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Configure a 2019 iMac for Video Editing [u]

Posted on June 11, 2017 by Larry

[ Update: On March 19, 2019, Apple released updates to both 21.5″ and 27″ iMacs. These new systems feature improved CPU and GPU options, though the display and storage remain the same as earlier versions. I’ve reflected these new options in my recommendations below. ]

At their WWDC, in June, 2017, Apple announced and released new iMac computers, designed to meet the needs of professionals. These new systems sport a variety of very exciting features. However, if you are on a budget, how do you determine where to spend your money?

This article is designed to help you make more informed choices when you don’t have a lot of money to spend.

NOTE: I have not purchased any of these systems. My recommendations are based on past experience, current system specs and talking with informed individuals.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

If money is no object, buy the top of the line iMac. It will work great and you’ll have bragging rights over all the other systems.

But, if money IS an object, then you need to make trade-offs, balancing the performance you need with the money you have. However, you don’t need to spend a fortune to get a system today that can meet your editing needs for the next several years.

ALSO: Here are two other configuration articles you may find useful:

YES, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE IMAC PRO?

Holy smokes! What a system.

This review covers the iMac. Click here to read about the iMac Pro.

YES, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MAC PRO?

Given the latest iMac releases, there are very, very few reasons to purchase a Mac Pro right now; especially given its price. Keep in mind, however, that Apple has already announced they are working on a new, top-of-the-line Mac Pro which will ship sometime in 2019.

Given what Apple has announced for the iMac Pro, however, that upcoming Mac Pro will need to be a true screamer to compete. I’m looking forward to seeing what Apple creates – but, as I mentioned earlier, I still need to pay my bills today.

And that leads us directly to the latest updates to the iMac.

WHAT SIZE SCREEN?

Both Final Cut Pro X and Premiere interfaces work best on larger screens. This is not to say they work poorly on smaller screens, but both of these display a LOT of elements on screen. More screen room is MUCH better.

I recommend a 27″ display. Plus, all the new 27″ iMacs now share the same 5K Retina Display.

NOTE: One of my iMacs is an older 5K iMac. I’ve discovered, that while seeing a 5K image is nice, the on-screen text is often very hard to read. So I’ve lowered the screen resolution using System Preferences to make the text larger. I prefer to easily read the text to seeing every pixel in my image.

However, if the purpose of the new system is video compression, you don’t need the bigger screen size. In which case, you can save money and improve performance with a 21″ system.

NOTE: Both H.264 and the up-coming H.265 video codecs are hardware-accelerated in all the new hardware. While this won’t help when transcoding into ProRes, hardware-acceleration will significantly speed compressing files for the web.

WHAT SPEED CPU?

UPDATE Intel’s latest 8th-gen and 9th-gen Core processors, including up to a 3.2GHz six-core 8th-gen Core i7 with Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz for the 21.5-inch 4K iMac and up to a 3.6GHz eight-core 9th-gen Core i9 with Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz for the 27-inch 5K iMac.

While CPU speed is important, it is not critical for video editing; remember, iMacs that were current as recently as last month, were easily able to edit almost all forms of SD, HD, and 4K media.

Any of the processors in any of the new iMacs will be fine for video or audio editing.

UPDATE: The choice in the 21.5″ iMac is between i5 and i7. The i7 is worth the money because of its support for multi-threading. The choice in the 27″ iMac is harder: between i5 and i9, because it’s a $500 differential. Unlike the i5, the i9 supports multithreading. If you are doing multicam, 4K or HDR editing, or lots of video compression, the i9 is worth the money.

HOW MUCH STORAGE?

I really like that Apple has put Fusion drives into all but two of their iMacs. I own two iMacs with Fusion drives and I remain very impressed with these systems. They are an excellent balance between the speed of an SSD with the storage capacity of spinning media.

Keep in mind that the SSD portion of a Fusion drive is only a part of the total storage. For example, the 1 TB Fusion uses a 32 GB SSD, while the 2 and 3 TB Fusion drives use a 128 GB SSD. The OS watches what you do and moves files onto the SSD based upon what you are using most. Which means that a Fusion drive works fastest with files you access over and over.

NOTE: Here is an updated article on storage speeds and media requirements that explains the load your storage system needs to carry.

If you want maximum performance AND you plan to store media on an external drive, get the 512 GB SSD. All the files in macOS will take less than 30 GB, leaving plenty of room for working files and immediate storage.

If you want an excellent balance between performance, price and capacity, stay with the 1 TB Fusion drive. Again, store media externally.

If you don’t plan to purchase external storage – and you will, you just don’t know it yet – get the 3 TB Fusion drive. (An extra TB for $100 makes this a better value than the 2 TB Fusion drive.)

One of my systems has a 3 TB Fusion drive. Currently, I’m using 600 GB of it. The rest is sitting around idle. When using external storage, you really don’t need lots of internal storage.

If you just want maximum performance from your storage, get the 1 TB SSD. It’s pricey, but it’s speed will make you giggle.

Apple notes: “For the best performance, iMac systems with 32GB or more of memory should be configured with a 2TB or larger Fusion Drive or all-SSD storage.”

NOTE: Apple’s marketing materials now define a terabyte as one trillion bytes. This means that when a disk is formatted, its storage capacity will be less than 1 TB because of the differences between how marketing and engineering calculate disk sizes.

WHICH GPU?

Configuring the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is now done when you pick the initial iMac, rather than as a build-to-order option within each iMac family. So, much though I would like to pick the mid-range system and add a high-end GPU into it, we no longer have that option.

Which is a shame. Because while we don’t need the high-end CPU system for most video editing, we would significantly benefit from the high-end 580 GPU in any system.

Both Final Cut and Premiere are increasingly using the GPU for most editing tasks, because the GPU is much faster than the CPU at rendering bitmapped images. Therefore, the best choice is the high-end GPU. The high-end GPU also includes 8 GB of video memory (VRAM).

However, the mid-range system with the Radeon Pro 575X is a perfectly adequate choice.

NOTE: The difference between the 575X and 580X is performance. The 575X has a peak performance of about 4.5 Teraflops, while the 580X supports up to 5.5 Tflops. Both will handle video just fine. All of the Radeon chips support OpenCL and Apple’s Metal and up-coming Metal 2 GPU computing API.

Here’s a link to learn more about Radeon’s GPU chips.

NOTE: Again, if you are principally doing video compression, the GPU speed is less important than the CPU speed. So, compressionists don’t need as high-performance a GPU as an editor.

UPDATE: When looking at GPU performance, use the specs for Metal or Metal II. OpenCL will not be supported going forward. Also, while eGPUs are attractive, I don’t see them, yet, as a big enough benefit for iMacs. eGPUs are principally designed for laptops.

HOW MUCH RAM?

Both Final Cut and Premiere will use as much RAM as you can afford.

Based on my tests with the 2016 MacBook Pro, I recommend a minimum of 16 GB of RAM, though, all my systems here have 32 GB. Again, if you have the money, max out the RAM. However, 32 GB of RAM will be sufficient for virtually all projects.

HOW MUCH SHOULD I SPEND?

You are going to be using this computer for four years. Spend what you can afford, but don’t be stingy in areas that matter: GPU and RAM.

All the base systems are fine, But, depending upon your needs, you can tweak the configurations to better match what you want the systems to do. All systems feature wireless mice and keyboards; though, in my office, I prefer my mice and keyboards wired.

NOTE: Apple has not yet delivered the Touch Bar on any stand-alone keyboards.

If it were my money and I was doing video editing on a budget, here’s what I would get:

Total: $2,499 (you’ll still need to spend additional money for 3rd-party RAM)

However, I wish that Apple made the Radeon 580X available on the mid-range unit.

If it were my money and I was doing mostly video compression, I’d get the high-end Mac mini. (This, in fact, is what I did personally.) Here’s an article that explains this in more detail.

As always, I’m interested in your opinions.

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346 Responses to Configure a 2019 iMac for Video Editing [u]

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  1. Hale Torrance says:
    October 14, 2017 at 4:16 pm

    Hi, Larry. I’m an independent filmmaker and film student and I’m looking for a new editing machine. I’ve been looking at this machine and the 2009 Mac Pro with a 5,1 upgrade. Which would be best for 4K video editing for feature length video projects? Thanks man.

    Reply
    • Larry says:
      October 14, 2017 at 4:35 pm

      Hale:

      The 2017 iMac, or a 2016 iMac if you can find one. There is no version of the Mac Pro – new or old – that I recommend over an iMac.

      Also, keep in mind that the codec you use for your 4K video will make a HUGE difference in performance and file size. Plan to purchase a LARGE external RAID to support your media files. And, if you are shooting frames sizes larger than 4K, frame rates faster than 60 fps, or HDR material, you’ll need an 8-drive RAID and Thunderbolt 3 to support the media transfer.

      Larry

      Reply
  2. Stephen says:
    October 25, 2017 at 3:55 pm

    This is a strange article, making recommendations based heavily on budget considerations while not talking about the most cost effective choice you can make when purchasing an iMac – upgrading your own memory.

    The 27″ iMacs make it easy to add memory, with four easily accessible slots, two of which are empty… Apple charges $600 to move from 8GB to 32GB of RAM, while buying that 32GB elsewhere and installing it yourself costs around $350. Even more budget friendly – you can simply buy two 8GB modules and install them in the open slots and have a system with 24GB for less than $200, giving you a savings of more than $400.

    Also note that while the 2TB and 3TB fusion drives give you a 128GB SSD to work with – a good size to make things flow smoothly, the 1TB fusion has only a 32GB SSD, which means you’re getting quite a bit of upgrade for your $200.

    Anyway, if I were taking your recommendations, I’d buy my RAM elsewhere, install it myself, and spend the money I saved on either a 2TB fusion drive or a 512GB SSD.

    Reply
  3. Owun says:
    October 31, 2017 at 2:07 pm

    Hello,

    I’ve recently started looking at purchasing a new computer as I’ve decided to get rid of my ancient MacBook (don’t ask why I kept it that long, not much of an answer anyway). However, I’ve been torn between iMac and MacBook Pro. I’ve read both advantages of each machine and latter being portable. Though I don’t see myself moving around a lot and having to edit whilst on the move.

    Also, I have edited a lot since I’ve studied Media at college and Film at university. So I’m no amateur but I wouldn’t consider myself experienced (being a bit out of the loop with current software). Though I do learn very quickly and see myself growing my skills in filmmaking quite quickly (getting back into the game, as it were). So what specs would you recommend in the long run (or would you still go for the specs mentioned above?)?

    Reply
    • Larry says:
      October 31, 2017 at 3:28 pm

      Owun:

      The KEY question is portability. If you don’t need portability, get the iMac. It has a larger screen, faster CPU, faster GPU and MUCH more memory. It also costs less.

      If you need portability more than power, get the MacBook Pro.

      Other than that, my advice is the same. Increasingly, the GPU is more important than the CPU.

      Larry

      Reply
  4. Marc Sedaka says:
    November 17, 2017 at 10:00 am

    Hi Larry –

    I’m setting up an Avid system with a 27″ iMac (Mid 2011, 3.4GHz Intel Core i7 until the iMac pro arrives) and want a second monitor to best match it (for size and positioning as much as resolution) Any suggestions?

    Thanks!

    Reply
  5. Ellie says:
    November 19, 2017 at 2:11 am

    Hello, my 2012 macbook can’t save my file from Unity for VR game. Do you think it Radeon Pro 575 enough for VR development? Will it be strong enough to test out VIVE or do I have to upgrade to Pro 580?

    What do you think?

    Reply
    • Larry says:
      November 19, 2017 at 11:15 am

      Ellie:

      I’m not clear what you are asking here. The GPU has no effect on saving a file.

      However, VR is VERY GPU and CPU intensive. If you plan to develop VR titles, as opposed to shooting 360/VR video, you’ll need a powerful system with a fast CPU and the fastest GPU you can afford. Your 2012 laptop would not be a good development system for that type of work.

      Larry

      Reply
  6. Brian Mitchell says:
    November 20, 2017 at 4:23 pm

    Hi Mr. Jordan,

    To begin many thanks for you wisdom over the years. Many thanks!

    I am currently upgrading my video cameras to 4K and my editing in 4K.

    My concern is my existing system: i7 imac 27” ghz 2.8 ghz quad core late 2009 8gb 1066 MHz DDR3 Yosemite ATI Radeon HD 4850 512mb. I had this built in early 2010 from Apple. It was not used heavily as I used a 15” MacBook Pro more so.

    I have purchased 32gb for this unit from OWC MacSales in USA. I also purchased a Samsung 850 SSD 1Tb. Because of where I reside my closest installers were Best Buy Canada where I purchased the SSD. I thought it would but now I have reservations about this as I am waiting to get it upgraded.

    Do you believe this setup described would work?I have FCP and Adobe CS 5.5.
    Or should I upgrade my software? At present I do not do a lot of 4K work but will be working with 4K drone in Spring. As 4K becomes more in demand I may have to go to bigger and better.

    Constructive suggestions please.

    Regards,
    Brian A. Mitchell

    Reply
    • Larry says:
      November 20, 2017 at 7:09 pm

      Brian:

      Well… truthfully, this is not a really good idea. You have a computer that is pushing nine years old. The “normal” life of a computer is 4 years. This is NOT to say it isn’t working and working well, but it is woefully under-equipped for the latest video technology like 4K, HDR, or VR.

      If your goal is to get ready to meet the future, its time to get a new computer – maybe not now but within the next few months. If your goal is to keep editing the media you are editing now, you don’t need to upgrade.

      The world of media is moving to faster, more powerful GPUs, hardware acceleration for media playback and encoding, and faster protocols for storage. Especially with H.264 and H.265, newer hardware will make those formats much easier to edit.

      So, CAN you upgrade? Yes.
      SHOULD you upgrade? I’s suggest, instead, that you start saving for a new computer, coupled to faster external storage with more capacity. 4K will fill a 1 TB drive in almost no time.

      Larry

      Reply
  7. jamie Gilmore says:
    November 28, 2017 at 7:12 pm

    Very useful article. Thanks!
    I am upgrading from a 5 year old MBPro 13. The prices on the 27″ iMacs are making me nauseous, but I am playing with GoPro Hero 5 video and neither my MBPro or my SurfaceBook (for work) are making the grade.

    Reply
    • Larry says:
      November 28, 2017 at 7:51 pm

      Jamie:

      Get a year-old iMac and save money. A 2016 model will save you hundreds of dollars and still work great with a GoPro. Check out some of the used systems on Apple’s and OWC’s websites.

      Larry

      Reply
  8. Mae Janer says:
    November 29, 2017 at 7:25 pm

    Hi Larry!

    I have started event and wedding videography as well as creating travel films and other content. I currently use a 2011 13″ Macbook Pro 2.8ghz i7 16gb RAM 1TB SSD. It was managing fine (surprisingly) until 4k came into the picture and heavy colour grading! I primarily use lightroom and final cut pro!

    I am now looking to purchase the following iMac:

    2017 iMac 27″
    4.2 GHz i7 (turbo boost to 4.5ghz)
    32gb RAM (DIY upgrade form 8gb)
    2TB Fusion Drive
    Radeon Pro 580 8gb video memory

    I use a 1TB thunderbolt 2 external HD + 2x 8TB USB 3.0 external HDs for file storage.

    My questions are the following:
    1. Will fusion drive be able to handle the workload when editing or is SSD absolutely necessary?
    2. Do I need the 8gb video memory or can I settle with a 4gb?

    It’s no question that this machine will be expensive! I cannot afford a 1TB SSD upgrade so I have to settle with fusion drive but if that cannot handle editing 4k then I will have to consider 512gb SSD for editing purposes.

    THANK YOU!!

    Reply
    • Larry says:
      November 29, 2017 at 10:57 pm

      Mae:

      I like Fusion drives A LOT! So, yes, that will have the performance you need, plus far more storage than an SSD.

      For weddings and events, 4 GB of graphics memory will be fine. 8 is better, but you are not doing effects-heavy work, so 4 GB should be OK.

      Larry

      Reply
  9. Robb says:
    November 30, 2017 at 10:23 pm

    Hi Larry,

    I edit video, sometimes multicam, on an older MBP and would like to upgrade in order to cut down on render time and start using Motion much more extensively. I also have some ideas with Cinema 4D that I’d like to try. You posted this article back in June and listed the following iMac as a good choice for video editing on a small business budget and better than any Mac Pro. My question is if the iMac system below is still your choice for editing and if it would help me work with Motion and Cinema 4D.

    “If it were my money and I was doing video editing on a budget, here’s what I would get:

    27″ Retina 5K Display
    3.5 GHz i5 processor
    (Includes the Radeon 575 GPU)
    32 GB of RAM (custom upgrade)
    1 TB Fusion drive
    Keyboard and mouse to suit

    Total: $2,599”

    Thanks

    Reply
    • Larry says:
      November 30, 2017 at 11:30 pm

      Robb:

      Essentially, yes. Motion is VERY GPU intensive, as it Cinema 4D. If those are your main reasons for getting the system, get the best graphics card you an afford.

      The rest of the system specs remain the same.

      Larry

      Reply
  10. Robb says:
    December 2, 2017 at 11:13 pm

    One more question, Larry. For what kinds of work would you recommend the i7 over the i5 CPU?

    Reply
    • Larry says:
      December 3, 2017 at 1:04 am

      Robb:

      Anything CPU-intensive. Examples would be video compression, spreadsheets, databases, that sort of thing. Nothing graphical, like Photoshop, Motion, Premiere, FCP X.

      The i5 is a perfectly fine chip. But, if you are doing CPU-intensive things, the i7 is a better choice.

      Larry

      Reply
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