We have easy access to shooting everything in 4K resolution thanks for the popularization of 4K cameras like GoPro, DJI, Sony, Panasonic Series Camcorders, as well as high-resolution Smartphones such as iPhone X. In terms of visual experience, a large amount of pixels brings us lots of benefits. Sadly, nightmare it could be to edit those livelihood 4K pictures.
Why We Need Professional 4K Editor?
To process a video by editing software usually consists of 3 steps: 1) Software read the source file, usually compressed file that we import to the workflow. 2) Software decompresses the file as uncompressed frames. 3) Apply our editing decisions to the uncompressed file for our preview. 4) Apply all editing decisions to source files when export by rendering and encoding. Decode capability of editor matters most for processing efficiency. Ordinary software relies on CPU to decode footages, which will eat up many sources of systems. Thus our computer easy gets stuttering once we import 4k video to editors. Professional 4K editor has a strong decoded capability which will help us edit high-resolution clips fast and easy.
Common 4K editors for Windows and Macs
VideoProc- one-stop editing tool to trim, split, rotate, compress, add subtitles, watermarks, etc. It smoothly handles 4K 60fps, HEVC/H.265/H.264/MOV/XAVC videos, and other formats. When we edit videos, VideoProc will trigger Level-3 hardware acceleration. Thus it can processes footages 5x faster than most other tools, even on a poor built PC.
Adobe Premiere Pro- A couple of features in Adobe Premiere Pro that makes it a top choice for editing 4k videos: stunning cinematic effect, powerful color correction, and complete editing toolkits and so on. The Premiere is tagged high: usd239.88 per year and has high requirements on hardware. Thus, the major groups of users are the movie, advertisement maker and professional editors who need to apply impressive after effect to 4K /8K, 3D, and 360 VR footages.
5 Factors We Should Care When to Choose the Right 4K Editor
What is the most decent editor to process 4K videos? This is probably one of those questions every newbie to 4K has asked. Sadly, no editor is a panacea. When considering which ones merit getting, take below factors into account.
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Supported Formats
What is the codec adopted in the video? HEVC and VP9 are typical codecs for 4K. DJI videos are compressed by H.264/HEVC. GoPro files are recorded using the h.264 codec and the MP4 file type. XAVC codec is for Sony Camcorder. iPhone X shoots everything using HEVC or H.264.
Unless using Vegas Pro, VideoProc, those editors featured with a wide range of support formats. Knowing exactly the codec information of source and export file is necessary as some 4k editor, for instance, Lightwork, iMovie does not support exporting HEVC file.
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Minimum System Requirement
A computer built with 1.2 GHz CPU 8core, 32GB RAM, 8GB, GTX1070 or AMD equivalent is often the lowest requirement for processing 4k videos, but software makes minimum system different. Editor, such as VideoProc and VSDC needs only 1GHz CPU, 2GB RAM to process 4K footages.
Check the below information on our PC.1) Hard Disk Space. 2) Processor: right-click on the Windows start menu icon, then Click on System>RAM. 3) RAM: right-click the Windows start menu icon, select System, then Scroll down to find installed RAM. Then make a comparison with our system to see whether it can run on our PC.
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Editing Functions
Do we need to add complicated after effect for the footages? Need any picture-in-picture effect, stunning transitions, or color corrections? If yes, Adobe Premiere Pro, Vegas Pro, Final Cut Pro X are the top 3 recommended options. Pro editors always have over the complicated timeline as an expense of strong editing functions. Therefore when doing some quick editing works like cutting, merging, splitting, rotating, stabilizing, etc., VideoProc turns to be the go-to option.
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Ease of Use
Though it may not be hard to learn any editors, we don’t have time and find no necessity to study the difficult terminologies and confusing panel for editing casual videos. Shotcut, iMovie, VideoProc, VSDC are all beginner-friendly and needs barely anytime to learn.
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Price
I’m not saying the cheaper, the better. I’m saying do not invest extra money on toolkits we will never put to work. There are free tools like Shotcut can do almost all basic editing jobs. If we do not need to process large files, it will not be worthy to purchase DaVinci Resolve 15 Studio which costs $299.
