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Choices for video editing
- Thread starter drijones
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I had the same questions ... i would be using FCP along with after effects and motion and high res photographs using apeture 3 and/or lightroom and it seems that most are saying that the SSD that apple provides is costing too much $$$$$ and wait for a few then go with 3rd party ... so i decided to get the 500gb 7200rpm HD ... cause i did want the 512GB SSD but for $1170 [edu price] seemed a bit steep ...
i have editing in fcp on my 17inch 2.93 with 4gb and a 7200rpm and it wasnt bad at all .. i sold it and just ordered a 2.66 15inch high res matte with 500gb 7200rpm and 4gb .. i will order 8gb down the road .. as for ssd .. i would pick up an intel one just for your os apps and then use an external
Two issues with SSD for video editing:
- Not sure how well OS X handles the TRIM issue.
- Too small. 7200rpm hard drives are plenty fast for editing most video and are much larger.
8GB of ram and a 500GB 7200rpm is my vote.
Ram, especially if you want to have apps like Photoshop and Illustrator open.
4GB Limit
Final Cut has a 4GB limit, so anything else is a waste of money. You can allocate 2.5GB to the program and it keeps 1.5 GB for whatever else it wants. However, it never tends to use that much. You shouldn't have other intensive apps open while editing anyway.
An external drive (preferably RAID 0 and Firewire 800) is your most essential upgrade. Never save media to your system drive. In that case an SSD is fine as a boot/program drive. But SSDs do not work well with large files, like the ones created for DVDs -- but again these could and should go to the external drive.
A powerful processor helps with realtime editing of effects and the like if you use a lot of those. I understand the graphics card matters only for Motion and Color, but I don't use those programs.
Final Cut has a 4GB limit, so anything else is a waste of money. You can allocate 2.5GB to the program and it keeps 1.5 GB for whatever else it wants. However, it never tends to use that much. You shouldn't have other intensive apps open while editing anyway.
An external drive (preferably RAID 0 and Firewire 800) is your most essential upgrade. Never save media to your system drive. In that case an SSD is fine as a boot/program drive. But SSDs do not work well with large files, like the ones created for DVDs -- but again these could and should go to the external drive.
A powerful processor helps with realtime editing of effects and the like if you use a lot of those. I understand the graphics card matters only for Motion and Color, but I don't use those programs.
Could we get some further opinions on this?
I'm in a similar boat; FCP, After FX, Photoshop, Illustrator, maybe some light Maya
I was going to go for the SSD 128's are about $300 as is, so 200 more is pretty much cost for the change. It's only 150 over the 7200 which is a must.
Obviously this machine can't replace a mac pro for the heavy duty converting and rendering, but it strikes me that 128 is plenty for apps and swap, and any projects media files are going to be over 300gb anyway, and best practices are to keep your media separate, so what's the point in trying to keep it internal to have 500gb?
I think we'll see some serious speed benefits and just day to day use improvements out of the SSD... people swear by that drive on the MacBook Air,
are there really trim or other technical shortcomings of a ssd drive? is there a flaw in my reasoning?
I'm in a similar boat; FCP, After FX, Photoshop, Illustrator, maybe some light Maya
I was going to go for the SSD 128's are about $300 as is, so 200 more is pretty much cost for the change. It's only 150 over the 7200 which is a must.
Obviously this machine can't replace a mac pro for the heavy duty converting and rendering, but it strikes me that 128 is plenty for apps and swap, and any projects media files are going to be over 300gb anyway, and best practices are to keep your media separate, so what's the point in trying to keep it internal to have 500gb?
I think we'll see some serious speed benefits and just day to day use improvements out of the SSD... people swear by that drive on the MacBook Air,
are there really trim or other technical shortcomings of a ssd drive? is there a flaw in my reasoning?
Hey I just chimed in on this on another thread. I do a lot of editing in FCP, and keep a big photo library so fast storage is important to me. But ever since putting an SSD in my Thinkpad, I can't imagine going back to HDDs for OS. What I'm doing is ordering MCE's Optibay (http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/) so I can use the X-25 for boot and small FCP projects and keep the 500 gig in the optical bay for mass storage. The optibay even includes a free external enclosure for your superdrive, in case you need it. Which for me, is exceptionally rare.
I think this solution is a good one and offers enormous benefits. Not too expensive either, 80 gig X-25M can be had for about $210 plus $100 for the optibay.
I think this solution is a good one and offers enormous benefits. Not too expensive either, 80 gig X-25M can be had for about $210 plus $100 for the optibay.
Where is the x25 so cheap? Plus for 128 Apple's still price/gb competitive. I've been pricing out ssd options and been unable to come up with one that's actually cheaper than just going with apple, and doing the optibody as an aftermarket add on later.
Take a look at this video.
The director is using a SONY XDCAM, capture vis SDI direct to MAc Pro and to Stardom ST8 storage.
That gives him full color depth, uncompressed.
He saved time on digitizing, time and much fast turn around.
Also, RAID 0 is not a good option, what if it failed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTlbYKbycKw