How I am using a GoPro and iMovie on my MBP

[BenFL]

I have a 2010 15" MBP with 4GB of RAM and a GoPro HDHero camera. These two items are probably my favorite new toys. I shot some video and time lapses fishing last month and finally got around to editing them and putting them on YouTube. Let me know what you guys think.
Also, if I were to upgrade my RAM to 8GB that would benefit me over installing an SSD for movie editing, correct?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-yT8y8FArs&hd=1

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBh0thkvF5E&hd=1

 

[yoak]

The SSD would benefit you more. Even Final Cut can´t use more than 4GB of RAM at the moment. That should hopefully change with the new upgrade rumored to be out next week.
The best thing to do is to have your material on an eternal disk connected with FW800

 

[VideoCave]

To add to already posted FCP can only use 4 gigs of RAM but if all you have is 4 gigs total remember that half of that is being used by the OS. So now you only actually have 2 gigs left, and if you have other apps running besides FCP you are now reducing the amount available even more.

Its always good to have as much ram as you can it just helps things run much more smoothly. Especially if you have a lot of apps open.

And to reinforce about your files. Never ever keep anything important on your main startup HD except for your apps. Always keep everything on an external HD. Especially when working with video editing.

If running everything off a single HD no matter how fast it is, that single HD is running an OS, any other apps and trying to read and write data all at the same time. This is a lot for it do.

Its good to spread the load of work across multiple HD's. If you can even take it a step further and find an external drive that can have some type of raid set up. Western Digital and G-Raid both have HD's that you can set up a Raid1 which automatically mirrors your files onto two different drives at the same time, so if one fails the other still has everything.

 

[xStep]

To add to already posted FCP can only use 4 gigs of RAM but if all you have is 4 gigs total remember that half of that is being used by the OS. So now you only actually have 2 gigs left, and if you have other apps running besides FCP you are now reducing the amount available even more.

OS X uses well under 1GB of memory.

 

[BenFL]

Thanks for the feedback, but I am only using iMovie. Does this have the ability to use more than 4 gigs?

 

[martinX]

Neither would make a noticeable difference. An internal ssd would, but that's a pricey upgrade.

An external drive on your mbp can't go faster than about 700 Mbps, which is considerably slower than your internal drive, even if it does have your OS on it.

Since you're using iMovie, you can't get more than 2 streams anyway.

In addition, by having it all on the internal, it makes backing up a lot easier. Having files split up over multiple drives makes backing up that much more of a pain. Save your money.

 

[BenFL]

Neither would make a noticeable difference. An internal ssd would, but that's a pricey upgrade.

An external drive on your mbp can't go faster than about 700 Mbps, which is considerably slower than your internal drive, even if it does have your OS on it.

Since you're using iMovie, you can't get more than 2 streams anyway.

In addition, by having it all on the internal, it makes backing up a lot easier. Having files split up over multiple drives makes backing up that much more of a pain. Save your money.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone!