As far as Final Cut Pro X was concerned, a bigger than 4K screen was attached. I don’t have a 4K monitor or a UHD TV (which can be connected to the new MacBook Pro using the HDMI connector), so I simulated a 3840 by 2400 display using QuickRes – a shareware app from thnkdev. I decided to test to see if my new Mac can edit 4K well. Does that mean the new MacBook Pro can edit 4K video smoothly? It will do if the GPU is fast enough. This new faster PCIe connection method is the same as the one advertised for the Mac Pro coming in December. The Disk Speed Test result was 206 MB/s write and 265 MB/s read. To give some perspective, I recently added a 750GB SSD to my SATA-connected mid-2009 17″ MacBook Pro.

Here is the result of using Blackmagic Design’s Disk Speed Test application: As the SSD is now connected using PCIe instead of SATA, I knew that its storage connection speed would be much faster. This week I received my new 15″ MacBook Pro. Two problems need to be fixed to make this work – fast enough hardware to decode large amounts of video information and a fast enough connection to the storage to get large amounts of data onto the screen. What could the next Mac Pro / Final Cut Pro X combination bring to 4K editing? The ability to import 4K clips and to work with them instantly – playing more than one at the same time without having to wait for rendering. Up until now, there have been two strategies of dealing with high quality video on systems that are too slow: wait for the computer the render the video to a single combined clip which can then be played back, or to make lower quality versions that can be edited without rendering. For example if you had clip A transitioning to clip B while clip C is overlaid as a picture in picture, your editing software would have to play back clips A, B and C at the same time – changing the transparency of clips A and B while scaling clip C.

However, Final Cut Pro users have been able to create high resolution timelines since the mid-00s.Īlthough it has been possible to create 4K timelines for many years, smooth editing of 4K footage requires instant playback of more than one stream of video footage at once. UHD is the consumer brand name for TVs that can show 3840 by 2160 pixel footage.Īpple also mentioned that a new version of Final Cut Pro X is being prepared to make the most of the new machine. 4K is the next size up from HD – twice the pixels horizontally and vertically: four times the detail. When the new Mac Pro was previewed at this year’s WWDC, Apple said it would be great at editing 4K.

Macbook pro 4k video editing