i bought a caddy off of a popular auction site and it came with an external enclousure for my optical drive. USB powered.
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Final Cut Pro X Memory Usage
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i bought a caddy off of a popular auction site and it came with an external enclousure for my optical drive. USB powered.
I was nervous about getting one through a third party that I hadn't heard of since some people have problems with the fitting. I also wanted to go through amazon since I had a $10 gift card. It was only $10 for it out of my pocket compared to the other more expensive options. Please send me the link of the DVD enclosure if you remember it. There's a cheap one for $10 shipped on amazon, but it isn't designed for the slot loading DVD drive. I've thought about getting the apple knockoff on amazon that lookalike apples external SuperDrive, but it's $20 and you can often buy an external DVD drive for that much.i bought a caddy off of a popular auction site and it came with an external enclousure for my optical drive. USB powered.
I have a mid 2010 15" MBP dual core i5 with 500GB 7200rpm disk 4GB RAM. It was my first step into the Apple world and was motivated by wanting a decent HW platform and SW for video editing. I have done my early projects on FCE and recently trialled FCPX. I got lots of bouncing ball stuff and after recent reading will be upgrading the memory to the max hopefully. Even so...my HW config only contains the one disk so I guess that by implication I am "editing from my system drive". I had hoped I had done the right thing spec'ing a 7200rpm but I would appreciate some additional commentary and advice about where to locate and how to organise my FCPX project data.
Thanks
*** The below is being used with FCPX ***
I actually use the 15' MacBookPro that you see in my signature for video editing about 75% of the time over any given week. This MBP stays on for 13 to 16 hours every day. I did replace the internal HD with a Momentus XT Hybrid drive though. When I originally got this MBP it had the 8GB of ram in it, which was so-so for editing, and when I saw Corsair 16GB of ram go down to $200, I put that in and it flys even better. The Corsair ram is even cheaper now around a $100, so that is a no brainer to update the ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...Memory+(Notebook+Memory)-_-Corsair-_-20233217
I have been running this ram since November 2011 day in and day out with no issues, so there is nothing wrong with this ram at all.
I do the editing off an external Thunderbolt drive from LaCie. If you are doing any serious video editing get this external drive to put your footage on and output your project to. So between getting 16GB of ram in your machine and getting this Thunderbolt drive, these 2 upgrades will make your editing life alot better and I am speaking from experience and real world application.
As a side note, when I got this MBP in my signature in July of 2011 I was outputting to the internal hard drive because the LaCie Thunderbolt hard drive was another month or so away from being released. In that month or so period of time I did end up killing the hard drive, the computer slowed way down, tons of page ins and out and output times became longer and longer. Once I replaced the original Mac HD with a Momentus XT Hybrid drive and only did everything to the external Thunderbolt life got fast and good.
I actually use the 15' MacBookPro that you see in my signature for video editing about 75% of the time over any given week. This MBP stays on for 13 to 16 hours every day. I did replace the internal HD with a Momentus XT Hybrid drive though. When I originally got this MBP it had the 8GB of ram in it, which was so-so for editing, and when I saw Corsair 16GB of ram go down to $200, I put that in and it flys even better. The Corsair ram is even cheaper now around a $100, so that is a no brainer to update the ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...Memory+(Notebook+Memory)-_-Corsair-_-20233217
I have been running this ram since November 2011 day in and day out with no issues, so there is nothing wrong with this ram at all.
I do the editing off an external Thunderbolt drive from LaCie. If you are doing any serious video editing get this external drive to put your footage on and output your project to. So between getting 16GB of ram in your machine and getting this Thunderbolt drive, these 2 upgrades will make your editing life alot better and I am speaking from experience and real world application.
As a side note, when I got this MBP in my signature in July of 2011 I was outputting to the internal hard drive because the LaCie Thunderbolt hard drive was another month or so away from being released. In that month or so period of time I did end up killing the hard drive, the computer slowed way down, tons of page ins and out and output times became longer and longer. Once I replaced the original Mac HD with a Momentus XT Hybrid drive and only did everything to the external Thunderbolt life got fast and good.
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Just to update, I got a replacement for my 8GB of ram and have the upgraded dual SSD/HDD configuration mentioned previously.
I just finished up a project where I had everything on my HDD and didn't have any problems. There were some pages outs, but nothing that slowed me down or gave me problems with the beach ball. It ran smoothly and FCPX is a dream to work with as far as audio sync multiple cameras. I had to run the multicam feature with two 1080HD feeds off the HDD and didn't have any problems. Now I'm desiring the upgrade to a quad core with a dedicated graphics card for the occasional time I spend in Motion. The project took over 5 hrs to transcode on my laptop. Really though, the 13" mbp is more than capable for most projects...basic titles, HD projects, etc.
I just finished up a project where I had everything on my HDD and didn't have any problems. There were some pages outs, but nothing that slowed me down or gave me problems with the beach ball. It ran smoothly and FCPX is a dream to work with as far as audio sync multiple cameras. I had to run the multicam feature with two 1080HD feeds off the HDD and didn't have any problems. Now I'm desiring the upgrade to a quad core with a dedicated graphics card for the occasional time I spend in Motion. The project took over 5 hrs to transcode on my laptop. Really though, the 13" mbp is more than capable for most projects...basic titles, HD projects, etc.
Wow...thats a lot of investment and my video editing is only that of a home hobbyist....and, my MBP will only accept up to 8GB I believe.
I am actually waiting for the new 2012 iMACs to be released and I am now really hoping for USB3 to be on there as the Thunderbolt drives are still somewhat out of my price bracket at the moment once I spend the cash on the new iMAC. I will hopefully fill the new iMAC up to the limit with Crucial memory.
I am slightly confused as to why replacing the MBP drive made a difference if all of your projects were on an external Thunderbolt. What do you specifically mean by "killing the hard drive"? Did you end up with a dead disk that needed replacing or do you mean it was just having to work very hard?
I am actually waiting for the new 2012 iMACs to be released and I am now really hoping for USB3 to be on there as the Thunderbolt drives are still somewhat out of my price bracket at the moment once I spend the cash on the new iMAC. I will hopefully fill the new iMAC up to the limit with Crucial memory.
I am slightly confused as to why replacing the MBP drive made a difference if all of your projects were on an external Thunderbolt. What do you specifically mean by "killing the hard drive"? Did you end up with a dead disk that needed replacing or do you mean it was just having to work very hard?
NOTE: you will need to have a 2011 MBP in order to upgrade to 16GB of ram
The drive worked... sort of... just not well after all the abuse I put it through. The Hybrid drive I put in it helped alot and made boot up faster. Outputting the project to the internal hard drive is never a good idea.... I know that I should not have done this, yet I knew that I could easily replace the hard drive if I killed it.
Just to recap, the month or so before the Thunder bolt was available (August of 2011 I think) I was doing everything off the internal hard drive. Then Thunderbolt came out and then I transferred everything to the Thunderbolt drive. Then after running and outputting everything using the Thunderbolt drive the MBP was outputting very slow. I had a few really sharp tech people spend a couple hours trying to figure out why it was outputting so slow, they then recommended that I insert a new hard drive to see if that would correct everything and it did. All I did was clone exactly what was on the original MD that came in the MBP to the new Hybrid drive and BINGO, all of my slowness issues went away.
Not sure it this helps your exact situation, yet this is what my experience was and how I corrected it.
Happy Editing everyone!
Mac Mini FCPX
Like everyone else has said here, best performance will come from dedicated graphics, however, I might just wade in and say that I have been running FCPX in a mac mini with 16GB, 256SSD, HD3000 and a firewire drive.
My workflow is to download video files from a 5D and edit on the SSD then archive afterwards. It makes the workflow very usable even up to quite long documentary work. The problem comes with encoding. It all happens in real time up to about 5 minute videos and goes to about 2.5 times longer for really long projects 45 minutes +.
Memory wise, FCPX on its own doesn't use much. Only when I use Motion, FCPX and photoshop alongside each other do I go over 8GB.
If you are happy to use just one app at a time, only 8GB should suffice for your machine.
Like everyone else has said here, best performance will come from dedicated graphics, however, I might just wade in and say that I have been running FCPX in a mac mini with 16GB, 256SSD, HD3000 and a firewire drive.
My workflow is to download video files from a 5D and edit on the SSD then archive afterwards. It makes the workflow very usable even up to quite long documentary work. The problem comes with encoding. It all happens in real time up to about 5 minute videos and goes to about 2.5 times longer for really long projects 45 minutes +.
Memory wise, FCPX on its own doesn't use much. Only when I use Motion, FCPX and photoshop alongside each other do I go over 8GB.
If you are happy to use just one app at a time, only 8GB should suffice for your machine.