Macbook Air or Pro 4 video editing

[matteusclement]

the thunderbolt changed the game.
i shoot on a canon t2i.
if i carry around a thunderbolt external ssd, will it have enough punch if i convert all the footage to prores and use fcp7?

any one have experience with this?

the air is just so light and editing on the road is a once in a while thing.

 

[danpass]

the Air is nice indeed.

but the FCPX trial wouldn't run for me, kept crashing, nearly the moment the program finished booting.

imovie was ok. I don't know how FCP7 will do.

on a MBP13i7 with 8gbs of ram everything is running smooth.

I'm hoping for an Air refresh with 8gb. I could live with everything being left the same lol as long as it has 8gb.

 

[CaptainChunk]

the thunderbolt changed the game.
i shoot on a canon t2i.
if i carry around a thunderbolt external ssd, will it have enough punch if i convert all the footage to prores and use fcp7?

I don't see why it wouldn't work. Practically any Intel Mac can play HD ProRes pretty smoothly...

But I don't consider TB changing the game quite YET. Aside from the expensive multi-disk Promise enclosures and LaCie's new (and sickeningly overpriced) Little BigDisk TB units, there's practically nothing available. It would be nice to see single-disk TB enclosures, for example.

Also, being hard-limited to 4GB of RAM on an MBA is a bit disconcerting, too.


For these reasons, I still consider the 13" MBP to be the overall better value for mobile editing. It has FW800 (you can connect reasonably fast external storage NOW without breaking the bank), upgradable RAM and faster CPUs. And like all mobile Macs, it still has TB in case you get the bug for it later.

My 2 cents, anyway...

 

[matteusclement]

I guess it's important to add that when I do mobile editing, suprisingly, I am not in a rush. Also, when I'm on the road, people aren't in such a rush or have a desire for complicated editing.

Thanks for the advice, will have to think about it.

 

[Badrottie]

MBP for video editing...Air is for causal use. that is all I can say right now.

 

[matteusclement]

MBP for video editing...Air is for causal use. that is all I can say right now.

also important to note I have a mac pro at home for serious lifting.

 

[cgbier]

That Mac Pro at home doesn't help when you want to edit in the field.

I played around with the 13" MBA my wife just got from work. A nice office/facebook/email machine, but not really suitable for even iMovie.

 

[Hillskill]

A Mac Pro and a MBA could be a match made in heaven for the "man about town" video editor. I have been looking into picking up and 11" MBA so I can edit on plane journeys etc. This would be my workflow.

Transcode ProRes rushes in both 422 (LT) and ProRes Proxy. The LT files remain on video drive connected to my Mac Pro, the proxy files come with me on the road. I edit my sequence and save the project either to a dropbox location or a local file. While I am away I can either: log into my Mac Pro via VNC and open the project, reconnect the media with the LT files, render and then export. This could then be done by the time I reach home. OR......I could have an assistant open the project and render and export. If the project can wait till I am home then I can do all the above steps myself when I am actually back infront of my desktop.
As long as good media management is practiced this workflow would work fine.