New Macbook Pro Question

[John Fishback]

Another consideration is whether you want to be able to offload P2 cards with your MBP. If you do, I believe you must get the 17-inch version as only it has an Express Card slot which you need together with a card adaptor (like the Duel Adaptor) to offload P2 cards. We have an older MBP and have had no problems editing DVCPro 720P HD with it. Of course, you need a fast external drive (preferably a RAID). You should never use your system drive as your scratch drive.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
24″ TV-Logic Monitor
Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Russell Lasson]

[Ben Adler] “hard drive which has 7200rpm over 5400rpm”

It’s usually not a great idea to use your system drive to edit. If you’re in circumstances that you want to do that, I think 7200rpm is worth it.

[Ben Adler] “I am investing in a new Macbook Pro on a budget to edit P2 HD. “

If you need to do ingest of P2 cards, then fine a Macbook Pro with express card and use a express card to pcmcia adapter. Don’t get the Macbook Pros with the SD slot instead.

[Ben Adler] “or whether the big difference in performance will only be seen with a 2.5Ghz/3Ghz over 2.4Ghz processor. “

In FCP, it will be hard to see the difference. If you use compressor often, you’d probably see a difference if you pull out a stop watch and time it or if you have a compression job that would take an hour, you might shave off five or six minutes with a 3Ghz processor over a 2.4Ghz processor.

I’ve stopped buying the top of the line processors because I think they’re over priced and not significantly better.

As a side note, a 600Mhz difference in process speeds used to be a big deal, but now that processors are as fast as they are, that type of difference doesn’t seem as big.

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net

[Everett Bowes]

If I were going to vote on this, I would say get a 7200 RPM hard drive, no matter what the capacity. You’ll want to capture your media to an external drive. Top of the line processor is nice, but not a must-have. And spend your money on RAM. Get as much RAM as you can afford.

And I like buying RAM from Other World Computing https://www.macsales.com/
I find they have the best pricing and service.

[M. oliver Watson]

Hey guys,

I thought I read at one point that you can use USB to download video from a P2 card/HVX 200A onto a mac book pro. Is that right? Thanks!

M. Oliver Watson