HD Video editing Mac book or Mac Pro?

Hi all :dive:

I'm new to the forum and also mostly to macs, i am considering purchasing a Mac laptop for editing this will be mostly what the machine will be used for.

I don't really care about the internal display size and consider the portability to be more of an important factor.

I have looked at the specs of the 13.3 Mac Book and the 15 Mac Pro and like the look of the smaller form factor having been a laptop user for more years than i care to remember! I would like the Mac Book.

Is there any performance considerations from the Mac book (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4MB shared L2 cache, 80GB SATA, 1GB DDR2) to the Mac book Pro (2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4MB shared L2 cache, 120Gb SATA, 1GB DDR2)

I mostly will be using Final Cut Pro for editing and initially it will be DV then HDV in the next couple of months.

From what i can see and seeing the great value of the smaller Mac book compared to the Mac Pro (whats pro about it? Higher screen res, decent GFX) the extra cost for the size and dedicated GFX is it worth it?

Can you edit HDV on the mac book and mac book pro ?

Any replies will be welcome, i'm open to discussion

Many thanks in advance!

I figure if you are editing HD video, you would want a better graphics card. I have not tried it on a Macbook, so not sure if it will handle it well.

As for the cost difference, MBP is metal outer casing, larger screen, better graphics card, generally larger hard drive, not sure about Frond side bus speeds, etc. I think the MBP may be thinner as well, but not positive, but if it is thinner, then it costs more to make it that way.

I would like to get a Macbook at some point, but already have the MBP and just bought an iMac, so not in the near future, sorry I couldn't give you more advice.

Brian

Go review Apple's FCS System Requirements page.

If you are even thinking about using Motion, then forget the lower end Macbook. Past discussions here and elsewhere suggest it is not very interactive because it requires a dedicated graphics chip. This is likely true with the realtime rendering options of FCP too.

I've seen people mention that editing on a Macbook or Macmini has been fine with FCP. I'm not sure about doing HD editing tough. Perhaps you can take an HD camera into an Apple store and experiment. Likely though your only option in a store on a MB will be iMovie HD.

You could check up on the Apple discussion board for FCS also.

FYI: Apple just announced Final Cut Studio 2 a few weeks ago, so you'd like be advised to buy this latest version. I'm not sure it has been delivered yet.

If I were you I would just get the MacBook Pro because the macbook was not really made for editing any kind of video, its more of a office, student, and presentationer kind of laptop but it can do editing that's for sure. The thing is I have a powerbook and it can do hd editing (but only up to a point) because it is the pro line of apple laptops the ibook mostlikely couldnt do it even at the highest specs. Another reason, the macbook pro can stand the heat that the rendering will produce and the macbook may have a temp problem. Im just getting this from what I now about editing but I'm sure its true. So if you want to do some real hd editing I would go wit the macbook pro wit atlest 2gb so you don't have to worry about rendering time and stuff like that.

I had an HD Camcorder and returned it because of the ridiculously high disk space requiremenets. 25 minutes of video turned out to be almost 3GB. I used a MacBook Pro and iMovie so I know for a fact the MacBook Pro is capable. Just make sure you have ALOT of disk space if you're doing HD.

Also be sure to purchase a firewire external hdd

egandolfi said:

I had an HD Camcorder and returned it because of the ridiculously high disk space requiremenets. 25 minutes of video turned out to be almost 3GB.

Click to expand...

That doesn't sound right since regular DV uses about 13GB per a 1 hour tape. In other words, 3GB for 25 minutes sounds great!

Many thanks for the replies....... i really wanted the MB and with the revised (updates) specs from the 15th May now you get even more for your money and its a curious thing and please feel free to flame/insult/discuss< that a PC ultra notebook is steep its for the elites look at the prices for a Ultra NB Sony Vaio!

Given the posts and the curious disk space comment (DV/HDV) what has disk space got todo with buying a HD camera? I accept the heat issue for the MB the only limitations are the 950 Integrated GFX.

I don't come from the elitist world of must owning a MBP <IF> a machine that costs considerably less CAN do the job (with a few considerations) then great for what you get a very portable machine much more than the MBP at a very resonable price. With the release of FCP6 and its need for some additional h/w reqs. ie a real GFX card i cant go MB even though i'm pretty sure it would cope with FCP5 even in HD (flaming welcome) i cannot justify the purchase as i will have to upgrade to a MBP in the future to run FCP6.

A couple of points why do we need the MBP screen size? I arrive then connect a 20inch cheap as chips 16:10/16:9 monitor. I want portability the MB is great the MBP is not so. compared to the MB.

Now for the real fly in the soup ...... With various posts take the gorgeous discuss on macrumours and the already available SR Santa Rosa will the MBP have SR? Do i wait!

Basically, editing HDV content takes a considerable amount of resources from the computer including disk space. So, a MBP is the route you would likely want to take because it's got the guts to go through HDV media. I second the idea to get a large external firewire hard drive, it may not hurt to get a large drive customized in the MBP itself either just incase you decide to run your current projects off that drive and then just send them to the firewire drive when you're finished.

The bottom line is, it's very unlikely that a regular Macbook could handle HDV video editing, especially with FCP, because of it's more basic build in comparison to the MBP.