Freelance work on a powerbook

[Walter Biscardi]

As long as they’re simple, short projects with not a lot of rendering, you’ll be ok. Start getting into projects with a lot of effects, transitions, multi-track composites or long timelines and you’ll be waiting hours for renders.

Also, you’ll be limited to DV and HDV editing on that system unless you invest in an AJA Io. DVCPro HD cannot be captured cleanly to a Powerbook via Firewire and Uncompressed formats cannot be captured at all without something like the Io.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Jeremy Garchow]

I work on my laptop a bit, but now I have a MacBook Pro and it is really awesome. Used to cut DVCPro HD on my G4 Powerbook a bunch. It works great. What are you planning on for storage?

The render times are a bit slower than a desktop, screen real estate is at a shortage, but if you need to get in and get out to different locations, a laptop is great and I swear, I sometimes have more creative moments on my laptop than on a desktop, I guess it’s because I can be wherever I want to be and not stuck in the studio next to the ringing phone.

If you plan to do a bunch with you laptop, I’d upgrade to 17″ MacBook Pro. It’s really really a powerful mobile setup, especially with the new After Effects now being universal. Can’t wait to see what it ioHD is going to being to the table as well.

[Rafael Amador]

I work a lot on the field and I’ve been doing that for a few years with my G4 Powerbook. Now I’ve got a job for a year or so that will make me edit on the field a week a month, so last Fryday I bought a 17′ MacBookPro Core2 Duo with 4GBs RAM.
Yesterday I installed the full FCS2. I haven’t had yet time to test it much but this morgning I sent a movie to Compressor to make an MPG2. Amazing. Runs at least three time faster than my Desktop G5 Dual 2GHz, 4GBs RAM.
Now I need a LaCie FireWire800 PC card so I will have three FireWire800 and two FireWire400 ports available. Enough to work SD and I think enough too when, hopefuly, I will go XDCAM in the next few months.
As Jeremy says, is a bit short of screen (too many things in the FCs window), but almost wherever you go you can borrow a PC screen to work with two screens. I look forward too to buy AE CS3 as soon as my empty pockets recovers a bit.
Cheers,
rafael

[Walter Biscardi]

[rafalaos] “I look forward too to buy AE CS3 as soon as my empty pockets recovers a bit.”

If you own plug-ins, chances are very few of them, or possibly none of them, will work with CS3. We’re finding that out now and will have upgrade just about every single plug-in we own.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Rafael Amador]

Walter,
Out of the plugins issue (damn), did you notice a better performance with AE CS3 over the previous versions?
Cheers,
rafael