[ 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.
346 Responses to Configure a 2019 iMac for Video Editing [u]
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James Christy says:
November 26, 2018 at 2:56 pm
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Larry says:
November 26, 2018 at 3:19 pm
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JHZ says:
December 3, 2018 at 7:50 am
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Larry says:
December 3, 2018 at 8:40 am
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Thomas says:
December 18, 2018 at 12:28 pm
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Larry says:
December 18, 2018 at 12:36 pm
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Pravin Sharma says:
December 26, 2018 at 12:54 am
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Larry says:
December 26, 2018 at 10:01 am
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Pravin Sharma says:
December 26, 2018 at 12:56 am
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Larry says:
December 26, 2018 at 10:03 am
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jeffrey stevens says:
February 10, 2019 at 4:04 pm
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Larry says:
February 10, 2019 at 5:22 pm
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Vincent Tamer says:
February 18, 2019 at 7:31 pm
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Larry says:
February 18, 2019 at 8:14 pm
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Vincent says:
February 28, 2019 at 12:34 am
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Larry says:
February 28, 2019 at 8:10 pm
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Cleber says:
February 22, 2019 at 4:43 pm
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Larry says:
February 22, 2019 at 5:44 pm
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BPR says:
February 26, 2019 at 7:36 am
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Larry says:
February 27, 2019 at 6:33 am
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John says:
February 27, 2019 at 6:22 am
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Larry says:
February 27, 2019 at 6:39 am
← Older Comments Newer Comments →Hi,
This was really useful for me. I just bought an iMac to edit my first feature (27″ Retina 5K display: 3.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 2TB). It came today, I bought Premiere and I’m ready to go. But my wife’s office has a video department and they are saying these fusion drives are not consistent and are recommending a full SSD in an i7. Their recommended package would be like $3100 compared to mine at like $2100. Any advice much appreciated.
Best,
Jim
James:
Well…. if you have lots of money and lots of external storage, an all-SSD system is ideal. But, for me, I’ve used Fusion drives for five years. They work great and the editing is fine.
If you can, upgrading the RAM to 16 GB will more than compensate for the Fusion drive. And the 27″ iMac has RAM that’s upgradable.
Larry
This was very helpful. I like that I can always come to your page for valuable and consistent answers and tips for my problems. It’s like visiting an old (and very knowledgeable) friend!
I’ve had my 2017 27″ 5k iMac for a year now and I’ve been pretty satisfied. However, I’m starting to work on bigger and longer projects, sometimes running multiple apps at once (AE, Premiere Pro, Encoder..etc). I’m thinking about upgrading my 32gb RAM to 64gb. Do you think this upgrade will be of any significance in terms of speed or performance? Is it worth the $500 upgrade?
Thanks for all your valuable insights!
JHZ:
Boosting RAM won’t help a whole lot for a single app, but it should make running multiple apps smoother. Especially because Final Cut, Premiere and Photoshop are very RAM intensive.
However, just to set expectations, your machine will feel “smoother,” it won’t feel “reborn.”
Larry
Hey,
I was wondering if the speed difference would be very big between a 4core i5 and a 6core i7 for editing 4k h264. Thanks!
Thomas:
This is a very specific case. H.264 is not multi-threaded, so the fact that the i5 does not support multi-threaded won’t make a difference for this codec. (Other codecs, like HEVC and ProRes are multi-threaded, which would make the i7 faster). What would also matter is clock speed between the two CPUs; faster is better.
Larry
This is a very specific case. H.264 is not multi-threaded, so the fact that the i5 does not support multi-threaded won’t make a difference for this codec. (Other codecs, like HEVC and ProRes are multi-threaded, which would make the i7 faster). What would also matter is clock speed between the two CPUs; faster is better.
Pravin:
You are correct. In fact, I ran speed tests using the i7 CPU in Compressor, Adobe Media Encoder and ffMPEG to see what the results were for different codecs and different compression software. The results were eye-opening:
https://larryjordan.com/articles/video-compression-speed-test-apple-compressor-vs-adobe-media-encoder-vs-ffworksffmpeg/
Larry
This is a very specific case.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
Pravin:
Also correct. However, for most social media, H.264 is the codec of choice – HEVC still takes far longer to compress and doesn’t yield greater image quality, simply smaller files – which is why I specifically mentioned H.264.
Larry
Hi Larry
this is a terrific page of advice. I am using two machines: an Early 2015 2.7ghz i5 8gb RAM Macbook Pro, and an Imac Late 2014 3.ghz i5 16gb RAM.
I have just begun to do video editing (HD) and a lot of timelapse photography. It has completely overwhelmed my Macbook Pro, and I am just getting it to work on the iMac.
I would like to purchase a new machine this year, probably around summer, and I am betting that Apple updates the iMac line.
It seems from reading around your site, and other sites, that while it is possible to do all of this work on a laptop, the iMac is a more capable performer.
For someone doing one 20mn HD video (with a vision to moving to some 4k) and lots of timelapse photography (1000 RAW files from Fuji XT3 for example), how much power would I need. Money is an object: $3000 would be my limit.
You have said,with regard to buying a machine “you will be using this computer for four years”. That is what I would like to count on. Four years, and then turn it into our home computer when I upgrade in 2023 or so.
Jeffrey:
With a MacBook Pro, you are paying for portability. With an iMac, you are paying for power. My advice in this article hasn’t changed – but, by summer, Apple may have released new hardware.
Check back in then.
Larry
Hello Larry. I really appreciate the perspective in your articles. I am in the market for a new computer and would like to take the mac route.
I’m a video editor that will be cutting a lot of 2K and 4K footage and am looking to upgrade from my 2011 MBP.
I think I’m leaning in the 2017 iMac direction now as I’ll need to upgrade in the next month. However I’m apprehensive with a potential iMac update on the horizon. My friend can give me an apple discount and the 2017 iMac 21.5 inch I have configured comes to a nice $1660, which is pretty much my budget in the first place.
Specs:
i7, 16gb ram, 256 ssd, magic track pad and the radeon 560 graphics 4gb ram
Do you think going with this build would be a mistake right before a new iMac comes out? Do you think this build will be sufficient for 2k and 4k editing? I am considering learning FCPX to take advantage of optimization.
I would love your advice!
Vincent:
Frankly, you are setting yourself up to be disappointed.
You want to edit 4K media, but only getting a small 21.5″ screen. You are making technical decisions for budget reasons – this will not work over the long-term for serious editing. However, it will be fine is editing is more a hobby than an income generator.
Critical to editing 2K and 4K files is the speed and capacity of your storage. A 256 GB internal SSD is inadequate. What external storage do you have, how big is it and how does it connect. It also depends upon what software you are using to edit with. 4K RAW files can require up to 1 GB per second of bandwidth, which puts you into Thunderbolt 3 and multi-drive RAIDs.
If you are not on deadline and your income does not depend on getting work done quickly, this system will work. Image quality will be fine, but whether it can play 4K in real-time without using proxies will depend upon your storage. My suggestion is that you plan to edit using proxies to decrease the stress on your storage.
If, on the other hand, this is how you earn your living, deadlines are critical and/or there is a lot of work waiting for you, then this is the wrong system. You may be better off renting newer gear until you see what Apple announces in the next few months. 4K is enormously large and requires high-end computer gear.
Larry
Good to know all this Larry. How do you edit your 4K? At this point I am thinking of building a PC with nearly 3 tb of SSD to handle this endeavor.
I really don’t wanna switch but I feel like I have no choice thanks to Apples hesitation releasing the new iMac. I just want to make a smart investment.
Vincent:
If you need something immediately, an iMac Pro can easily handle 4K, and with up to 28 cores, has power to burn. You can also add a 2 TB SSD.
However, I suspect we will learn Apple’s plans for a new Mac Pro in much more detail at the WWDC keynote in early June. Developers are precisely the right audience to showcase a top of the line Mac system. While I don’t KNOW anything, for sure, this was the audience that Apple traditionally showcases all their high-end gear.
Rather than rush into switching platforms wait until June, then you can make a more informed decision.
Larry
thank you for your notes, the priorities were well organized. but I use imovie for editing, and I bought a mac mini i7, 6 core! you know if imovie uses a lot of gpu, how much better would the editing experience and import, export and compression be if I buy an e-gpu type a black magic ???
thank you
Cleber
Cleber:
Truthfully, I don’t know if or how iMovie uses the GPU. However, adding an eGPU would not change image quality, only the speed with which it calculates an image. This means it would improve effects render times and exporting, but, generally, not the editing experience.
Larry
I am considering a Radeon 570 with 4GB vs the 8GB version…how much of a difference, if any, does the difference in VRAM make for video editing? I am able to pick up the 4GB on sale for about 40% less of what the 8GB goes for. Trying to decide whether the cost/performance ratio is worth it. Thanks.
BPR:
Increasing VRAM does not increase quality, just speed. If you are editing HD, you probably won’t the difference.
If you are editing 4K or larger frame sizes and not adding significant effects, you won’t notice it.
Where it will make a difference – but how much varies by shot, codec and effect – is large frame sizes, with heavy color correction, shooting RAW or HDR.
Larry
Larry:
Vincent’s predicament is pretty much mine too. I was looking at the same configuration that he was. I typically edit to and from an external drive with FW800. Right now I’m editing with a 2009 IMAC 2.7 GHTZ 4GB memory 10.9.5. I’m finally going to take the subscription leap to Premiere soon. Still hanging on to FCP-7.
I do about 70% of my own editing. I usually have my editor do the finishing. Which means he has to switch back over to his old FCP-7 system to work on my material. I’m not editing every day, but I have upcoming projects which involve some 4k and 6k RED.
Question: Can I work with the configuration Larry mentions if I’m working off external drives using Thunderbolt-3 combined with accessing some material from FW800 drives? My editor says I should go the new Mac Mini route with a decent monitor. Can I get away with the 3.6ghz quad core or should I go with the 3.0 ghz 6 core? I have a budget of around 2K. The Mac Mini route seems like the way to go, but I don’t know its limitations. This will be my full time computer too.
Thanks,
John
John:
If you are editing 4K or 6K, your Firewire drive is WOEFULLY!! inadequate. It delivers speeds up to about 85 MB/second. 4K/6K files require above 400 MB/second.
If you really are looking to larger frame sizes, you will need to spend the money to support them both in storage and CPU horsepower. The Mac mini is fine for editing – even 4k – but with an underpowered GPU. If you are creating lots of video with After Effects or Motion – both of which use the GPU – the Mac mini will need an eGPU for extra horsepower.
So, in short: If you are editing HD, your system is OK, but you are making your editor’s life difficult by running older software. Premiere is a comfortable choice after FCP 7. If you move to 4K, you need a new system and new storage. Thunderbolt 2 or e will both work – and Thunderbolt is optimized for media. In any case, between getting the high-performance Mac Mini ($1500), a better monitor and more storage, you’ll exceed your $2K budget.
Larry