Many of us edit high-resolution videos these days. Working with large frame sizes usually require more memory resources from the computer. Those resources come in form of the system memory (RAM) and video memory (VRAM), or as a single pool of memory (Unified Memory) used by both central processor (CPU) and graphics processor (GPU). So the question that typically comes up is how much memory is actually needed to let your computer smoothly edit and render video of a specific resolution. This may be especially important to know when you are about to purchase a new computer that cannot be upgraded later, for example, an Apple Silicon Mac or a similar machine where the memory size is pretty much fixed for life. Or when you want to upgrade some components of your existing computer and need to know the required target memory size.

Factors affecting memory requirements

Frame size

The primary factor determining how much memory you need for smooth video editing and rendering is the frame size of your footage. Larger frames require significantly more memory. For instance, a UHD (3840x2160) frame needs four times the memory of an FHD (1920x1080) frame, while an 8K (7680x4320) frame demands four times more memory than UHD. As resolution increases, so does the memory required—there's no way to avoid this if you want smooth performance.

Obviously, if you don’t need to work in high resolution, you can reduce the frame size early in your workflow and in this way directly shorten the memory demands.

Video editing application

Your video editing software naturally demands a significant amount of RAM and VRAM for its video processing. Each application has its own memory requirements. For instance, Adobe Premiere Pro (Windows) has a minimum requirement of 8 GB of RAM, with 16 GB recommended for FHD video and 32 GB — for UHD video. In contrast, DaVinci Resolve (Windows) requires at least 16 GB of RAM for FHD projects, with more memory needed for higher-resolution edits. Different applications usually also have different requirements to VRAM.

Operating System

Different operating systems also have varying memory requirements and handle RAM and VRAM differently, this variation is mostly influenced by their architecture. For example, macOS 14 Sonoma requires at least 8 GB and the recommended size of RAM is 16 GB. In Windows 11 on the other hand, the minimum requirement for RAM is 4 GB.

However, when you look at memory requirements of the same video editing application working in different OSes, things may turn out different from what you expect. For instance, DaVinci Resolve 19 working in macOS requires a minimum of 8 GB of RAM, and increases this requirement to 16 GB when handling tasks in Fusion. On the other hand, when working in Windows, DaVinci Resolve needs at least 16 GB of RAM, doubling to 32 GB for work in Fusion.

Complexity of project

The more clips, effects, transitions, and other elements you include in a project, the more resources are required to process each individual frame and to maintain smooth performance overall. If your workflow regularly involves complex large-scale projects, it’s essential to use a computer with ample memory capacity.

When working with heavy effects (both built-in and external ones provided by plug-ins like Neat Video), it is also important to take those into account. Some effects can use not only CPU/RAM but also GPU/VRAM. While some effects are lightweight, others can place some heavy load on the hardware. It is therefore important to take into account the RAM and VRAM requirements of such effects.

Other applications

Editing and rendering may require some memory but that may be not the only consumer of the memory resources. There may also be other memory-heavy applications, like a web browser with tens or hundreds of tabs opened or waiting in the background. Such applications may significantly reduce the amount of memory actually available for video processing. And so you may want to close those applications to free up the memory or make sure your computer has enough memory for both kinds of applications running at the same time. It is up to you to decide on that but it is important to remember about those other applications and their use of memory resources.

We recommend to monitor other processes running at the same time as you are editing or rendering, as those may shorten the available memory resources and in this way reduce the speed of video processing. Start using tools like Task Manager (Windows), Activity Monitor (macOS), System Monitor (Linux) or similar tools to control the actual memory usage.

The overall combined memory load comes from all four types of memory users mentioned above: the operating system, your video editing application, the effects (plug-ins) used in your project, and other applications running in the background.

Memory requirements measured

One possible way of establishing the total amount of RAM and VRAM (or Unified Memory on new Macs) required to edit and render video of specific resolution, in a specific video editing application, running in a specific OS, and using specific video effects, would be to check the official system requirements of each of those software products and then somehow combine or add up them to get the total numbers. This however may not always be possible because many video editing applications and effects do not explicitly differentiate the requirements for different video resolutions, do not specify the parameters of the project, do not provide accurate data, etc.

Another way would be to run some real-life tests with different video editing applications, in different OSes, with video of different resolutions, with a specific effect, for example Neat Video 6, applied to the video, and to measure the minimum amount of memory just sufficient to make it all work, and the recommended amount of memory when you can more or less comfortably edit and render without unnecessary slowdowns caused for example by excessive swapping from RAM or VRAM to the virtual memory.

We have done several direct tests to see how much memory is actually needed in a simple test case. We have measured the amount of memory just sufficient to get work done and separately, the amount of memory needed to get it done comfortably.

The test projects had only two clips, each with Neat Video 6 applied using default settings, joined by a cross-dissolve transition.

The testing was conducted using separate test projects based on FHD and UHD clips.

We measured the actual RAM and VRAM usage on systems with discrete GPUs and their VRAM, and the amount of used Unified Memory (UM) on Apple Silicon Macs.

Below are the results, showing the minimum and recommended memory requirements (rounded to whole GB figures) for different host applications (latest versions as of early 2025) and two video resolutions, FHD and UHD:

Neat Video 6, FHD (1920x1080)

Neat Video 6, UHD (3840x2160)

These figures show the total amount of memory used by the OS, video editing application, Neat Video 6 and video data itself.

The total memory consumption increases with larger frame sizes. For resolutions larger than UHD, the numbers above will be even higher.

Complex Projects

If you work with more complex projects in terms of the structure of the composition where, for example, multiple effects must be applied to the same clip, then you can expect an increase in memory usage.

Neat Video 6 incorporates many optimizations intended to save memory and reduce the load on memory resources whenever possible. However, there are many external factors (other effects, layers, video resolution, other applications running, etc.) that may still add that extra load, so you need to take that into account.

You may also want to check the official memory requirements of the video editing application you work with. Those official requirements may sometimes be even higher than the measured figures above. In this case, it may be a good idea to go for a higher value recommended by the specifications of that video editing application when choosing new hardware for your video editing, as those video editing applications may require more memory in more complex scenarios.

Conclusion

The above results show that the amount of required memory can vary very widely depending on the video editing application, OS, video resolution, and generally on the project setup as well. The figures above can help you choose the hardware configuration that can comfortably work with a specific video editing setup in a relatively simple project when using Neat Video 6. Please use these figures when considering a new computer purchase or upgrading existing components. This is especially important when deciding on the memory size of an Apple Silicon Mac where you cannot increase the memory after purchase. It is crucial to do it right the first time.

If you can go higher in terms of memory resources, make a reserve for the future. Do not go lower than the minimum numbers shown above, as that is likely to cause unnecessary slowdowns.