FCPX on MBP Retina Display – WOW

[Mark Dobson]

[Andy Field] “It’s now an entirely different program – no crashes – crazy fast…..it appears this program needs lots of ram and a very fast machine.”

Hi Andy – so which bit is faster?

The biggest holdup I have is with rendering out stabilised and treated shots or complex compound builds.

But it might be that with the MBP Retina that this is not necessary.

I would be interested to find out what you plan to connect to your new laptop.

I’m planning to get one soon and have worked out that I’ll need to spend almost as much as the MBP to really take advantage of Thunderbolt and external SSD drives.

But I suppose the biggest question is what is like to work with a a high resolution 15″ screen?

[Andy Field]

What’s faster? – everything – applying effects – program loads in an eye blink – just exported a short 30 second movie as a test – took a few seconds – effects preview super fast — i kept giving up on the program on a late 2010/11 model Macbook Pro as it was slow, clunky – just decided to stop randomly and crashed so much I wouldn’t trust it with a paying project —

Still hate no tracks and no real time keyframeable mixer — just can’t go back to rubber banding audio when every other NLE has this….double clicking nested audio to make adjustments – maddening – if Apple lives up to it’s promise, I’ll give it another try.

in the mean time it does things that I’ll use for effects to plug into other NLEs (FCP 7 PP 6…Avid)….that are quicker and easier than other options.

Connections – still waiting for my thunderbolt to firewire adapter to connect old legacy drives….(Apple’s selling them now on their web site)

Will buy a thunderbolt drive and see what the speeds are — but over all – if you’ve got the dough, this new MBP Retina display -fully loaded is the Fastest machine I’ve ever used.

Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852

[Andy Field]

Sorry didn’t answer your original question – What’s it like to work with hi res screen. Very Nice – you can play with size and real estate in the Monitors control panel – if you leave it alone it optimizes for the Retina Display but you can make the screen crazy big (an everything in it much smaller – but still sharp if the program is optimized for this ..and FCPX seems to be) very nice display. I’ve read if you use FCP 7 on this it doesn’t play well with changing resolution while it’s loaded ..in fact crashes) so it may be best to change resolution before you open FCP 7 — haven’t tried many others yet

Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852

[Gary Huff]

[Andy Field] ” What’s faster? – everything – applying effects – program loads in an eye blink”

Did you have an SSD in your 2011 MacBook?

[Alban Egger]

[Andy Field] “It’s now an entirely different program – no crashes – crazy fast…..it appears this program needs lots of ram and a very fast machine. Impressive.”

Hmm…haven´t many here been saying this for months? 16GB RAM and a GPU from 2010 and younger is the minimum. Then FCPX works as you expect it to.

I don´t think you need the Retina, my 2011 MBP and even my MacPro from 2009 work fine with it (although the MacPro misses Thunderbolt).

[Andy Field]

No ssd in old computer

[Andy Field]

Yes. But I had the latest CPU and max ram in last MacBook. Pp and avid were zippy. Fcpx slow and buggy. On this machine not the case

[Alban Egger]

What was your “last Macbook”? It worked on my 2008 MBP without crashes and wasn´t sluggish since 10.0.1, but got sluggish with projects with 1500+ clips. It worked fine with a few hundred clips, but was constantly on the 4GB RAM spike.

In my new MBP I got 16GB during a project and suddenly everything went much faster even in rendering; also in Motion and the rest of my software. So FCPX is not the only 64-bit app that is hungry.

[Lance Bachelder]

I finally got to play to with FCPX on Retina display at the Apple store and had the same “blown away” experience. Even with the base model it was just fantastic – although the project was Pro RES Proxy it still was blazing fast adding fx and color timing and looks clearer and better than any monitor I’ve ever used.

I have a fast all SSD Win 7 workstation and I thought that was fast – the built-in memory on the MccBook is just crazy fast. I’m waiting for the extra cash for the mid to higher end model. I can see editing a feature film using proxy files with just the on-board memory – awesome. Who knew the day would come when it was faster to use the system drive than an external raid?

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California

[Jon Barr]

The internal SSD is indeed super fast. The following BlackMagic Speed Tests done on a top of the line Retina MBP:

Internal drive speed test:

Write: 433.8 MB/s
Read: 447.0 MB/s

Promise Pegasus Raid-5 Via Thunderbolt:

Write: 603.1 MB/s
Read: 541.2 MB/s

Looking forward to the speeds we’ll be getting with an all SSD Raid connected via Thunderbolt.