New MacBook Pro vs iMac

[Jeremy Garchow]

MacBook Pro. It’s more flexible and less constrained for ins and outs.

Jeremy

[Mike Sabatini]

Have to agree with Jeremy. I had a similarly configured iMac for a very short time on the suggestion of a friend. Long story short, I traded it back in after a month for a 17″ MacBook Pro. Sure I wish I had the extra new horsepower but I’m productive right now and there will always be faster better computers just around the corner.

The portability and connectivity of the MacBook Pro made my life a lot better right away. The screen on the iMac is wonderful however.

Mike

[Than Baardson]

Great advice guys, thanks! So really the biggest drawback of the MBP is the screen size? Money isn’t a huge concern, but certainly plays a role.
Core i7 vs i5… worth the upgrade?

[Jeremy Garchow]

Get the fatsest you can.

[Mark Petereit]

Get an external Cinema Display, bluetooth keyboard and Magic Mouse with your MacBook Pro. You’ll forget you’re even using a laptop.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Than Baardson] “I’m looking for a good editing machine and was leaning towards the 27” iMac with Core i7 and 8 gigs of RAM. The new MacBook Pro’s are very tempting though. Do you think they would be comparable when paired with an external HD for storage? Thanks, “

The one thing I need to look into is whether they have the same screwy Broadcom Ethernet controller that limits the throughput to 1500. The i5 and i7 iMacs both have this card which completely negates the use of the those iMacs for use with our Ethernet SAN. I had to return our i7 iMac and get the 3.33 Core Duo machine so we can use it for editing with FCP on the Ethernet SAN.

And with direct connect ethernet storage now possible, that opens up something like an iMac and MacBook Pro to very large media arrays running RAID 5. Right now I can connect my 15″ MacBook Pro to 32TB of shared storage and that is very sweet. So I’ll have to look up the specs and see if that ethernet controller on the new one can also do this or if they cut that out on there as well.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” featuring Sigourney Weaver coming soon.

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[David Roth weiss]

[walter biscardi] “And with direct connect ethernet storage now possible, that opens up something like an iMac and MacBook Pro to very large media arrays running RAID 5. Right now I can connect my 15″ MacBook Pro to 32TB of shared storage and that is very sweet.”

Walter,

But didn’t I read somewhere that you’re only getting throughput on these machines of about 100MB/s?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Walter Biscardi]

[David Roth Weiss] “Walter,

But didn’t I read somewhere that you’re only getting throughput on these machines of about 100MB/s? “

The main SAN array is running around 500 to 650MB/s. Through ethernet SAN right now we top out at 120MB/s to each of the 7 workstations. Plenty fast enough for multi-stream ProRes HD, which is pretty much all we cut these days. 720p and 1080i ProRes to all 7 systems. This the same SAN we’re finishing up our feature documentaries with somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 hours of footage between the two. The only snag we hit was the i7 iMac not supporting Jumbo Frames, but now we replaced that.

At NAB Maxx Digital was demonstrating 350MB/s via ethernet so very shortly we’re going to have Uncompressed HD capability which is a huge HUGE change. Currently we run two 8TB local RAIDs to support 2k and Uncompressed HD. Once this new infrastructure is released, we won’t need to do that anymore as all of our systems will now have the capability to support Uncompressed HD.

So glad we went this route instead of FibreChannel, especially since we have the Maxx Expando chassis allowing us to hang 128 drives off a single Atto SAS card. Last month we went from 16TB to 32TB on the SAN in about 10 minutes. Hang the new 16TB chassis in the rack. Connect single SAS cable between the new and original 16TB chassis. Turn on. Format. Edit. Sweetness.

When our new facility opens we will have between 12 and 18 workstations all sharing the SAN from Mac Pros to iMacs to MacBook Pros and even a Mini driving Cat-DV. Each edit suite will have two machines, the primary edit workstation (either a Mac Pro or 27″ iMac) and an iMac that will be either for the Producer or Edit Assist. Exactly how we have it set up now.

That’s the real beauty of ethernet SAN. ANY computer with an ethernet connection (Mac or Windows) that supports Jumbo Frames can immediately use the SAN. If you don’t have Jumbo Frame support, you can still hop on the SAN and scrub through video or at the very least we use those secondary systems to upload video, compress, etc…. all those things you don’t want to tie up your primary editing system with.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” featuring Sigourney Weaver coming soon.

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[David Roth weiss]

[walter biscardi] “t NAB Maxx Digital was demonstrating 350MB/s via ethernet so very shortly we’re going to have Uncompressed HD capability which is a huge HUGE change. “

That is a huge change, and now I’m liking the whole concept more. 120MB/s is okay, but 350MB/s is great. Any idea how Maxx is achieving that big bump in throughput?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Walter,
I’m tired of working with a MBP, but not other solution at the moment.
I need a new computer but I can not wait the next Mac Pro.
How works Color (and in general all the GPU based software) in the new MBPs?
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com