Im looking at buying a Dell XPS15 laptop. I want to be able edit 4K camera footage from my Mavic drone and GoPro, however the top XPS that i can really afford without destroying the bank has a 1080p screen. Can i still edit the 4K in a video editing suite (im looking to buy Cyberlink PowerDirector 15) and output in 4K via HDMI or YouTube etc to watch on my main TV, which has 4K. The laptop has planety of grunt – Geforce 1050GTX gfx, core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM (which i’ll eventually boot up to 16 or 32 GB when finances allow), so should handle the footage fine, just an question of whether it is feasibly possible on a 1080p screen?

Shoot in 1080?

I honestly don’t know – but it doesn’t sound ideal but as you can downgrade 1080 to 480 to make editing a little easier on hardware and then render it in 1080 I suspect you can.

Personally unless there’s an underlying reason why you want 4k I’d use 1080, it still has the wow factor or if you hell bent on 4k use a desktop with the right GPU / Monitor, it must be hellish on hardware, I’ve got a decent spec desktop and it still crashes the GoPro editing suite now and again.

I don’t see why editing wouldn’t work. You don’t have to have 1:1 zoom, you’d presumably be zoomed out pretty far. (On a 15″ screen you’d struggle to see any difference between 1080p and 4K anyway).

Output would depend on a) whether the card supports it and b) whether the HDMI port supports it (you need HDMI 2.0). Let’s see:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new-product/pc-components/nvidia-gtx-1050-gtx-1050-ti-uk-release-date-price-specs-3647792/

We expect both cards to be used in full-HD 1080p setups, with 1440p and 4K gaming to be out of the question, unless you favour sub 20fps gaming (definitely not recommended).

Video’s not as intensive as gaming, and the card at least supports 4K, so you might be ok.

As for HDMI you’d need to check the tech specs of the exact model, there’s been a few different ones.

What’s your budget? I’ve seen XPS15’s with the QHD screen for as low as £1100 on the dell outlet; you might have to hang around and check every now and then though as they go quickly at that price…

As above – check out the Dell outlet – they are much cheaper on there.

I don’t think you need a 4K screen to edit 4K do you?

Molgrips, it turns out that no, you dont. You asked the same as what i effectively wanted to know, only FAR more to the point!

🙂

You’ll just either work ‘zoomed out’ or not see the whole frame. Probably not going to be editing pixels frame by frame like you would a photograph, so probably won’t matter.

Yeah most of the editing will be done at 1/2 res anyway for speed – you don’t need to see it all at that res. You could pair it with a 4k monitor if you really wanted to.

Yes , yes and yes.

We shoot in 4k all the time on Red Epics, GH4/5 and Phantoms/Inspires.

The way it works (certainly with premiere) is that you set your timeline to whatever your output is, so often it is 1080p as that’s you’re designated delivery. The 4K can then be scaled or left 1:1 and zoomed around but critically your system is being editing from 4K footage.

The other option is set your output to 4K and edit that natively and your output window is resized to your display device. Also you can adjust the quality of the playback to deal with the bandwidth.

The laptop’s native resolution has nothing to do with what your editing resolution is set at. And more to the point I’ve a 1080p XPS15 and it’s the better option as it’s a matte screen for one and doesn’t have to shift all screen pixels about like the QHD XPS.(You end up resizing the QHD XPS anyway a lot of time as it’s too small to see for the screen size.)

You can always attach a 4K monitor to either for final output.

Bear in mind it’s usually prudent to shoot in 4K and deliver in 1080p for lots of reasons. So think through your project.

Your limitation for editing (certainly H264/265) is likely to be on the processor/memory side of the XPS which whilst a powerful laptop is still only just okay for native 4K. In Premiere though you dial down the preview to 1/4 which is still good enough for making editing decisions.

I’ve done hours upon hours like this for years now.

As an aside whilst the XPS is a decent system they are still not as good as a similarly priced desktop for editing. So if you don’t need the mobility and you have the space get a desktop every time. Or Both if funds allow.

Jack the memory up and hard drive up to a raid where possible too and use Premiere CC is you are commercial. It’s great value for what you get as your hourly rate will beat their monthly charge in one hour!

hard drive up to a raid where possible too

Why?

Because multiple timelines/layers of 4K footage need all the help they can get. Latest Phantom is 100mbps , GH5 has 200mbps mode. You can soon create havoc with 4K layers.

They’re cheap and why be the limiting factor?

It’s industry standard to use RAID of some sort in 4K video applications. And yes some single drives are fast enough perhaps for H264 but R3D and PRORES, CINEMA DNG and others rely less on CPU compression cycles.

Like everything you dont have to. But I would recommend it.

It’s industry standard to use RAID of some sort in 4K video applications.

On desktops; yes I can imagine that would be the case.

That XPS can be specced with an NVMe M2 SSD which is scary quick; there’s absolutely no need to bother with RAID from a speed point of view.

roughly:

7200rpm SATA drive – you might get 100Mbs for large contiguous files
regular SSD – up to 400Mbs
nvme SSD – I get up to 3000Mbs

Also; being on my second Dell with the 4k screens (previous gen XPS; now on a Precision) – I’d not go back to a standard def screen. There were some teething problems early on but it works amazingly well now. So my question about budget was more “If you go to the outlet; you can probably get exactly what you want including the 4k screen” – maybe I should have been more specific … 😉

“RAID of some sort” is pretty meaningless and certain RAID configs will slow down performance so it depends what you’re talking about. In a laptop, assuming two drives then your only real choice is RAID0 (for performance) and that has inherent risk (especially as your OS would be on it to). As stevehine mentions you need an NVMe M2 drive these days for anything doing a lot of I/O on a single drive, pricey though.

“RAID of some sort” is pretty meaningless and certain RAID configs will slow down performance so it depends what you’re talking about. In a laptop, assuming two drives then your only real choice is RAID0 (for performance) and that has inherent risk (especially as your OS would be on it to). As stevehine mentions you need an NVMe M2 drive these days for anything doing a lot of I/O on a single drive, pricey though.

Really only trying to give general advice. Yeah?

RAID 0 on an external drive. Another solution too for back-up.

I wouldn’t edit on the same drive as the O/S.

Something like the G/RAID mini.

Run an SSD if you want etc.

At the consumer level editing off the OS drive does help a lot, lucky to have footage on one, scratch on another and export on the 3rd. It’s just a byproduct of my work machine.

On desktops; yes I can imagine that would be the case.

That XPS can be specced with an NVMe M2 SSD which is scary quick; there’s absolutely no need to bother with RAID from a speed point of view.

roughly:

7200rpm SATA drive – you might get 100Mbs for large contiguous files
regular SSD – up to 400Mbs
nvme SSD – I get up to 3000Mbs

We still run external RAID 0 systems. It’s just not the done thing to run the O/S drive for editing. That said the internal SSD of my XPS is okay for editing light-weight stuff but we’re used to running external drives for 4K editing.

I’m a bit behind on these NVMe drives.

At the consumer level editing off the OS drive does help a lot, lucky to have footage on one, scratch on another and export on the 3rd. It’s just a byproduct of my work machine.

Absolutely.

We all know there are plenty of ways of ‘getting-away’ with things. But setting up across multiple drives yields the best performance and security.

Up to the OP what he does. I just have a lot of experience with 4K and do happen to own an XPS15 which is a decent spec. It’s just not as balls out as perhaps people think, and mine is set-up for dealing with 4K quick-turnaround.

Also; being on my second Dell with the 4k screens (previous gen XPS; now on a Precision) – I’d not go back to a standard def screen

I assume you mean FULL HD screen? 😉

It’s just not as balls out as perhaps people think, and mine is set-up for dealing with 4K quick-turnaround.

Yeah I use the old i3 for the instabangers and better stuff when I get home. High power in a laptop and performance is a compromise

Thanks for advice all. Im needing the portability as i travel a lot with work…i have a very dull job and the editing will be done when ive got bot all better to do! Its just hobby footage of me and the mates mincing about the trails, nothing remotely professional at all…im still learning how to fly the Mavic and compose some remotely interesting material. Some family stuff as well, so wanting it to be ‘future proof’ as possible…i dare say 1080 will look as old hat as SD does now in the not too distant future. You know when we’re all watching 8K hologram projectors or something.

I assume you mean FULL HD screen?

Too right; those things suck 😀