FCPX on 2012 MBA... worth it?

[chumawumba]

So I have used FCPX on my Macbook Air for a couple projects which turned out well, except for the fact that a 10 minute video takes 6 hours to render in 720p. Final Cut lags and freezes alot when I am using it, so my question is this: Is it normal for FCPX to be this buggy, or is it that high-end video editing is not meant to be on a MBA? I am planning to purchase a new Mac in 2015, so getting a new one now isn't an option. My specs are 128/8/i5. Is using FCPX on a MacBook air practical?

 

[Siderz]

What version of FCPX are you using?

I had a go at using FCPX on my 2011 MacBook Air 11" for the fun of it and it went quite a bit smoother than I had expected, I just edited a bit of a holiday I went on, the videos were 1080p. Once I reached about 7 minutes in, that's when it began getting unbearable and I stopped and deleted FCPX. It was a bit over a year ago, I can't remember the version I used.

The MacBook Air is definitely not ideal for video editing. I got away with it, sort of, so it's possible, but not ideal. You should look into creating proxies for video editing on a MacBook Air, hopefully that'd fix some of your problems.

I would assume that this is a good guide to creating proxies - http://www.larryjordan.biz/fcpx-working-with-proxy-media/ - I don't have FCPX anymore, I don't use it, so I can't try it out myself.

 

[chumawumba]

What version of FCPX are you using?

I had a go at using FCPX on my 2011 MacBook Air 11" for the fun of it and it went quite a bit smoother than I had expected, I just edited a bit of a holiday I went on, the videos were 1080p. Once I reached about 7 minutes in, that's when it began getting unbearable and I stopped and deleted FCPX. It was a bit over a year ago, I can't remember the version I used.

The MacBook Air is definitely not ideal for video editing. I got away with it, sort of, so it's possible, but not ideal. You should look into creating proxies for video editing on a MacBook Air, hopefully that'd fix some of your problems.

I would assume that this is a good guide to creating proxies - http://www.larryjordan.biz/fcpx-working-with-proxy-media/ - I don't have FCPX anymore, I don't use it, so I can't try it out myself.

Thanks for the advice on proxies; I'll definitely look into it. As for version I am using 10.0.8. (Although I might upgrade to 10.0.9 soon because I keep on getting these annoying update notifications.)

 

[nateo200]

I edited 1080p PLENTY of times on a 13" 2010 MBP with Core 2 Duo 8GB of RAM (see below) and it was possible...for anything over 10minutes I would simply transcode everything to ProRes 422 BEFORE importing and I could edit pretty fast...anything over 30 minutes and I wanted to claw my eyes out. One time I had to do a 2 hour edit for Blu-ray output and it was the most frustrating experience I've ever had! Its possible but having your video in ProRes prior saves allot of headaches...again thats with a 13" MBP...at the time of the 2hour edit I did not have my SSD in and had only 4GB's of RAM in. If I were you I and wanted to enjoy editing on a MacBook don't get anything less than quad core i7. External SSD for a scratch drive is also a nice touch if you have an open thunderbolt port.....otherwise a regular external hard drive will do. Everyone has different levels of patience, ProRes helps make it less painful and so do breaks

 

[daybreak]

I think over the years advice has been given to use an External Hard Drive for your video media.
FCP-X is a robust software if used and understood probably. All other editing software fall into that category.

 

[wheelhot]

My advice, transcode it to proxy and edit in proxy. Once you're done, switch it back to original media, let it render 100% and export.

While editing in proxy, I'm able to use my pre-unibody lower spec MBP to edit 1080p files (optimized media and original media will not even playback properly), of course even simple edit takes 30-40 secs to render 100%, but it just shows how much faster editing in proxy is compared to FCPX default settings.