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anotherarunan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 18, 2007
372
61
London, United Kingdom (UK)
Contemplating replacing my ageing 2007 Macbook with a 13inch i5 MBA. Mainly use it for day to day things - however, will occassionally need it to edit/render HD video using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Realise that the MBP is much more suited to this - but I would also like the portability and dont want to spend so much on a rMBP either.

Given I currently do all this on my ageing C2D macbook - will the performance on an i5 MBA be good enough?
 

ECUpirate44

macrumors 603
Mar 22, 2010
5,750
8
NC
I would think so. I do lots of video editing and exporting on my 2010 i7 MBP and looking at the geekebench scores, the MBA outperforms the 2010 MBP.
 

ZZ Bottom

macrumors 6502a
Apr 14, 2010
829
258
Bangladesh is a wonderful country.

Ok...

OP, I have watched a youtube video of the performance of After Effects CS5.5 on the previous generation of MBA (model with HD 3000 gpu) and it appeared acceptable for lightweight projects. Just expect that even with the newest one, you'll still have to have patience in many occasions. Also, remember that transcoding your footage to an uncompressed codec like ProRes 422 will make it easier for your CPU/gpu to render quickly.

My biggest recommendation is to upgrade the ram to 8gb, which can only be done at time of purchase. In case you weren't aware, the MBA ram is soldered to the board, and AE & Premiere without a doubt benefit from as much ram as possible.
 
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