That old computer of yours might be able to handle a lot more than you think.

One of the most common issues people run into when getting into video editing is the intense computing power required for smooth editing. Smaller resolutions might work fine but when you get into 4K or higher resolutions, high frame rates and high bit rates chances are your computer might struggle to play back your footage.

If playback alone isn’t hard enough, things get even worse when you start adding layers of graphics, effects, color grading and other typical elements of video editing. I’m using a 10-year old iMac that was fully loaded, top-of-the-line when I first bought it. 10 years later it’s still incredible, it has the best display I’ve ever used and I prefer using it over my M1 Max MacBook Pro. It even handles video editing pretty well but as soon as you throw anything recorded using HEVC encoding the iMac will pretty much throw a tantrum and stop playing the video. It’s unusable.

In my case it’s the newer HEVC codec that’s causing issues, my iMac has to run a specific process in the background to decode HEVC footage which is very taxing on the system. This is the case for a lot of us – our cameras are optimized to capture the best possible image quality in the smallest possible file size. As a result we have loads of footage that looks great, fits in small file size but is not really optimize for editing on any older computer.

So I just need a new computer, right?

Before you give up and buy a new computer there’s a workflow that’s worth trying – proxies. Proxy workflow means creating duplicate files of your source footage but in a smaller resolution using a codec that’s more edit-friendly. Proxy files are temporary, they’re used when editing your video, providing you significantly improved performance. All major video editing applications have a built-in proxy workflow, they’re able to switch between proxy and full-resolution media and your final exports automatically use the original, high-resolution source files. And if you’re worried about disk space you can delete the proxies after finish your edit.

That’s stupid, why would I waste time creating duplicate files?

When I was in film school proxy workflow was pretty standard for anything we worked on, my guess is because the computers back then couldn’t handle even the most basic formats too well. If you join any feature film or TV-show post-production team you’ll also quickly learn that all major productions still use proxies. It just makes sense and speeds up the editing process when dealing with high-quality footage. Somewhere along the line when computers started getting better we got used (and sort of spoiled) to edit natively whatever format our cameras were recording and for a lot of people this became the standard. Insisting to edit natively and if your computer can’t handle it, then it must be time for a new computer. If that’s how you roll, good for you, you must have quite a budget for new computers every couple of years. The rest of us are going to use proxies because they just work.

Below we have a video guide on how to utilize proxies in Davinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere.