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Laptop vs Desktop
If you had to choose one which would you prefer:
a 17″ Macbook Pro or an equivalently priced Dual Core Mac Pro
I’m leaning towards the Macbook Pro since it’s quite versatile – you can take it to the shoots even if it’s quite remote and/or quite far (with plane travel for instance). It’s strong enough to do some after effects/shake/motion stuff
But the Mac Pros are stronger, faster and you are able to connect a KONA or BLACK MAGIC to them, which I don’t think you’re able to do on the Laptops (I’ve seen the tutorial on the travelling G5 but I don’t think it’s quite rugged enough for some particular types of travelling methods – it’s also quite bulky, so you’d basically need quite a big production to be able to use it)
You’ll be working mostly on Panavision HVX material, HDV materials and 3D Targa 10bit Sequences with a possibility of doing uncompressed 10 bit materials in either 1080 or 720 which are either converted from DVCproHD/HDV materials or materials be captured via KONA or BLACK MAGIC provided by another party.
So with this in mind, if you had to choose one – which one would it be?
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2 Replies
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As soon as you need anything uncompressed, the only way to go is the MacPro. You’ll need a Kona or Decklink, and that simply doesn’t fit into any laptop 😉
Apart from that, you’ll need a really fast RAID for uncompressed HD. There’s simply no onnector on the MacBook Pro for that, neither FW 800 nor the express-card slot is going to cut it (the latter one is faster, though).
There’s only one possible exception: if you want to stay in HDV or DVCPro HD native ALL the time and only play out to something uncompressed in the very end, you might use the Matrox MXO, which is an external box connected to DVI.
Regards,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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[Markford Astina] “f you had to choose one which would you prefer:
a 17″ Macbook Pro or an equivalently priced Dual Core Mac Pro
I’m leaning towards the Macbook Pro since it’s quite versatile – you can take it to the shoots even if it’s quite remote and/or quite far (with plane travel for instance). It’s strong enough to do some after effects/shake/motion stuff”
It’s an apples and oranges question for me actually. Where do you plan to do the most editing? In the field or in an office?
Mac Pro is much more versatile than a laptop due to the many configurations you can create for SD / HD editing.
MacBook is much more versatile because you can edit just about anywhere.
They’re both versatile for different reasons. I like having both and I do. I have an older 17″ PowerBook and four desktop systems, the latest of which being the Mac Pro.
You can’t do any uncompressed HD editing on a MacBook. If that’s a requirement, then you need the Mac Pro.
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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