FCP standard def edit on Mac Book?

[Jeff Carpenter]

Should be ok…sort of. The main problem is that you’re stuck with only 1 firewire port. That’s IT, you can’t add anything else. You’ll have to buy a firewire hub and use it to split the one port into two…one for a camera (or deck) and one for a hard drive. It’s not ideal, but for DV video it should work ok.

I’d also suggest getting the full 2 GB of RAM (buy it somewhere other than Apple). At the very least, go for 1 GB. (For that, Apple’s price is fine to go with.)

The Macbook’s main weakness is the video card but that shouldn’t be such a big deal for Final Cut Pro.

If this is a secondary system that’s for capturing and field editing only I’d feel ok. My main concern would be using it to lay BACK to tape. It should work but I could see a higher chance of dropped frames in that situation. If you can edit on this and then move your drive to another computer to finish the project then I’d worry less.

[Winston Cely]

Thanks for the advise. That’s what I was thinking. I’m holding out to get the 17″ MBP this fall.

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

You can certainly try to “daisy-chain” the camera via the external drive (no HUB needed).
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of laptop Macs with FCP hooked up this way.

[Bret Williams]

There’s isn’t anywhere to put a card, is there?

[David Jones]

[Jeff Carpenter] “Should be ok…sort of. The main problem is that you’re stuck with only 1 firewire port. That’s IT, you can’t add anything else. You’ll have to buy a firewire hub and use it to split the one port into two…one for a camera (or deck) and one for a hard drive. It’s not ideal, but for DV video it should work ok.

I’d also suggest getting the full 2 GB of RAM (buy it somewhere other than Apple). At the very least, go for 1 GB. (For that, Apple’s price is fine to go with.)

The Macbook’s main weakness is the video card but that shouldn’t be such a big deal for Final Cut Pro.

If this is a secondary system that’s for capturing and field editing only I’d feel ok. My main concern would be using it to lay BACK to tape. It should work but I could see a higher chance of dropped frames in that situation. If you can edit on this and then move your drive to another computer to finish the project then I’d worry less.”

Are you talking from experience, or just offering your best guess?

Because I have a new MacBook Pro, and you should know that you are not limited to just a single firewire port as you say.
It comes with a new ExpressCard 34 slot, which lets you add additional firewire or SATA ports for example, quickly and easily.
While the video card is not as bad-assed as some of the new models out now that have cooling blocks as big as a car,
it is still nice enough to drive an additional 30-inch cinema display,
and offers better performance than most folks have on a desktop system.
In fact the MacBook Pro offers better overall performance than most of the computers you folks are using to run Final Cut Pro,
and as long as you use a drive sub-system that has enough throughput to support the edit media of choice, DV, 10-bit SD, HD for example,
you should not have a problem dropping frames.

[John Pale]

[David Jones] “Because I have a new MacBook Pro, and you should know that you are not limited to just a single firewire port as you say.”

He’s talking about the Mac Book (the new revamped iBook) , not the Mac Book Pro.

[Craig Alan]

https://www.barefeats.com/mbcd4.html

[Kevin Monahan]

Go for a MacBook Pro if you want more stability with an Io, which you need for SD work.

Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com

[David42]

FC Studio is officially not supporrted on MBs. The FCS apple sales info says the little GMA 950 graphics card is the issue.

Word from an Apple video expert is that FCP universal will install, but no tech support. Motion almost certainly not.

The post on the shootout was great! https://www.barefeats.com/mbcd4.html

Thx all, for contributing.

[Uli Plank]

May I offer some speculation?

I suppose Apple is just discouraging use of FCS on a MacBook since a future version of FCP will probably make more use of Core Video (i.e. the GPU power, just like Motion is doing now) than the current version, and they don’t want disappointed customers yelling at them by that time. Currently, FCP is running just fine on a MacBook, while Motion is severely limited by the graphics card as soon as it comes to HD (SD is not so bad).

I was very surprised when I found that there wasn’t any difference in performance of FCP 5 under 10.3.9 (no Core Video) and 10.4.x (with Core Video).

You will be fine with DV and even HDV (editing, no SFX) on a MacBook. But for anything more demading than that, you’re stuck: No card slot, no FW 800, nothing. Where would you connect a P2 card or a faster drive? So, if you don’t care for that, go ahead, it’s a nice little machine and Apple had good reason to drop the 12″ PB.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.