MacBook Pro for editing?

[Tim Kolb]

Are you editing HD or SD? Compressed or uncompressed?

Depending on the processor in that laptop (7200 rpm refers to the rotation speed of the harddrive), I suspect the computer would be fine. You may have to carry some storage around with you…and you may enjoy working with another display when you have the chance, but I do lots and lots of editing on laptops (PCs) and it works just fine if the data rates are manageable with the other parts of the system (harddrives, buss speed, etc.)

TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net

[Brian Dugan]

Hi.
Standard right now but I will need to move into HD soon I suspect.
Is it just file size issues or is there some problem with working in HD on the Macbook Pro?
I usually render out an uncompressed version as my final piece. 2-5 minutes = 8-10 gig.
Imported footage can usually be saved as high quality / low loss compressed then brought into my project.

[Tim Kolb]

I would say that render time won’t be equal to a full workstation (of the same age of course), and HD files will be large and you’ll need some large/fast drives. I know there are some external SATA interfaces that work out of a laptop’s PCMIA slot…which of course, the newer Mac laptops don’t have.

You could go with a USB>SATA adapter, but USB will definitely be the bottleneck there…

The only other issue with editing (or maybe more to the point-‘finishing’…) HD is that seeing your video pixel-for-pixel will require a WUXGA (1920×1200) display for 1080 material, and without a second monitor you’ll have to have a way to view video full size in order to be sure that what you are doing with the video in post (color correction, effects, and so on…) is actually playing out without any flickers or fine detail artifacts that may not be noticeable until you master out the finished file and play it on a large monitor.

TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net

[Blast1]

[Tim Kolb] “I know there are some external SATA interfaces that work out of a laptop’s PCMIA slot…which of course, the newer Mac laptops don’t have.”
The new MacbookPros have 34mm express card slots vice Pcmcia, there are Sata II cards that will add two eSata II channels, Problem is that the Mac Express Card slots are 34mm which reduces the available cards that fit, The 54mm slots that are available for PC laptops have eSata II raid controllers where you can raid0 a pair of drives to get over 140MB/s, its amazing to have a TB or TB and a half of drive space hanging off a laptop.