Latest Macbook Air and FCP7 ...

[snaps042]

Hi,

In an effort to save a few pennies, I am thinking of buying an Air instead of Pro.

My intention is do conduct basic video edits while out on the field, nothing too advanced.

Will the latest Macbook Air run FCP7 or is there a question mark hanging over the graphics card?

I look forward to your replies.

snaps

 

[simsaladimbamba]

FCP 7 will hardly have a problem with your GPU, as it is not as dependant on the GPU as FCP X is.
Will you edit 1080p or 2K or 4K footage via proxies or original material?

 

[snaps042]

Thank you for your reply.

I expect to be editing 1080p (or i) from any number of DSLRs. Nothing complicated and certainly nothing using Motion 5.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Thank you for your reply.

I expect to be editing 1080p (or i) from any number of DSLRs. Nothing complicated and certainly nothing using Motion 5.

DSLR footage is CPU intensive due to the MPEG.4 codec, and FCP 7 does not like that. You always have to transcode to ProRes or Apple Intermediate Codec if you do not want the red render bar on top of the timeline.

Maybe use a USB flash storage thumb drive, a clip from a DSLR, 1 GB or so in size, get MPEG Streamclip and copy MPEG Streamclip and the clip onto the USB flash storage thumb drive and go to a store with MacBook Airs and let MPEG Streamclip transcode the clip into a MOV file using the ProRes or Apple Intermediate Codec.
You will not need admin rights to do that, unless the Demo Mac is severely controlled. You could always ask an employee to let you test, since you are interested to buy.

That way you can determine, if the MacBook Air is fast enough for those transcoding needs.

 

[Boyd01]

I am still on FCP 6, but it works great on my 11" 2013 i7/8gb/512gb MBA. Before I got this machine, I had a 13" 2011 i5/4gb/256gb MBA and FCP 6 also ran just fine on that machine. Really, the only difference I notice on the new MBA is that rendering is faster. I mostly work with XDCAM-EX HQ full HD video.

Before I got the 2011 MBA I was using a 2008 15" MBP core2 Duo 2.4ghz with 4GB. The 2011 MBA was a huge upgrade from that machine, and the 2013 MBA is even better.