mac mini.

An iMac costs way much than the base mini, and it only has 16GB of memory, Securing more memory improves the longevity of the Mac as macOS MAY require more memory in the future.

You will be shocked by the difference of performance between the 2013 iMac and the new Apple silicon computer

You put some doubt into my mind so I fired up my 8 GB M2, opened FCP and dropped a newly shot 4K video into it, selected the "Scene Removal Mask", added a woodland video clip behind it and everything worked at lightning speed and playback was silky smooth.

So much for 8 GB RAM not being enough . . . you don't want to believe everything you hear.

Of course if you have dozens of apps open and scores of browser windows open simultaneously you might find 8 GB suffering but that's as daft as trying to fit a baby elephant in a normal family car . . . you shouldn't do it!

Where are you posting?

It would be a good idea to download etrecheck, run its test program and post the results with your query as they will almost certainly ask for one.

https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html

It's completely safe and free. There is a paid version but it's not necessary for what you need.

Does this apply to newer macOS versions such as Tahoe?

8GB of memory with liquid glass is horrible, I have experienced it with my M1 MacBook Air, It was VERY SLOW and it struggled on Tahoe, Liquid glass uses a lot of computing power, and lets say macOS uses 4-5GB of memory, that’s 3-4GB of available memory, I don’t even edit videos or use stuff that requires a lot more power, 8GB of memory is perfect when I downgraded back to Sequoia

I do not know if your Mac struggles or if liquid glass has to do with the CPU but I think the M1 is very strong, even in 2026, so this has to be something with the lack of memory, That’s my experience though.

NO!

iMovie never uses the files physically . . . it just references them.

So the files stay on your external and iMovie just refers to them in situ rather like an alias.

All you get in iMovie (or any other editing app) is a set of instructions (which you have supplied) saying cut this here, add an effect there etc. These project instructions take up at most a few megabytes.

However, you have to tell iMovie where to save the Library etc. otherwise it will by default put it in your Movies folder on your internal drive.

Connect your external drive to your Mac.

Open iMovie.

In the top menu bar, click File > Open Library > New...

In the "Save As" dialogue window name your library.

Click the "Where" dropdown menu and select your external drive.

Click Save.

What do you mean by saying your M1 struggles with "Liquid Glass"?

When people talk about a macOS requiring a bit more power the emphasis is on the word "bit" . . . it's negligible, in no way comparable to running pro editing apps with 4K footage.

If your Mac really is having problems with Tahoe you have probably got something in the way you have configured it (the M1) and should ask about it on the Mac Mini or Tahoe forums.

The main thing about any computer is never let the drive become more than 80% full. Drives need plenty of elbow room to move stuff around and allocate new blocks. Once you get above 80% you are stifling it and your performance will drop.