Video editing skills are in high demand right now due to many people turning to YouTube for passive income and businesses expanding into video marketing. If you want to get into video editing, you need a capable laptop to handle your files and the software you use to edit your videos. But how does a more powerful computer benefit your video editing effort?
Rendering Time
Rendering is a process used to combine all the parts in a video file and their edits into a single file that can be played online or on a video player. Rendering requires numerous calculations that create the frames of the final video. These frames include the recorded frames, animations, transitions, and effects.
In some cases, you may hear the word exporting used in place of rendering.
Seeing that there are calculations behind the process, you need a reasonably powered computer to finish rendering your video. Other factors determine render times, but how powerful your CPU and GPU are playing a significant role. The more powerful the components in your computer are, the faster the render will be.
For this reason, video editing computers must have enough cores and high clock speeds. Remember that these specifications will go up as you increase the resolution of the final render. For example, rendering a 4K video requires more cores and faster clocks than rendering a 1080P video. Both also help you complete the render in a reasonable amount of time.
When chopping for a rendering computer, ensure it has a current or last-gen CPU and GPU. These video editing Lenovo desktops have enough power to handle even the heaviest render workloads.
Video Scrubbing
Video scrubbing is moving your cursor across the timeline in video editing software. Video editors do this to navigate the video they are editing, see how various transitions are working, find out if there are some areas they need to fine-tune, and generally see how the video flows before the final render.
Video editors will also scrub B-roll video to skim through it and see if it would be a good fit for the video as-is, or if it needs additional editing.
Because you are jumping forwards or backward many frames, your computer must calculate the final frame where you land. If the video is already playing, the computer must also fill in some frames as you scrub.
A powerful computer makes this process faster and smoother, especially when the video is already playing and has a high resolution.
Editing For External Storage
Many editors store their footage on external drives as a form of backup, and to also not fill their computer drives with footage.
Some edit off their external drives if they have fast enough drives. You need a reasonably powered computer to ingest a lot of footage when editing from such an external source, especially if it is a NAS or server.
It should feel like you are editing out of a local drive to eliminate bottlenecks and breaks in creativity and productivity.
While it might not be feasible to get the most powerful computer you can when getting started as a video editor, you will certainly notice when you upgrade or buy a new one.
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