Editing HD footage on MacBook Pro

[David Roth weiss]

1080p what?

There’s 1080p 10-bit uncompressed, which would be a big NO.

And, then there are many 1080p compressed formats, such as ProRes, DVCPro, etc. that would work just fine.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Ernie Santella]

You might want to get a eSATA Express34 card and a portable eSATA RAID. I use this setup my MacBook Pro on location and it works great.

[Shane Ross]

I can edit 1080p ProRes fine with my FW800 raided drives (G-Raid, Caldigit VR, VR Mini). And pull off editing that with a single FW800 drive. eSATA would be better, but FW800 works fine.

But yeah, 1080p what? There are more codecs then you have fingers and toes…

Shane

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[Miss Mc]

Great. This is sounding positive so far.

The only info I have from the client is that it’s 1080p footage. I’ll get codec info before committing. Sounds like uncompressed will not work? But ProRes is safe? Just trying to determine what my limits are with my current set up…and what my options are for improving it.

Love the Cow. Thank you.

[Illya Laney]

A firewire 800 drive with the right sequence settings is more than enough for ProRes and XDCAM. I even did a test a few months ago with a USB 2.0 drive to see if I could edit 1920×1080 ProRes and XDCAM and it worked fine on my dual Quad. I had the sequence set to Unlimited RT, Dynamic Video Quality, Full Frame Rate, and I very rarely dropped frames. If you want to speed things up when navigating through the timeline, turn off the thumbnails for the video tracks and turn off the audio waveforms.

eSATA is great, but if you’re not cutting multicam or stacking clips on top of each other, it’s not necessary.

Motion Design, Color, Editing
SWGC Incorporated

[David Roth weiss]

[Illya Laney] “eSATA is great, but if you’re not cutting multicam or stacking clips on top of each other, it’s not necessary. “

That’s the same type of argument that some people have been making about insurance, inoculations, and savings accounts for years. Trust me, never bumping up against overhead limitations is not just a luxury for the rich, it means no dropped frames when outputting to tape, a lot more realtime performance, happier clients, and most important of all, happy editors.

Look at it this way if it helps: any investment you make in a firewire solution is just a waste of money that will keep you stuck in the inferior world of firewire land that much longer.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Guthrie Andres]

I edit footage from a Canon 7D which is 1080p on my Macbook Pro which is exactly like yours, and with a FW800 hard drive. There is no issue, as long as I export the 7D’s H.264 files to Apple ProRes before I start editing. The editing will be fine, but expect your exports, renders, and compressions to take a while.
-Guthrie

[Illya Laney]

[Miss MC] “I need to edit 1080p footage from a firewire800 drive. Do I have enough processing power to pull this off?”

David, I love eSATA just as much as the next guy, but she didn’t ask if she needed eSATA, she asked if she had enough to edit with. I’m assuming she’s doing offline editing and not laying a sequence off to tape so dropped frames is a non-issue. Besides that, I was referring to her particular situation, not anyone else’s.

If you read her post carefully, she’s already in possession of a Firewire 800 drive and most of those already have an eSATA port. It would be a waste of money if she bought an extra card and an eSATA RAID for a job she already has adequate gear for.

Motion Design, Color, Editing
SWGC Incorporated

[David Roth weiss]

I understand your side Illya, however, as you can tell, I’m not a big fan of firewire storage for video editing. It’s great for backup and for transporting files and projects, and it’s certainly convenient, but for day to day editing, it’s a perfect example of what I like to call “false economy.” I liken it to the discussion we see here so often in which some people will argue that shooting with three or four mismatched cameras has saved them money. Of course, if they actually performed a simple analysis and put a proper price on their post-production time, they would see that actually costs them a bloody fortune.

The fact is, if one accurately analyzes their day to day metrics of post, and you account for every minute of every hour of every day, it becomes very easy to see that enormous amounts of time that could be spent being creative are wasted unnecessarily, with needless rendering being one of those things at the very top of the list. And, once an editor truly begins to think like a business person rather than an artist, it becomes quite obvious that an investment in SATA, especially a SATA RAID, is a terrific saver of of both time and money, with a return on investment that exceeds most, if not all, other hardware investments.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Miss Mc]

It’s true. I’ve been editing different 1920×1080 HD footage (ProRes422 and Apple Intermediate Codec) and both are playing back great. I do appreciate the suggestion to upgrade to an eSata drive. I’ve since purchased a drive and the eSata card for my laptop is on its way. In the meantime, my MacBookPro and Firewire 800 connection are doing the trick. Always good to know what I can get by with but what is the best set-up as well. Thanks!