Minimum spec PC and graphics card for Canon R5 video

[Bundu]

I have a Dell XPS27 all in one pc bought 6 years ago. Or 7??
I have upgraded to ssd and more memory. The pc is great for everything I do except h265 video (Premiere pro).
Lightroom an Autocad Inventor no problem.

I am due for a new PC and want to spec it so that I can edit my R5 h265 videos easier.
Any recommendations on min spec for the processor, memory and graphics card?
Then I can work from there and buy the best possible on my budget.
Thank you in advance

 

[Joules]

I have a Dell XPS27 all in one pc bought 6 years ago. Or 7??
I have upgraded to ssd and more memory. The pc is great for everything I do except h265 video (Premiere pro).
Lightroom an Autocad Inventor no problem.

I am due for a new PC and want to spec it so that I can edit my R5 h265 videos easier.
Any recommendations on min spec for the processor, memory and graphics card?
Then I can work from there and buy the best possible on my budget.
Thank you in advance

Which setting exactly are you referring to? Not all variations of H.265 have support for hardware decoding in current open ecosystem hardware. If that is explicitly the setting that pushes you to upgrade, you might either want to lower your expectations or wait for some more hardware to come around the corner.

To add some more general recommendations, AMD Ryzen 5000 is the way to go for CPU in this instance, or wait until March for Intel to catch up with Rocket Lake.

Graphics cards are hard to get currently, and impossible to get for a good price. But all the new options are great in absolute performance. You might want to list a few more of the applications you use and how much performance uplift you expect for them.

Also worth noting is that I assume you're talking about a desktop here, not another all in one. Is that correct?

 

[sociophilo]

I have a DELL XPS 15, Brand New (9500 model), and it is impossible to edit H265 on it. Literally have to create proxies for any of the R5 HQ video options (4K HQ, 8K, 8K Raw) and even the 4K 120 (which is in MP4) is slow.

These things take a lot of CPU power and memory.

That being said the M1 Macbook Pro 13inch can edit these, as they have a specific H265 accelerator chip. I would recommend getting that.

 

[privatebydesign]

I have a DELL XPS 15, Brand New (9500 model), and it is impossible to edit H265 on it. Literally have to create proxies for any of the R5 HQ video options (4K HQ, 8K, 8K Raw) and even the 4K 120 (which is in MP4) is slow.

These things take a lot of CPU power and memory.

That being said the M1 Macbook Pro 13inch can edit these, as they have a specific H265 accelerator chip. I would recommend getting that.

So can the iPad Pros by all accounts.

 

[Deleted member 381342]

Any M1 Mac would be the cheapest option at the moment. On the PC side you just need to much hardware until we see things like Ryzen 4, Intel 12th gen, Geforce 4000 series, and Radeon 7000 series. The M1 Mini for £699.00 or £899 with 16 GB RAM is the cheapest way to edit 8k video and it'll do it silently.

 

[Bdbtoys]

Although, there is a lot to pick from for cool & affordable PC parts, most are super hard to come by currently (if you don't want to pay more than retail). The demand for parts is unprecedented atm. My recommendation is to wait if possible.

Just a point of reference... it was way easier to get a R5 at launch (even though it was a wait to ship)... than it was to get my current CPU/GPU. I literally had to monitor websites for the moment items dropped, and even then if you took longer than 10seconds to check out... you didn't get it. From what I heard, its still like that.

 

[Chris.Chapterten]

Any M1 Mac would be the cheapest option at the moment. On the PC side you just need to much hardware until we see things like Ryzen 4, Intel 12th gen, Geforce 4000 series, and Radeon 7000 series. The M1 Mini for £699.00 or £899 with 16 GB RAM is the cheapest way to edit 8k video and it'll do it silently.

From the tests I’ve seen the M1 macs still struggle with 8k... but very good for 4K h.265

 

[Bundu]

Which setting exactly are you referring to? Not all variations of H.265 have support for hardware decoding in current open ecosystem hardware. If that is explicitly the setting that pushes you to upgrade, you might either want to lower your expectations or wait for some more hardware to come around the corner.

To add some more general recommendations, AMD Ryzen 5000 is the way to go for CPU in this instance, or wait until March for Intel to catch up with Rocket Lake.

Graphics cards are hard to get currently, and impossible to get for a good price. But all the new options are great in absolute performance. You might want to list a few more of the applications you use and how much performance uplift you expect for them.

Also worth noting is that I assume you're talking about a desktop here, not another all in one. Is that correct?

I only use Autocad Inventor, Lightroom, Photoshop and Premiere Pro. Just Premiere Pro a problem, and specifically h265 4k25p and 4k100p files. And yes, I am talking about a desktop.

 

[Bundu]

I have a DELL XPS 15, Brand New (9500 model), and it is impossible to edit H265 on it. Literally have to create proxies for any of the R5 HQ video options (4K HQ, 8K, 8K Raw) and even the 4K 120 (which is in MP4) is slow.

These things take a lot of CPU power and memory.

That being said the M1 Macbook Pro 13inch can edit these, as they have a specific H265 accelerator chip. I would recommend getting that.

Yes, I am also sick and tired of creating proxies. and the rendering with a few effects added takes forever.
I am not familiar with the Apple environment, would prefer to stay with a PC.

 

[Deleted member 381342]

Yes, I am also sick and tired of creating proxies. and the rendering with a few effects added takes forever.
I am not familiar with the Apple environment, would prefer to stay with a PC.

If you want to stick with PC I advise holding off a year or two. Unless you want to go something daft like a 32/64 core Threadripper and a Quadro GPU. In PC land this is still workstation territory.

 

[Joules]

Yes, I am also sick and tired of creating proxies. and the rendering with a few effects added takes forever.
I am not familiar with the Apple environment, would prefer to stay with a PC.

You didn't make it clear, but I guess the settings you want to use are 10-bit 4:2:2, which is what causes issues for the majority of hardware. Apples latest chips are currently the only ones with hardware decoding for that. With open ecosystem hardware, I am not aware of anything on the horizon that is certain to have it - though you never know. Maybe 5000 series Threadripper or Epyc are more workstation tuned in that regard. So there is no way to get around proxies other than waiting or going Apple.

In case you are talking about anything other than 10 bit 4:2:2 anyway, there is no issue at all and you can expect a major boost in performance. 6 years is a long time and especially this last update has pushed performance by a lot.

As I said, if you are looking for Adobe and general purpose compute power, Ryzen 5000 series is the way to go currently. Although availability is horrible and the prices reflect that, which makes the value proposition much worse.

I updated my own rig to run an AMD 5900X (12 core, up to 4.8 GHz), an RTX 3070, 64 GB DDR4 3600, 1 TB PCIe 3.0 NVMe software drive and 3 TB worth of Sata SSD for data.

You haven't named a budget yet either, this above configuration is more on the expensive side considering that you are already satisfied with your PC for all but one task.

 

[Joules]

If you want to stick with PC I advise holding off a year or two. Unless you want to go something daft like a 32/64 core Threadripper and a Quadro GPU. In PC land this is still workstation territory.

Do Quadro cards support H.265 10-bit 4:2:2 in hardware? I couldn't find anything suggesting that's the case, but I've not dug deep. I would find it interesting.

If they do, what's the point of going ham on the CPU core count?

 

[Deleted member 381342]

Do Quadro cards support H.265 10-bit 4:2:2 in hardware? I couldn't find anything suggesting that's the case, but I've not dug deep. I would find it interesting.

If they do, what's the point of going ham on the CPU core count?

The point of this stuff is since they don't support it in hardware, you just have to brute force it. The Quadro for its high RAM count and the CPU's for rendering. Our rendering stations are 32/64 core CPU's with 256 GB RAM and Quadro RTX 8000. This allows them to do 8k without too much stuttering on the timeline and still be able to colour grade and the like non top of that. The M1 machines give you a smooth(ish) 8k timeline and let you colour grade with relative ease comparably.

So my advise is to wait a few years, buy a workstation, or buy a M1 Mac. It depends if you need to do this today.

 

[Joules]

The point of this stuff is since they don't support it in hardware, you just have to brute force it. The Quadro for its high RAM count and the CPU's for rendering. Our rendering stations are 32/64 core CPU's with 256 GB RAM and Quadro RTX 8000. This allows them to do 8k without too much stuttering on the timeline and still be able to colour grade and the like non top of that. The M1 machines give you a smooth(ish) 8k timeline and let you colour grade with relative ease comparably.

So my advise is to wait a few years, buy a workstation, or buy a M1 Mac. It depends if you need to do this today.

Okay, got it. Was just curious because you didn't specify which quadro you were talking about. RTX 3090 or Radeon 6900XT are up there with the power compared to the entry level quadro, so I thought maybe you knew something about hardware acceleration I don't.

I'd say buying a workstation should also be accompanied by waiting though. 5000 series EPYC has already been teased and Threadripper is bound to get refreshed sooner rather than later. Availability is a different story of course.

Same for more Ampere Quadro cards. Spending that kind of money on last Gen hardware so close to the refreshes is certainly an option, but unless time is of the essence, it seems not worth it in my eyes.

 

[Bdbtoys]

I live and breathe computer hardware... w/o knowing your budget, go with an AMD Ryzen 5900x (if you can afford it bump up to a 5950x, or down to a 5800x if it's tight). An x570 motherboard. 32gb of 3600 CAS 15/16 memory. A nice PCIE Gen4 M2 Drive for OS things you really need speed for. Large drive for data (unless you're rich then go all out with SSD's for the extra speed). For video go nVidia RTX 3000 series or AMD 6000 series according to your budget... on the nVidia side there is a 3060ti, 3070, 3080, 3090 (preferably a reference card). There is also news of a 3060 (this is going to be a heck of a bang for the buck) and 3080ti (this one got cancelled). Just to note... the 3090 is way overkill (5-10% performance increase for almost twice as much cash)... if you can afford it, go for it. But if you like to hold on to some cash... go for anything under it. Otherwise there is the AMD Radeon side which is a good bang for your buck... the 6800, 6800xt, 6900xt. The 6900 (like the 3090 is a lot more cash for little gains). For brute force I would go nVidia, for memory size AMD.

All of the parts I mentioned are in high demand... don't buy from scalpers (wait to buy from retail).

 

[Bundu]

Thanks for all the input. Seems like I will have to wait a while........

 

[Joules]

I live and breathe computer hardware... w/o knowing your budget, go with an AMD Ryzen 5900x (if you can afford it bump up to a 5950x, or down to a 5800x if it's tight). An x570 motherboard. 32gb of 3600 CAS 15/16 memory. A nice PCIE Gen4 M2 Drive for OS things you really need speed for. Large drive for data (unless you're rich then go all out with SSD's for the extra speed). For video go nVidia RTX 3000 series or AMD 6000 series according to your budget... on the nVidia side there is a 3060ti, 3070, 3080, 3090 (preferably a reference card). There is also news of a 3060 (this is going to be a heck of a bang for the buck) and 3080ti (this one got cancelled). Just to note... the 3090 is way overkill (5-10% performance increase for almost twice as much cash)... if you can afford it, go for it. But if you like to hold on to some cash... go for anything under it. Otherwise there is the AMD Radeon side which is a good bang for your buck... the 6800, 6800xt, 6900xt. The 6900 (like the 3090 is a lot more cash for little gains). For brute force I would go nVidia, for memory size AMD.

All of the parts I mentioned are in high demand... don't buy from scalpers (wait to buy from retail).

Keep in mind that it is specifically and apparently only the performance when editing H 265 10-bit 4:2:2 that's bothering the OP and that none of this hardware has built in support for it. Compared to hardware that has, that's a big disadvantage as demonstrated by the iPad being able to edit these files and proper desktops not.

 

[Bdbtoys]

Keep in mind that it is specifically and apparently only the performance when editing H 265 10-bit 4:2:2 that's bothering the OP and that none of this hardware has built in support for it. Compared to hardware that has, that's a big disadvantage as demonstrated by the iPad being able to edit these files and proper desktops not.

Missed that tidbit... I don't have personal experience in editing that specific codec in Premiere, but from what I'm seeing its a pain on most systems. I would have to look into that specific situation. So OP, please take my hardware recommendation w/ a grain of salt. However for other workflows it's hard to beat it.

 

[TravelerNick]

Black Magic latest Resolve beta now supports 4.2.2 HEVC on Intel. They don't make it clear but I'm assuming the latest Quick Sync. Tigerlake or maybe Icelake laptops or wait a few weeks for Rocketlake. They mention both decode and encode. Encode is almost certainly only a Studio (paid version) feature but who knows if the free version will support decode.

Blackmagic Forum • View topic - Release of DaVinci Resolve Studio 17.1 Public Beta 10

forum.blackmagicdesign.com

"
What’s New in DaVinci Resolve 17.1 Beta 10
Support for hardware accelerated encoding and decoding of H.265 10-bit 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 formats on supported Intel platforms."

Adobe last month put out an announcement about supporting Tigerlake but I didn't see exactly what they included.

 

[Joules]

Black Magic latest Resolve beta now supports 4.2.2 HEVC on Intel. They don't make it clear but I'm assuming the latest Quick Sync. Tigerlake or maybe Icelake laptops or wait a few weeks for Rocketlake. They mention both decode and encode.

Without the hardware offering decode/encode support, it doesn't matter if the software could have taken advantage of it. Does Tiger lake have 10 bit H.265 4:2:2 support? I don't think so.

So unless Rocket Lake shakes things up, nothing has changed as far as I'm aware.