How to Choose the Best Mac for Video Editing in 2021

In order to perform video editing or any work with either visual effects or animation, one needs a powerful  device to save time and ensure everything is running smoothly. Due to this reason, a lot of professional editors prefer to use a MacBook to avoid lags and delays.

In this article, we will share all the necessary information you will need to choose a powerful video editing system that can handle heavy workloads. By customizing or using a MacBook, it becomes easier to achieve the desired speed and performance.

The Processor

The processor is undoubtedly the foundation of any computer system. Whether you are looking for a new laptop, a smartphone or the best tablet for Netflix and movies, the core count of your processor and its speed is what affects the performance of your computer. If your MacBook is not equipped with a strong processor, then it will run slow. If you prefer using a professional editing software like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro, then you might need to opt for a system with a powerful processor. The performance of an editing software solely depends on your system’s core processor speed. In case you are using a different software, then the performance of your graphics cards will be more crucial than the speed of your core processor. Ideally, the processor is what makes your system fast and efficient. Therefore, you need to spend the largest portion of your investment on your system’s processor. You need to have at least a 6-core processor if you want to use it for professional video editing.

Graphics Card

The video card used in editing mac books is comparatively less important than the performance of your processor. As long as you invest in a powerful processor, you can still opt for a cheaper graphics card.  An average quality graphics card won’t work well with Resolve as its performance primarily depends on the graphics card.

Moreover, it is not mandatory to invest in a video card for editing videos. However, if you are using a more advanced or new software for editing videos, then you may need to invest in a high-level graphics card. A newer version of an editing software is more likely to benefit from graphics cards by hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding. Therefore, if you plan to edit videos by using a modern editing software, then it is recommended to invest in a high-level graphics card. Even if you cannot afford an expensive video card, you can opt for a moderate level graphics card.

NVIDIA vs AMD

Today, there are many different brands of graphics cards available for playing games and editing videos. NVIDIA is a popular option among gamers and professional video editors. AMD’s OpenCL also provides similar performance. Popular editing software such as Premiere Pro and Resolve are compatible with AMD as well as NVIDIA. However, Adobe editing software is more compatible with NVIDIA.

Unless you don’t have enough workloads or have a powerful CPU and SSD, investing in a high performing graphics card won’t be enough. You need to make sure your processor is powerful enough to run with your desired graphics card.

Video cards are a vital part of gaming laptops. Therefore, if you want to use your editing MacBook for playing games as well, then it is better to use a graphics card.

RAM

Having large amounts of RAM is crucial to enjoy a smooth video editing experience. If you want to edit at 1080p, you can opt for an 8 GB RAM. If you are working with 4K, then you need to have a minimum of 16 GB RAM. In either way, having large amounts of RAM  gives better results, especially when you use a heavy editing software. Nevertheless, you cannot overlook the significance of having a powerful processor and video card. While editing videos, you are constantly uploading heavy files and saving different versions of edited files into your computer. Therefore, it is better to have large amounts of RAM beforehand. It will help you perform your editing tasks without any fear of deleting your files for extra storage space. Moreover, you won’t have to worry about frequently changing and upgrading your system. If you have heavy workloads and editing assignments, then you can even opt for 32GB or 64GB of RAM

SSDs and HDDs

Data storage is crucial for the efficiency and smooth functioning of any computer system. In most cases, you can either opt for a Solid State Drive (SSD) or Hard Disk Drive (HDD). Although, both drives are used for video editing ; however, SSDs are more popular than HDDs among pro editors. When compared to HDDs, SSDs offer better performance, especially while performing complex editing tasks that require working on different clips simultaneously. Nevertheless, having an SSD is not a prerequisite for any video editing system. An HDD will work fine as long as you are editing a footage at 1080p. In fact, they can even be used for editing 4K footage. However, you are most likely to have dropped frames while editing 4K videos.

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Aron Christopher

Aron Christopher is a digital marketer and blogger. When not working, he enjoy playing games on his computer and cuddling his cat named Tiger.

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