[Dave Gage]

[Sean OBrian] “My immediate budget is $900-1200 so I am unfortunately limited. My hope is to upgrade next year and have this be a backup/on the road machine. The joys of starting a business on the side.”

Did you check out the Refurb store at the online Apple Store? My hesitation on that laptop is the i5 processor. If you can swing an i7, it should speed things up quite a bit.
https://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_pro/13

Good luck,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Tim Wilson] “That COW’s Business & Marketing forum has in fact largely been supplanted by this one.”

Cool. I just checked it out. I mostly just lurk here for kicks, but the business forum sounds interesting. I rarely have time to post here or anywhere, but maybe I can add something of worth at that forum.

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Bret Williams] “And if you go 27″ you can change the RAM yourself. Buying 32gigs for $200.”

Steve,

Sorry for the late reply, but yes, what Gary and Bret said. As always, buy as much computer as you can afford. It will last you that much longer. As I said, I’ve got 2 x 2011 i7 MBPs, and if something major doesn’t go wrong with the hardware, I can use them another couple of years.

As Bret said, with the slightly older Macs, you can go in and upgrade the RAM and HDs yourself which is a bonus. My next upgrade will be replacing my spinning drives with SSDs.

Good luck,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I would say you’re wasting your money, or at least not spending it as wisely as possible.

Check the refurbished section of Apple.com and for a little bit more money you can get a machine that’s newer, has better hardware, and therefore will run fcpx more smoothly.

It will also have a warranty.”

Steve,

I agree with Jeremy. My last 3 Macs were purchased from the Refurb section at the online Apple Store and I have no regrets. I even added the extended warrantys to all.

I edit on a 2011 MBP 17″ Quad-Core i7 (16 GBs of Ram) with AVCHD and screen captured H.264 files and have no problems and no transcoding, but… I’m not really doing anything taxing on the machine. I’m also still on the Snow Leopard OS for business reasons and a version of 10.0. It all works fine for me as I don’t make my living as an editor, I just do it for my online businesses.

In your case, I would definitely go with something refurbed and newer and with better graphics cards.

Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Andrew Kimery] ”
Metaphors are a lot like cars, Bill… ;)”

Good one.

(By the way, am I remembering correctly that about a month ago you said you hike in the S.M mountains from time to time. I live in Topanga and hike all the time. Let me know if you like to hike sometime and I can get my contact info to you.)

Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Gary Huff] “The benefit of ClipWrapped MOVs vs leaving the PRIVATE folder intact is that if you want to pull a single clip for something later, it’s less of a hassle.”

Yep, completely agree. As I mentioned in a previous post, I re-name all the clips I will be using and file them logically in folders so they are easy for me to find. It’s all my website and personal video only, so this makes sense for me. If I had clients, I would re-think the filing procedure.

As an aside, if I haven’t gotten a chance to wrap all the files and I want a quick peak, there’s a little app called “Movist” that plays raw .mts files (works in 10.6.8). Of course in the present Mac OS, it’s moot.

Thanks again,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Andy Neil] ”
Also, never worked with the fusion drive, but an SSD on your system drive is going to make a huge difference in app loading times for FCPX over a standard ATA drive.”

I upgraded my 2011 i7 17″ MBP a couple of years ago with a fusion drive as a media/edit drive by replacing the optical drive with a kit from OWC. I also moved the fusion drive to the faster boot drive position to get the faster connection. It’s faster for FCPX than a standard spinning drive, but of course no where near an SSD. (At the time,I posted the benchmark results here at the COW, but I’d have to search for it you are interested).

I didn’t buy the SSD because of the price back then, but I would today as the prices have come down so much. (Just watch out for that whole “TRIM” thing).

Dave

[Dave Gage]

Shane,

Thanks for the comments, all good points. But since I only edit for my business, I have zero concerns regarding clients and other editing software. I still have files from the ’80s and ’90s that when it was necessary, I converted them to work with my current software, so I may have to do that in 5-10 years with my current .mov files.

Since I’m also the cameraman of the business, I tend to shoot as many takes as I may need until I feel like a have a good one. Before I edit, I go through the wrapped files and toss the junk that isn’t useful and rename the files I’ll use so they are easy to search on and find at a later date. If I save all the masters that means I’m also saving 50% junk files that I will never need.

#1 The ClipWrap files are the same size. ProRes doesn’t speed up my editing at all, so I don’t bother with it. I’m only using 1080p files in a 720p timeline and I have no immediate motives to move to 1080p, let alone 4k.

#2 Good point, but I can always go back to an old computer if required to convert files or work in an old application. I still have a functioning PPC 7500, Pismo, and G5. The only times they get turned on these days is if my kids want to play a game on them that only exists on the old computer. But, they do still work. With what I do, which mostly goes up on my website or Youtube, FCPX should work for some time to come with my basic need. My two main computers today are Quad-Core i7 17″ MBPs running 10.6.8 and 10.8.5. As long as one is still working in 5 years, I should be covered.

#3 Again since I don’t edit professionally, it’s moot.

My basic question is whether the ClipWrapped .mts files wrapped into .mov files would be any more or less useful down the road then the .mts files themselves. I would think that the wrapped .mov files will be fine, but this is why I added this post.
—

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

Gary,

[Gary Huff] “Yep, i never save the PRIVATE files after re-wrapping.”

Makes sense to me. I was just being a bit anal and overly cautious when I first started with the AVCHD files and FCPX. I think I’m ready to recover a couple of drives.
—

By the way, how did that 15″ Retina MBP you picked up a year or so ago work out for you?

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Andrew Kimery] ”
“Reply with quote” would automatically quote the entire post and put it in the reply text box (for lack of a better term). Right now it’s:
1. Hit “reply”.
2. Highlight text in post you are replying to.
3. Hit Q or “quote” button.

A “reply with quote” button would merge these steps into a single button press.”

Tim, yes, what he said. I have an ancient forum (from 2001) on one of my websites that does exactly as Andrew described. The link for the “Reply with quote” is next to the “Reply” link and it greatly simplifies the “quote” aspect. As he mentioned, it does quote the complete prior post. If you don’t want that, you need to use “Q” or edit the content of the quoted reply.

Check out this post and you can see how the reply and other options are laid out on the bottom right of each post-
https://www.harmonicalessons.com/members/dcforum/DCForumID1/651.html

Dave