Which iMac for 4K video editing?

Honestly unfortunately unless you are resolved to use Final Cut and Final Cut only then none of the Mac's right now either iMac or Mac Pro would be good for a professional editing machine. They all have AMD GPU's which is just bloody awful. AMD GPU's although fast, for the most part have awful awful support throughout both photo and video industry application wise. The drivers are horrible, and you will have any combination issues/glitches/poor performance/crashes with almost any Pro app that isn't Final cut Pro. Visit the support forum of any pro app developer and you'll see what I'm talking about. The problem is the way AMD computes and what developers have to do to make applications that support it well and are optimized for it, it makes it very VERY difficult to develop for. So from an industry perspective if most of the Pro world is on Nvidia anyway (taking into account Windows and OS X) and Nvidia is much easier to develop for while maintaining stability and quality of your application, then why spend all the extra time and headache attempting to make AMD GPU's play nice? I have to wonder what is driving Apples decisions to release now all of their nice but very expensive devices with an inherent handicap for most of the users who will be using the high end models. It could be by design since they've spent a lot of time optimizing their Final Cut with AMD, then they'd rather sell a machine that works only best with their software and screw anyone who wants to use another vendors software. Not saying this is definitely their thinking, but it does seem like it. The unfortunate part is they don't even offer Pro Photo software anymore - so for Photo folks they are really getting screwed.

It's a long winded answer for sure but the short of it is, unless you are going to use Final Cut and ONLY Final Cut for video or pro work then none of the current Mac's out now would be a good choice. However if you are OK with a machine that is pretty good/great for Final Cut and kinda OK or meh for everything else then I would definitely get a 27" iMac with the AMD GPU's - the Intel isn't even an option when it comes to video editing. If you could afford it, I would choose the top of the line model with 16GB of RAM as it has the better GPU and CPU.

Wait, after re-reading your post - you have an iMac with 32GB of RAM???? Interesting... Also I didn't mean my post to be scathing - I love Apple products, just for work on video which I need, they have been cutting me off at every corner with their AMD decisions on each computer product line they have. You currently have an Nvidia GPU which is good but the bottleneck right now, judging by your system is the VRAM and the GPU speed itself. With the newer iMacs you'll DEFINITELY get noticeable performance increase from your current one - even with Adobe Premiere. One thing to keep in mind with all this - iMac's don't use desktop GPU's, they use mobile ones (read laptops). The CPU's they use are desktop class, the GPU's they use are laptop class - this is what helps them keep the heat down so they can fit all the computer parts in the nice slim and stylish design of the iMac. Notice on all the discrete graphic options the letter M is in front of the chip name? M380, M390, M395 - the M stands for Mobile. Another reason why iMac's aren't the greatest for truly Pro work... Just to be clear as well, when I say Pro work I don't mean editing the occasional movie for a family event or editing videos for a hobby youtube channel. This will do that work most likely fine. What I mean by Pro is, you have deadlines and can't afford any hiccups or random issues because your job depends on it etc... Like you are a video editor by trade for feature or short films, or you are a freelance editor who does wedding videos (for a living), or you have a youtube channel and you make content weekly for profit etc... Again, another long winded answer but I wanted to make sure we are on the same page with what I mean.

I have to disagree. a Mac Pro and even a top of the line iMac handle 4k just fine for professional work. I have both and do 4k editing, 3d animation (maya and c4d r17) tons of AE work (100's of layers) and run into zero problems.

I'm not sure what you're on about but they work fine for professional editing.

To be clear, Will Smith's film FOCUS was cut entirely on FCPX on a Mac Pro. Plenty other films were as well. So again, not sure why you're saying this, but it's not true.

Pal, top of the line 5K iMac cuts 4k like butter, and the Mac Pro cuts it like margarine. Seriously, don't worry about it, grab the top of the line iMac or mid range Mac Pro and you're golden. They will both run you around $4,000 "including maxed out everything and 1 terabyte SSD, etc..." but it's completely worth it.

video card is little impact, they are pretty much 3d speed up only 2d and video edit rely on cpu, memory and storage speed

So what did you end up choosing?

I don't know why that guy was saying what he said, but the reality is the current iMac and the Mac Pro have been used to cut Hollywood films.

Will Smith and Margot Robbie's film FOCUS was cut ENTIRELY IN FCPX on iMAC and Mac Pro. That guy is honestly weird and sounds like he works at Adobe. Another film cut on iMac and Mac Pro with FCPX exclusively? This years Tina Fey film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

Again, don't listen to that weirdo. I have no idea what he's on about...

You do realize Hollywood films are being cut in FCPX on iMacs and Mac Pro's right? What on earth are you on about???

Hi,

What did you buy at the end? Does it work well? I am in the same position as you. I want to buy a second iMac and I am totally lost. I use FCPX and my Ram is 24GB. I believe I have NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX 1024 MB...but not sure. I am in Spain at the moment and my iMac is in London.

Please share your experience.

Kind regards,