From The Hobbyist Corner
Prefix:
This is just a silly sort-of proof-of-concept… or more like a stunt. Would I use this combo for ’professional’ film making, lets say as wedding-photographer? For sure not! But with offerings of UHD-TV at nearby supermarkets for under a 600€ and 4k-camcorders in my domain (the forthcoming FZ1000 will cost, rumored, <800€!), my idea was: Would it
blend.. ehm, work? My hardware (don’t laugh!… ok, laugh, but not that loud!) is a MacMini, i5, 16GB Ram; and my working drive is made out of two 2.5“Toshibas, via discUtility set-up as Raid0, by usb3 …
Yeah, THAT’s what I call a shoestring-budget … !!
So, I've
stolen borrowed a 4k-clip from YouTube, imported it 4x into FCPX, optimized it …, first hurdle to go: this short 2:20min clips need about 15min to be imported and converted. But meanwhile, you can watch new tutorials at fcp.co, or search for new toys at amazon… or make a walk in fresh air.-
I know, video eats disk-space, these tiny clips, in proRes422 are now each 8Gigs heavy… phew!
My project (amateur: all set to auto) based upon the first clip: 4k, 30p …
In FCPX, I selected my imports, Make New MC-clip - and presto!, here it is:
Based upon my experience with my ‚normal’ material, I knew: WITH the Angle Viewer it gets a bit bumpy; and it did (kinda 11fps playback…). cmd-shift-7, withOUT the viewer, the 4k-MC plays back and forth like silk.
Now, to get really crazy, I applied two effects, no rendering …
.., and my <1k€ ‚workstation‘

still works flawless.
Yepp, this is just a lil’, non-scientific test with lil’ material, proofing nothing, far from real life (but I did edit a 30min documentary with ~20h HDmaterial with this set-up!); what impresses me: The actual latest toys for amateur-4k can be handled on the cheapest hardware!
… and, no, no fans running.
The biggest fun:
In standard ‚benchmarks‘ my set-up performs … a lil’ above a pocket-calculator. Which proofs again: benchmark-tests measure performance of benchmark-tests… not mandatory real-life-usage of hard- and software made for each other.
Somewhere at Cupertino, someone loves even my tiny
Tupperware™-box, and cares for it is somehow
optimized…….. Awesome!