Editing with White 2.4Ghz Macbook?

[questmcoupe]

I was wondering if it's possible to do some HD video editing with the older white Macbooks, specifically a 2.4Ghz with 4GB RAM? I was planning on using FC Studio. Nothing too complicated, just short videos. The Macbook should be here early next week. Should I be ok?

 

[ChemiosMurphy]

I wouldn't try it. What flavor of HD are we talking about here? You probably could squeeze out HDV, but anything more intense than that and I'd be weary due to the small screen and weak video card.

The video card sucks in the MB and the small screen size is not ideal for cutting HD, not to mention that it has only a single FW400 port. I'd say pony up the cash and get a refurb MBP, previous gen.

 

[questmcoupe]

Thanks for reply. I'll take a look at the refurbs then.

 

[MDangerous]

Yes, you can edit HD on the MacBook. I have actually edited 720 HD on a 867 MHz 12" PowerBook before. It was very slow on the renders but I was still able to finish the job. Now, Color and Motion may give you some problems because those are GPU intensive. FCP isn't really GPU intensive though.

 

[bigbossbmb]

I wouldn't try it. What flavor of HD are we talking about here? You probably could squeeze out HDV, but anything more intense than that and I'd be weary due to the small screen and weak video card.

FCP doesn't really use the GPU for much. A Macbook will be fine for editing. You can definitely use DVCProHD and ProRes. It'll likely struggle/crash with Color/Motion, though.

 

[Griffter]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

I found that as long as you max out the ram, you should have no problem. I used to edit hdv 1080i apple intermediate codec on a 4 year old PowerBook, renders were madly slow though

 

[questmcoupe]

Thanks guys. The Macbook is on it's way and it's for my little brother. He's the one who plans on working with it, but I'm going to test it before sending it to him. If it doesn't run as fast as I want it to, I'll keep it and find him a MBP.

Thanks again for your input.

 

[TaKashMoney]

Hey,

As others have pointed out, FCP doesnt really touch the graphics card. For editing HDV, Apple Intermediate, and Pro Res, my macbook has been just as fast as my friend's MBP and even a bit more stable on certain occasions.

You wont be able to run Motion or Color at all however. While they will install, they will close immediately when you try to open them and give you a message that you need a discrete graphics card.

Def get 2GB of RAM though.

 

[tri3limited]

Motion runs well enough to do bits on my late 2006 MacBook. Key trick is to export each animation after you've done a bit, effectively a form of nesting. Color is a no-go though.

 

[yoyo5280]

I was wondering if it's possible to do some HD video editing with the older white Macbooks, specifically a 2.4Ghz with 4GB RAM? I was planning on using FC Studio. Nothing too complicated, just short videos. The Macbook should be here early next week. Should I be ok?

iMovie is a little slow with HD footage on exact same setup.

Better then my mac mini, but I would recomend a MBP or an iMac.