2011 MacBook Pro 15 decision

[isal]

I have seen this thread come up very often but mostly it's about gaming. I'm torn between the low and the high end 15'. I'm not going to play game at all. But I will be looking to use Final Cut Pro with 720p video not 1080p. Since I have no experience with HD video yet, how much difference would the 1GB card make and is the 256MB sufficient?

Thanks!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

The current version of FCP will not take much advantage of the GPU, unless with some filters and effects.
Therefore the 256MB GPU will do fine.

But know, that FCS is expected to be updated in the near future (Q1 or Q2 2011), which may add much more GPU support.

Btw, FCP is more CPU dependent and as you most likely use a camera using MPEG-4 compression for its footage, you need to properly transcode it to ProRes 422 via the Log & Transfer window, which will only use the CPU right now to transcode.