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Before I buy…..
True or False: the old rule of thumb, that one should never edit with your media on your system drive, is no longer valid, with a 2013 MacBook Pro with Pcie flash storage.
The reason I am asking; I am looking into replacing my home machine (2008 MacPro), and thinking that buying a tricked out MBP, would be the way to go. The most intensive editing I do is 6 angle 720p 60 streams, and I mostly do that at work on a souped up iMac with a RAID attached. But If I wanted to take a project home, I could do a Thunderbolt transfer to my laptop, and basically edit anywhere.
I would of course get the 1TB option on the storage.Any misconceptions here?
don walker
texarkana, texasJohn 3:16
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22 Replies
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I say think different on storage. The problems that made it impossible to edit from system storage in the past (throughput, latency, capacity, fragmentation, bus speed) are a non-issue with solid state storage today.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
You’ll be amazed with the rMBP performance. It’s quite good. You should be Ok with that plan as long as it’s not your only long term solution (which of course it isn’t).
I often work on my laptop system drive with a copy of the library and media, and then transfer the library back to the desktop in the office and relink. It works great.
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I’d also have a look at the Retina iMac before pulling the trigger, unless easy portability is essential of course. The GPU power on the CTO RiMac is a considerably more robust for FCPX usage than the RMBP. It’s more expensive yes, but not compared to the new Mac Pros.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
Call Box Training -
I personally still preach the “never edit from the boot disk” mantra daily. For me it also never had anything to do with access speeds or the likes, at least not first and foremost. But rather due to the fact that if IT goes, it ALL goes. IOW if your OS or the entire disk goes south, then you’re not getting to your project any time soon either. If you have it on an external “media disk”, then all you need is another machine and you’re off. Aside from the fact that you’re in no need of ANY copying/transferring if you, as you describe, move to another machine.
Even your 6 angle multicam should be more than doable on a decent USB 3 disk when using proxy, which you’ll most likely need to work with either way. They are cheap and very portable. I for one recently edited a 4 angle 5K RED MC (as proxy of course) on an rMBP with only a few negligible hitches, coming from an external 2.5″ USB3 disk. So regardless of what you end up buying, you’ll want to go with external storage no matter what IMHO. And I’d also go with the iMac if portability isn’t a complete must.
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
Unless I’m reading this wrong, he already has an iMac and raid. This system would serve as a duplicate system, not the primary, in which case editing on the drive is easy and convenient. I do it often.
It would also be a highly capable mobile system if needed.
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If you need to take your project elsewhere for grading etc then having everything on the external is still the best approach. Otherwise SSD drives make the old mantra less important.
I still encourage editors to do it because we are working on a colaborative workflow and their media needs to get to me via and external.
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I work on a digital island. The only collaboration is between the audio guy and myself, and he usually sends wave files to me.
Thank you everybody for your responses. There will be of course, be other drives attached to this rMBP. I can’t hold all my graphics on this computer for example. But for taking a self contained project home to work on, it seems like a great work flow.
Again thanks for your responses.don walker
texarkana, texasJohn 3:16
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[Robin S. Kurz] “But rather due to the fact that if IT goes, it ALL goes.”
Same can be said for your USB 3 drive. It should have a backup, period. Editing from your main SSD doesn’t put you in any more danger other than having a backup.
Frankly, that reason is rather ludicrous. That’s like saying that you should have a different car for when you drive to work and when you drive for pleasure, because if your work car gets totaled, then you would be in it.
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Actually, the only thing ludicrous is that utterly nonsensical analogy. Maybe re-read (further) and brush up on the reading comprehension part?
FWIW, SSDs also have limited read/write cycles, even if they are high in number, so using it for everything all the time would also put additional strain on that limit. And yes, I’ve stored proxies of entire projects locally on my rMBP for remote editing a few times also and it’s a very cool thing to be able to do. It’s just not something I’d want to be doing all the time, which I may have misinterpreted to having been part of the original question.
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
[Robin S. Kurz] “FWIW, SSDs also have limited read/write cycles, even if they are high in number, so using it for everything all the time would also put additional strain on that limit.”
The practical erase limit for current-generation solid state technology is much, much higher than you think. High enough that I don’t think it’s really worth worrying about. Your solid state storage is still likely to be functional even after the computer has been retired.
Check out the SSD Endurance Experiment [link].
All the drives they tested passed 500 TB of re-writes. In practical terms, that’s like writing 140 GB to your SSD every single day for 10 years. A bunch of the drives failed between 500 TB and 1 PB of rewriting, but some of the drives have passed 1.5 PB (not a typo) of re-writes. That’s like 430 GB of data written every day for 10 years.
Of course all SSDs will fail someday, but so too will mechanical drives. Back up your data and it’ll be ok.
On the subject of backups and laptops and system drives, I find that a great many people overlook the importance of bootable backups. A bootable backup of your system drive means you can up and running in minutes, not hours, of a system drive failure. If you don’t have a current bootable backup, today’s a great day to make one! This concludes our public service announcement.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn]
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