I have a very tight budget, and need to edit 4k. My budget only allows me up to 12gb of RAM. Is that enough to edit 4k video, or do I need 16gb? Also, is the i5 and gtx 1650 enough? My budget is very tight
Hi youngboy. I never tried to edit 4K videos, but my bet is that it would be difficult on any budget machine. But maybe you can try this tool, created by member KKnBB :
I suggest you take time to read the entire topic since the comments contains many questions (and answers) you may ask yourself about this tool.
There is also the installed “Preview Scaling” tool (Settings / Preview Scaling) that could help a lot. It lowers the resolution of the video in the preview window.
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Thank you so much for showing me this tool. I will try it and see whether I can edit 4k on my budget desktop
Your welcome youngboy. By the way, I edited my answer (maybe after you read my original post). In the edited version of the post, I mention the Preview Scaling tool that could also be of help for you.
No, it’s not enough. Here is the minimum system requirements for Shotcut directly from the FAQ page: Shotcut - Frequently Asked Questions
I edit in 4K, and the 16 GB minimum is legit to get any real work done. If 4K was attempted with 12 GB of RAM, the operating system would be forced to make up the difference from the swap file on the hard drive, which is very very very very very slow.
The reason I create that “Proxy Tool” is I have a 8GB ram and I bought a 4k camera…
The edit phase can go fine on proxies, but the final export on 4K sources can take substantially longer due to swapping, or it can fail completely due to low RAM, especially if there are multiple tracks of video or heavy effects. When we do three-camera multi-cam edits, they are always over 12 GB during export. It’s very YMMV depending on the project… not a near-guaranteed success like 16 GB. Didn’t want the OP to feel like success was guaranteed at 12 GB.
We have some things in the next version 20.06 to improve this: proxy editing and flushing some cached memory at the start of an export.
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Ok, I need 16gb RAM for 4k. Is the 9th gen i5 good enough? It has 6 cores
Ok, I need 16gb RAM for 4k. Is the 9th gen i5 good enough? It has 6 cores
It’s good enough if you edit on proxies. For simpler projects, and depending on the source encoding type, it may be good enough without proxies but with Preview Scaling turned on. As for export time, it won’t be blazing fast, but that’s not a problem for most people. Just let it run overnight if needed, and there’s also an export queue to let multiple projects export overnight. I don’t know if your budget includes an RTX 2060 video card, but that can help export time a lot without impacting quality too much.
I have a GTX 1060.
My choice for choosing Shotcut was for twofold, one being that is was free to use and the second being that it handled 4k video. The work-supplied laptop that I use has just 8GB of RAM and most of my video is 4k. In conjunction with the KKnBB resource Shotcut allows me to achieve a good video editing workflow…
So I can edit 4k on 8gb ram with that resource from KKnBB? That’s great to know. Thank you
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