MACBOOK PRO & DSLR footage

[Thomas Morter-laing]

If you’re editing with DSLR footage I’m sure most of the upper specs of the macbook pro range will do the job perfectly well. Just out of interest, what is the data rate for DSLR footage and what DSLR are we talking about?

The problem is, even the new macbook pros are still technically dual core processors, they just hyper thread to make it virtually a quad core. This however means that even with the macbook pro i7 with any render intensive stuff you will get a little bit of loss of speed in comparison to even an imac i5.
If it was me, though, and I had the budget, what I’d get would be a macbook pro i7 (for the express card slot), with 512GB solid state HD (although there is some debate as to their longevity because of their finite amounts of read/write, and its VERY expensive for something which is great, but something we’ve all managed to do without perfectly well). The antiglare display is a must. The one thing I’d buy less of is RAM- everyone raves about it but does it actually make huge differences to FCP after 4GB? Not that I can tell……

😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
Production Assistant, Grace Productions
Degree; TV Production

[Tom Bucknall]

The 4GB RAM limit is not an issue if you are just using FCP, but if you are using FCP, Photoshop and After Effects at the same time, then 4GB of RAM may not be enough.

[Jonathan Ziegler]

I occasionally run off an older Macbook Pro with my T2i and a 7D. A desktop machine is way better.

The bottle necks will be your RAM, graphics card, and hard drive.

Get the fastest multi-core proc out there, 4GB RAM is not enough. The video cards in most laptops are NOT designed for editing video and you will get choppy performance (especially running h.264 footage as it’s processor and graphics heavy). I use FW800 external drives so I don’t fill up the hard drive after a couple days. Consider getting a backup machine like a Mac Mini or an older desktop G5 or Intel to help with processing files, too. Honestly, I’ve had better experiences working with the new iMacs than with the new Macbook Pros for video. I get the whole remote editing thing, but since I generally just set up in a corner, an iMac works just as well and the graphics cards are a little better. They’re both just as portable, too.

Jonathan Ziegler
https://www.electrictiger.com/
520-360-8293

[Dennis Radeke]

A laptop can edit the 7D footage with Premiere Pro but as others have stated, a desktop system would give you better performance.

For a laptop, get the most RAM you can stick in it – I believe it’s still only 8GB. From there, you should be able to edit footage and use other apps. As Dave said, both AE and Premiere Pro are 64-bit so can take advantage of all of your available RAM.

the nvidia card doesn’t come into play for a laptop and only becomes really important once you start adding effects. the GPU acceleration essentially offloads the effects from the CPU to the GPU, so if it’s mostly cuts editing on a laptop, you don’t really need the GPU acceleration.

To counter Dave’s point about 4 vs 8GB for AE: 8GB is WAY better for AE than 4, especially if you’re doing HD work. His basic point of sticking as much memory in there as you can if you’re doing a lot of AE work does apply though.

All that to say what I said in the beginning – laptop good (and usable), desktop better.

Dennis – The Adobe guy