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Can the MBA handle non-pro Photo and Video editing?

S

Sounds Good

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 8, 2007
1,692
57
Hi guys,

1. Can either MBA (11 or 13") handle Photoshop and Lightroom? Not pro work, just family shots.

2. Can either MBA (11 or 13") handle AVCHD video editing? Again, not pro work, just family footage.

Note: I already have a large external monitor, so laptop screen size doesn't matter.

Thanks in advance!
 
simsaladimbamba

simsaladimbamba

Guest
Nov 28, 2010
22,670
30
located
Yes to 1. and 2., but know, that Macs don't edit AVCHD natively and the AVCHD encoded footage gets transcoded during import in iMovie. It will be transcoded to a .mov (QuickTime) file using the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) for video and Uncompressed for audio, which will take 25GB (720p30) to 49GB (1080i60) of HDD capacity per HOUR of footage. Be sure to get an external HDD for this, but USB 2.0 will limit you to 30 MB/s, which is okay for single track video, even in HD, but you may encounter slow downs due to the nature of USB sending data in bursts instead of a constant stream.
 
S

Sounds Good

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 8, 2007
1,692
57
simsaladimbamba said:
...Macs don't edit AVCHD natively and the AVCHD encoded footage gets transcoded during import in iMovie. It will be transcoded to a .mov (QuickTime) file using the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) for video and Uncompressed for audio, which will take 25GB (720p30) to 49GB (1080i60) of HDD capacity per HOUR of footage. Be sure to get an external HDD for this, but USB 2.0 will limit you to 30 MB/s, which is okay for single track video, even in HD, but you may encounter slow downs due to the nature of USB sending data in bursts instead of a constant stream.
Click to expand...
Hmmm... I'll have to research this and give it a bit of thought. I'm not sure if I wanna do this vs the Windows way.

Thanks for letting me know about this!
 
simsaladimbamba

simsaladimbamba

Guest
Nov 28, 2010
22,670
30
located
Sounds Good said:
Hmmm... I'll have to research this and give it a bit of thought. I'm not sure if I wanna do this vs the Windows way.

Thanks for letting me know about this!
Click to expand...

Adobe Premiere can edit AVCHD footage natively, but it will be quite taxing for the CPU, as the application has to calculate every single frame except some keyframes. If you go the transcoded route, you will have every frame and the editing application will just read it.

And if you don't shoot an hour every day, the transcoding could happen overnight.
 
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