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Final Cut Pro on Laptop?

marioman38

marioman38

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 8, 2006
899
84
Long Beach, CA
---I have recieved a copy of FCP 5.1 w/ a 13" MB purchase on ebay for a friend who doesnt want FCP, so he let me have it :D

--- I purchased a 17" C2D MBP a few days before, intending to do photoshopping/ FCP tinkering...

--- Now i am thinking i may have made a bad decision, having a laptop for a main editing system doesn't seem too logical... Do any of you commenly use a laptop for editing, or is it just stupid?

--- If it is stupid i thought i could trade via craigslist etc. but probably wouldn't be able to trade for a Mac Pro, since i need at least a CRT monitor... So i thought maybe a Dual 2ghz G5, is this much slower? Or would it be best to use my MBP w/ my 300gb FW400 HD?

--- I guess the main downside to a laptop would be screen realestate? Or are renders slower too?

Srry for the run on Q's... Help is appreciated :)
 
S

Silentwave

macrumors 68000
May 26, 2006
1,615
50
Well, look at it this way:

The MBP C2D 17" has an extremely efficient dual-core 2.33GHz processor, a good graphics card, and a decently large screen. It's portable, so you can work anywhere.

If you put enough RAM in, there isn't much that you can't do with it even with FCP. If anything, you might want to get a small FireWire external HD for extra room, but that's about it.

I use FCP 5.1.4 all the time on my Core Duo 15.4" 2.16 MBP with 2GB RAM/256MB VRAM. Always runs great even without my externals hooked up, and when there's less strain on the internal HDD (esata and Firewire HDDs hooked up) it works like magic.

Do I want a mac pro? sure... but it'd need to be fully loaded to make me give up my MBP. It's that good.
 
Wallace25

Wallace25

macrumors member
Feb 21, 2007
41
0
I run the Final Cut studio on my G4 Powerbook, so should have no problem with it on a MBP.
 
FF_productions

FF_productions

macrumors 68030
Apr 16, 2005
2,822
0
Mt. Prospect, Illinois
Final Cut on a laptop is lots of fun. The freedom to edit ANYWHERE. To not have a tower and a monitor stuck in the same room just stinks. The only advantage to that is extra hard drive space and MAYBE speed.

I used to have a desktop but switched to a PowerBook G4 and tried editing with a portable. It was lots of fun, but it was slow so I bought a MacBook Pro and now this is the perfect desktop replacement.
 
H

hoop

macrumors member
Jan 2, 2007
52
0
Bath, yookay.
I've edited for a client on a 12" G4 Powerbook... the screen space was an issue for the first half hour, but as soon as you're sucked into the work you forget.

You'll be fine on a MBP!
 
failsafe1

failsafe1

macrumors 6502a
Jul 21, 2003
621
1
I use only laptops, from an old Tibook to a new Macbook Pro with Final Cut in various forms. You can always add an external screen if you need more space. But you can't tote your Mac Pro around. Portables all the way.
 
I

icrude

macrumors regular
Dec 29, 2006
197
117
editing video is totally possible on ANY laptop (pretty much). the main reason most people don't edit on a laptop is because everything is slower (slower drives, graphics, etc).....BUT the trick is not to import your video in its native format. If you import the footage in "offlineRT" (photo jpeg)...what your computer is basically doing is importing the video but converting it to a not so intense format so your computer can edit it no problem. so you edit your video in the offlineRT format and when your done, you (well it's all in the manual) but you just tell the computer to take the sequence you created and pull just that footage off your camera in the full quality format. make sense?
 
LethalWolfe

LethalWolfe

macrumors G3
Jan 11, 2002
9,370
124
Los Angeles
If you are just going to do occasional editing a new laptop is fine. But if you are going to be doing extensive amounts of editing I wouldn't suggest a laptop w/o using an external keyboard, monitor, mouse (and of course storage) and then what's the point of having a laptop? ;)


Lethal
 
S

Silentwave

macrumors 68000
May 26, 2006
1,615
50
AviationFan said:
Actually, if you want to use it seriously, you probably want to get a really big external HD (FireWire) as a scratch disk for FCP.

And yes, it'll run fine on your MBP!

- Martin
Click to expand...

I meant physical dimensions/bus powerability, but lots of space. :p
 
dollystereo

dollystereo

macrumors 6502a
Oct 6, 2004
907
114
France
I edit HDV in my Macbook Pro CD 2.0ghz 1gb ram, and it works like my dual G5, its even faster in some renders, I use a Sata external Drive, with a Sata express card for my MBP.
Even a Macbook is fast enough to run FCP with all the bombos and whistles.
Good luck
 
I

iMacZealot

macrumors 68020
Mar 11, 2005
2,237
3
That 17" MacBook Pro should be fine. It has the same pixel count as a 20" iMac! :eek: I'm editing on Final Cut Express with a 17" iMac. Though I've never used Final Cut on one, I think it's harder to use on a 4:3 non-widescreen display.

If you want to do it on your MacBook, everything should work but Motion.
 
ppc_michael

ppc_michael

Guest
Apr 26, 2005
1,498
2
Los Angeles, CA
I have a 17" MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo and can only echo what everyone else has said. It's perfect, and in my opinion, better than being locked down to one stuffy room with a desktop computer. I have a 500GB LaCie drive since I work in HDV, and everything runs ridiculously smoothly.

No question, you'll be happy.
 
I

icrude

macrumors regular
Dec 29, 2006
197
117
don't put anything other than the software on your internal. put all your video clips on an external. if you don't want to buy an external, transfer your clips to offlineRT format (which is in the manual) so you don't ruin your internal overtime.
 
S

sourmelk

macrumors newbie
Aug 30, 2010
7
0
new to FCP (and macs)

so i need some advice. i'm only new to fcp and macs (always been a bit of a pc snob until now) and i want to buy a mac that'll allow me to edit anywhere smoothly. i don't want to spend heaps and find i'll have problems later.

i've read through a few forums now and from my findings i've gathered that i'll have to buy something with lots of ram and a huge HD.

i'm thinking i'll splurg on a MBP, here are the specifications of what i'm looking at, can someone explain what this means and if it'll enable me to work efficiently with the full FCP studio.

2.66khz intel core i7 (is that enough? and is this the highest amount i can get on a MBP?)

8gb 1066ghz DDR3 SDram 2x4GB

500GB serial ATA drive @ 7200 rpm

i also have a 500MG external HD..would that help me in anyway?


any help would be muchly appreciated! (everyone here seems to know what they're taking about anyway)

thanks!

:D
 
spinnerlys

spinnerlys

Guest
Sep 7, 2008
14,328
7
forlod bygningen
sourmelk said:
SNIP
Click to expand...

What kind of footage do you want to edit?

Anyway, the MBPs are capable of running FCP quite fine, just get an external FW800 HDD for storing your media to work with, as using the internal HDD (the one where the OS resides on) is not recommended and can produce errors. The i7 is not really necessary, unless you transcode more than you actually do edit.

Be sure to read the manual of FCP, especially the parts about what kind of media in which formats is acceptable - .avi and .mkv is surely not.

Also use MRoogle to find dozens of threads about FCP setups and what formats can be used how.

Mac OS X Basics, Malware, Software and other useful links
 
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