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will 8GB Ram suffice for MBP use with PPro?
I actually need to buy 3 Macs. One has to be a laptop (MBP) which will be at my day job (not editing) though I can get away with editing from time to time. Would also use the laptop when I travel to visit my girlfriend every 2-3 weeks. In addition to PPro, I use a bit of AE and Motion and do a good bit of encoding for Vimeo. It’s a lot pricier to buy a 16 GB Ram MBP and I’d prefer to use that money towards the other two Macs on which I’ll be doing the majority of editing work. But, there’s no real point buying a MBP that’s too slow and will drive me crazy when I try to do the work I need to do.
So, any recommendations? Thanks!
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6 Replies
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I use a 2012 MBP with 8Gb RAM when I’m at the office or traveling, then a full fledge iMac based studio at home. The MBP Pro works just fine. I use Premiere CC, AE, and Media Encoder a lot. I do not use Motion. Obviously its not as fast as my system at home – but also not so slow that I’m frustrated having to use it when I need to.
Don Hertz
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It depends on your footage you are editing. My experience lead me to buy the higher end 2012 MBP with dual video card installed (nvidea GEForce) and 16GBs RAM. I shoot a lot of MXF and AVCHD HD footage. I just completed a 35 minute video project that didn’t have a lot of FX, but I found that on the machine that had 8GBs, I had a lot of small problems with Pr CS6. Crashes happened when rendering and I noticed that I was using all 8GBs to render. When I upgraded to 16GBs, my rendering showed using just about 15MBs, and all my crashing stopped.
I ended up with the non Retina display, because they stopped producing MBPs with the FW plug when they went to the Retina display. I have too many drives that force me to occassionally use FW800 to be limited that way. I assume I will end up going USB 3.0 or TB eventually. All my newer drives are USB 3.0 as well as FW800 and eSata.
So I would say that if you are doing simple field work, logging, and doing short pieces, you likely will be ok, but you could upgrade later. OWC has very good upgrades that I’ve used over the years.
Al
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Sounds like a very similar situation to mine. Thank you for the help!
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Thanks very much for the feedback. Strange how you were getting that error though. But, I’m set on the Retina and, unfortunately, you can’t upgrade its RAM.
I’ve been working with DSLR files converted to ProRes, but, as I transition to PPro from FCP, that might change. Most of my movies (short docs for the festival circuit) are around 15min. Also, I do a lot of Ken Burns type motion of stills, text animation, and plugins to help with these elements. Do you think 8GB RAM will work for this or would 16 really be recommended?
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I too do a lot of similar kinds of fx as you do. If you really can’t upgrade the Retina model to 16 GBs, I would buy the 16GB model. If you get into a longer project, and have to use the MBP, it would be a drag to find out that you couldn’t upgrade in the midst of a project. I did the upgrade to 16MB from 8 myself, I had to open the case, but it wasn’t that hard. OWC video based instructions were pretty clear. I wonder if because they are making such a slim case now, that they simply solder the RAM in and don’t have a typical expansion slot, or even a slot that allows the existing RAM to be popped out?
Al
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Simply put, I’m ALWAYS in favor of more memory than less. Will it work and be fine with 8GB? Yes. Will it work better with 16GB? Also yes.
Dennis
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