MacBook for Video Editing?

[Saluki Alex]

Hey guys,

My ex-g/f has been asking me about Macs lately, she started before we broke up because most of her friends have Macs like me and we would talk about the glory that is everything Mac, but nevertheless.

She's a Radio/TV major and is hoping to get a Mac laptop for video editing. She's been looking at MacBooks but I told her that she'd be better off getting a MBP like I have because it has a dedicated video card.

She's looking at refurb only btw.

I've also told her that she'd need to up the RAM on whatever she buys, especially if she's going to use it for video editing.

I'm hoping that someone who's well versed in video editing could help me out here (I'm a Political Science major).

 

[notjustjay]

RAM, yes. Hard drive space, yes -- 5400 rpm or better and the larger the better. And/or get an external firewire drive to capture video to. The video card isn't as critical as you might think. External, high resolution LCD is a must-have, though.

A MacBook would probably be just fine for basic video editing (e.g. iMovie, Final Cut Express). I edit on a 12" PowerBook G4, with 32 meg video RAM, driving a 20" LCD at 1680x1050, and it's quite usable. The weakest link is still the slow (and small) hard drive, with the G4 processor next (not quite fast enough to do real-time preview rendering.)

Final Cut Pro would probably work just as well, but I have no real-world experience with it.

 

[laidbackliam]

a friend of mine has a macbook with fce and imovie on it, runs great.

rendering is a little slow, much slower than on my mbp, but it works well enough.

 

[Saluki Alex]

When I say video editing, I'm talking about using it for class and they use Avid. I think they might also use Final Cut Pro, but I know they use Avid for sure.

 

[Locolako]

this will really help you out. I am basing my decision on this benchmark and several others which are just like it

http://www.barefeats.com/mbcd8.html

 

[brandon6684]

Well the dedicated video card shouldn't make a difference, unless there is 3D rendering involved(ignore the "OMG I CAN'T USE PHOTOSHOP ON INTEGRATED GRAPHICS!!1" crowd). Probably the biggest drawback here would be screen size, especially if she'll be using it in class without and external display. A MacBook Pro may just offer more comfortable screen size.

 

[laidbackliam]

i know that fcp isn't supported on macbooks, not sure of avid.

the graphics cards would help rendering speed definitely, and i'd also second the high res external lcd.

 

[Saluki Alex]

i know that fcp isn't supported on macbooks, not sure of avid.

the graphics cards would help rendering speed definitely, and i'd also second the high res external lcd.

I told her this after looking at the requirements of FCP, but then she sent me this link that says that MacBooks can indeed run it.

http://creativemac.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=43717

Anyone know anything about this.

I also told her that she might look into getting a Powerbook instead, especially if she plans on using Avid since it's not yet a universal application and that would really be the only route she could go. She thinks that Powerbooks are out of date even though I assured her that this wasn't the case.