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macbook pro vs MacPro
So if NAB brings a new top of the line macbook I may just be inclined to sell off my 3 year old G5 Dual 2gig tower with a PCI based Sata board and 4gig of ram. I am working the HVX200 and would love to have a laptop on set with me. So my question is… Is it wise to have a laptop as your primary computer? It would be faster than my tower and more useful since I could edit with it in the office and caputre with it in the field.
But what it the max number of sata drives it can operate? Currently I have 8 sata slots on my tower. the laptops only have one sata port right?
What else would I be giving up by going only with a laptop?
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9 Replies
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[Chris Baldwin] “the laptops only have one sata port right?”
actually zero, you need to purchase a card to run a SATA drive and I’m not sure how many ports you can get on any one card.
If it’s your primary machine, desktops will run rings around any laptops. If mobility is important to you, then go notebook.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Chris,
What are you importing? I have a 17″ MacBook Pro with a terabyte of storage, a Cinema Display, a Matrox MXO for HD output and a new HDV camera BUT there is no current laptop hardware solution to import anything except native HDV which is a challenging editing format. Make sure you can bring in your footagr in the format you want before you go the laptop route.
Bill Doyle
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Good for auxiliary use, problematic for primary use. As Walter points out, it just doesn’t have the muscle of the desktop.
But I just bought a laptop (a Dell, because I wanted to run DV Rack) and love it. I can start evaluating clips while still in the airport. And when I had to do an emergency re-edit (using Premiere Pro) on-site recently, the laptop was right there, which was pretty cool.
But laptops are frequently stolen, so I wouldn’t make it my only machine, or the only place I store my media. How many news stories have you read recently about stolen laptops with a million SSNs in them?
— Bob C
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if you want to use your SATA drives you will need a macbook pro it has the expansion slit that you can get a SATA card for the macbook has no such connection you will have to use firewire drives
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>BUT there is no current laptop hardware solution to import anything except native HDV
https://www.mobl.com/expansion/products/expresscard_expansion/index.html
w/ a PCI capture card and PCI SATA card -
Andy,
Thanks for the info on this card. I’m going to call them tomorrow and see if this will provide a solution to HD-SDI import.
Bill
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Thanks!
It was useful to hear people say that they wouldn’t feel comfortable with the laptop as the primary editing station. I also was under the assumption that the laptops with faster hardware specs than my Dual 2gig PowerPC G5 with 4gigs or Ram would preform faster than my tower, especially if they were Intel 2.16 chips… So that’s valuable info.
I suppose I’ll still wait till NAB and see if the new laptops (assuming and hoping there will be new laptops) will be affordable enough to move that way vs just getting a used G4 macbook pro with the PCMCIA card slot.
My only question though would be woul the G4 macbook pro with the PCMCIA card slots run the newest version of Apple OS Leopard & FCP6 that are rumored to come out soon? And would it run HD Rack fast enough to capture from DVCPRO HD cameras like the HVX200?
Thanks again!
Chris Baldwin
Shoulder High Productions
Media of the World; For the World!
https://www.shoulderhigh.com
newsletters@shoulderhigh.com -
“My only question though would be woul the G4 macbook pro with the PCMCIA card slots run the newest version of Apple OS Leopard & FCP6 that are rumored to come out soon?”
Well there is no such thing as a G4 macbook pro, there are G4 Powerbooks and Macbook Pro. I assume that you mean the G4 Power book because it has a PCMCIA slot where the Macbook Pro has a ExpressCard Slot.
Nobody can say what the system requirements of the next version of Final Cut Pro will be because it officially douse not exist yet. You will have to wait like the rest of us to find out.
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[Andy Mees] ”
https://www.mobl.com/expansion/products/expresscard_expansion/index.html
w/ a PCI capture card and PCI SATA card”Interesting notion, however their compatability chart says these expansion boxes do NOT work with AJA Kona or Blackmagic cards.
https://www.mobl.com/expansion/support/compatibility/index.htmlRegards,
David
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