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mcp and avchd...what do I need?

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Hey guys
What are the minimum specs needed on a mbp Imm about to get to edit avchd footage, imported form the gh1?

-ghz minimum

-graphics card (256 good or need 512?) and is 8600 enough? or really need the 9200 or newer ones

-hardrive

-17 inch needed? for the resolution? Or will 15 inch be ok

- 7200rpm at least?

- 4gb ram neccassary, if only running final cut pro

-final cut pro 6.0.1 or higher?

-snow leopard needed? or is just the highest leopard good?

-any third party software besides final cut to import/compress the gh1 10801 24p footage?

-matte screen? for editing, anyone used the glossy and like it?


Thanks a bunch...any help out be greatly appreciated.

trav
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Late 2013 rMBP, i7, 750m gpu, OSX versions 10.9.3, 10.10
Hi, hopefully this might help a bit :)

Hey guys
What are the minimum specs needed on a mbp Imm about to get to edit avchd footage, imported form the gh1?

-ghz minimum

As fast as you can afford - you're going to want to do I'm sure as little rendering as possible during the editing process, and unless you're doing dissolves and hard cuts only, the processor will play a part in what transitions and video effects can be played without forced rendering. Of course, if you're buying a new Mac book pro, any of them will work fine. I've edited AVCHD on FCP 6 with as slow as a 2.1GHz CPU and haven't had an issue, but I'm also willing to wait on that machine for rendering on some transitions I use.


-graphics card (256 good or need 512?) and is 8600 enough? or really need the 9200 or newer ones

Well, if you plan to go to FCS3 ever, I'd get a system with 512M video ram - the program Color refers to requiring 512M video ram for some functions - you'd have to read the specifications to see if it might now or in the future be important incase you ever upgrade final cut. Since you're talking about a laptop, I'd go with 512M because that is one piece in the laptop you won't be able to swap out.

-hardrive

Whatever size internal is fine, I'd suggest at least 250 gig internal for the boot drive so you have space for every app you might need - realize that FCS2 (this is the version that has Final Cut Pro 6), full install, is 56 gigs (with all audio samples, all apps, etc.) - that's not including any additional programs you might want, nor the OS, or any potential future needs.

For the video editing drive - IF YOU CAN AVOID IT - don't use the internal drive - I know there may be times where you have to (I've done it on my 2.4ghz macbook unibody), but get an external FW800 drive to connect to the macbook pro to act as your video scratch disk. Assuming you're using Pro Res 4:2:2 (the most common format used for editing AVCHD footage on FCP). You'll need 1.10 - 1.65 GB / minute of video - just for the capture. So if you're editing an hour long movie, you'll need probably at least 3x the space of the video for it (the space for the video, render files, output file) so between 198 and 297 gigs of storage for a single one hour production. I'd suggest having 500gigs to 1tb of storage for your scratch drive.

-17 inch needed? for the resolution? Or will 15 inch be ok

You can survive on 15", I've edited on 13.3", it sucks tho. There's a lot of info crammed on the screen - and if you ever plan to use Color, well, you really need screen real estate for that app. I'd suggest 17" unless you can't afford it - most of my editing I do on a 20" screen and I still want bigger TBH.

- 7200rpm at least?

for the scratch drives, it would be best to have as fast a drive as you can get. For the system drive, faster would be nice for quicker app launches, boot times, etc. - but for the scratch, get fast if you can.

- 4gb ram neccassary, if only running final cut pro

I'd say 4gb isn't a bad number for FCP. 2Gig will work (I have 2 gig in my macbook, 4 gig on my mini and 8 gig on my mac pro), but 4Gig gives more breathing room. And if you ever plan to use motion for special effects, or special openings and so forth, the more memory you have, the bigger of a project you can create in it...

-final cut pro 6.0.1 or higher?

I'm currently using 6.0.6 (latest patch) for final cut in FCS2. FCS3 offers some better authoring options and better blu ray support it seems. If you own FCS2 then you can probably stick with it, but if you don't own either - FCS3 is so cheap compared to previous versions (brand new $999), just get it.

-snow leopard needed? or is just the highest leopard good?

well, for FCS2, leopard is fine, I don't know about FCS3.

-any third party software besides final cut to import/compress the gh1 10801 24p footage?

I don't think so - only 3rd party software I use (I don't have a GH1 btw) is for post work, namely some special transitions and titling to make credits a little easier as I really hate doing scrolling text on FCS.

-matte screen? for editing, anyone used the glossy and like it?

Can't comment. My macbook has a glossy, but I normally am editing on a screen attached to it or to my Mac Pro - both of those screens are more matte then glossy, and I don't use the screen on the macbook too often for editing.

hope that helps a bit.
 

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