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munkees

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 3, 2005
1,027
1
Pacific Northwest
I am selling my iPad, I find it is not useful for on the road editing. I am looking at a MBA. Here is what I want to do

I shoot time lapse:

-Aperture 3 processing of images (3.7MP Jpeg), batches of 3000-5000 pictures. Sometimes with an extra tilt shift effect.

-QT7pro to sequence photos into a movie

-iMovie to add sound, and other clips (editing)

-Garage band to make back ground tunes.

Picture editing:

-Aperture 3 RAW picture editing of 15MP images.

Movies,

-720P and 1080P movies (short movies), mainly taken with my goPro HD


I was wanting to do some of this on an iPad, but clearly that is too much work to such a device, plus you cannot share files between apps without sync back to a Mac/PC.

I like the size of a MBA 11, I am not worried about screen space, seeing anything I need to do big, I can do at home on my iMac.

also anybody got any experience with solar chargers.
 

wilhelmreems

macrumors member
May 25, 2010
35
0
in my experience for photo editing, make sure you get as much ram as possible and you should be fine with any of those options. especially with a SSD.

good luck, if you choose the MBA, please post an update. :)
 

Designer Dale

macrumors 68040
Mar 25, 2009
3,950
100
Folding space
Sounds like this is a RAM and processor intensive task. Do you want to do all of this on a portable? What are you using for this now and how well does it work for you? My guess is to match or exceed that on your portable.

Dale
 

munkees

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 3, 2005
1,027
1
Pacific Northwest
Sounds like this is a RAM and processor intensive task. Do you want to do all of this on a portable? What are you using for this now and how well does it work for you? My guess is to match or exceed that on your portable.

Dale

currently I have no mobile means, just my iMac, what I want the MBA is for when I am no the road, so most of my editing will be at home.

any work I do on the MBA I will sync back to my iMac.
 

compuwar

macrumors 601
Oct 5, 2006
4,717
2
Northern/Central VA
currently I have no mobile means, just my iMac, what I want the MBA is for when I am no the road, so most of my editing will be at home.

any work I do on the MBA I will sync back to my iMac.

I'd suggest making an appointment to go into a store and test the workload on each choice- then you can see how long it will take to process 5k files and QT them and decide which solution fits your needs best.

Paul
 

Ruahrc

macrumors 65816
Jun 9, 2009
1,345
0
Judging from what they say, the newer MBPs with Sandy Bridge will significantly outperform the MB or the MBA, which use the older Intel Core 2 chips. If processing time is important to you, the MBP will be by far the better performer. Portability obviously goes to the 11" MBA. I also wonder how well those tiny MBAs shed the heat load of prolonged and intense processing jobs. The MBPs get pretty hot as it is, the MBAs have even less cooling capability.

Really depends on how much processing you actually intend to do in the field. Since you already have an iMac at home, the super small super portable MBA would be a good companion, but if you are trying to get real work done in the field, the MBP is a much more productive machine.

Ruahrc
 

Consultant

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,314
34
New MacBook Pro quad. Get with SSD if possible.

Sounds like this is a RAM and processor intensive task. Do you want to do all of this on a portable? What are you using for this now and how well does it work for you? My guess is to match or exceed that on your portable.

Dale

New MacBook Pro is faster than a 2010 low end Mac Pro.

Some people need the portability.
 

munkees

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 3, 2005
1,027
1
Pacific Northwest
well my wife's MacBook pro had a screen issue so I took it to the Apple store for repairs, today I picked it up, but here is what else I did, with the demo MBA in the apple store (I asked for permission first).

I down loaded the tilt shift plugin for aperture, and proceeded to process 20 images, which were RAW.

then I processed 20 RAW images to 4MP jpegs and processed them with the tilt-shift.

I did this all on a 1.4 C2D, 2GB Ram 11.3 MBA. I was pleased with the results, so I purchased a 1.6 C2D 4GB 11.3 MBA.

when I got home, and got the MBA setup, I ran it head to head against my 2.8 iMac Extreme, 4GB.

I did a sequence of 825 pictures in aperture using a tilt shift plugin.

here are the results

MBA took 37 minutes to process the tilt-shift, and 30 seconds to process the preview pictures (dam it is fast).
the iMac took 31 minutes to process the tilt-**** and about 8 minutes to process the preview pictures.

this is what I expected, io on the MBA is awesome, very please, it's processing is a little slow on CPU intensive task, put for normal photo editing, including raw it is fast, because most of this, applying presets and setting is not CPU intensive.

my conclusion

MBA is a good portable editing station for movies, photos and music on the go, perfect for my time lapse, especially when I am away from home, I can process. iPad is not suitable, it is a toy.
 

johndope83

macrumors newbie
Mar 27, 2011
28
0
well my wife's MacBook pro had a screen issue so I took it to the Apple store for repairs, today I picked it up, but here is what else I did, with the demo MBA in the apple store (I asked for permission first).

I down loaded the tilt shift plugin for aperture, and proceeded to process 20 images, which were RAW.

then I processed 20 RAW images to 4MP jpegs and processed them with the tilt-shift.

I did this all on a 1.4 C2D, 2GB Ram 11.3 MBA. I was pleased with the results, so I purchased a 1.6 C2D 4GB 11.3 MBA.

when I got home, and got the MBA setup, I ran it head to head against my 2.8 iMac Extreme, 4GB.

I did a sequence of 825 pictures in aperture using a tilt shift plugin.

here are the results

MBA took 37 minutes to process the tilt-shift, and 30 seconds to process the preview pictures (dam it is fast).
the iMac took 31 minutes to process the tilt-**** and about 8 minutes to process the preview pictures.

this is what I expected, io on the MBA is awesome, very please, it's processing is a little slow on CPU intensive task, put for normal photo editing, including raw it is fast, because most of this, applying presets and setting is not CPU intensive.

my conclusion

MBA is a good portable editing station for movies, photos and music on the go, perfect for my time lapse, especially when I am away from home, I can process. iPad is not suitable, it is a toy.



Ei guys can i ask where i can download plug-ins for aperture 3 especially this tilt-shift plugin (free as much as possible)?

thanks!!
 

Ish

macrumors 68020
Nov 30, 2004
2,212
743
UK
Can't add to comparison, but a friend has just got a new 15" MBP with 8GB RAM. I asked how well Aperture ran on it and he said it was like a warm knife through butter!
 

munkees

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 3, 2005
1,027
1
Pacific Northwest
Ei guys can i ask where i can download plug-ins for aperture 3 especially this tilt-shift plugin (free as much as possible)?

thanks!!

I do not know about a free plugin but this is what I am using

http://www.tiltshiftplugin.com/

its cost 25 Euros.
however you can download and playwith the plugin, as it is shareware.

Can't add to comparison, but a friend has just got a new 15" MBP with 8GB RAM. I asked how well Aperture ran on it and he said it was like a warm knife through butter!

yep, that should run very good.

but I am constricted by weight, size and cost. the MBA 11" ultimate runs great with Aperture 3. The SSD drives just rock.
 
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