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Macbook Pro for HD-editing

S

Sjogogo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi 🙂
I'm looking for a new computer for HD- and HDV-editing (and maybe other formats too). I'm mainly going to use Avid Media Composer. I'm considering buying a Macbook Pro. Do you think it is strong enough?
I need a 7200rpm hard drive for video-editing, and I want a Antiglare display and I've found a pretty cheap used Macbook Pro i Europe (where i live):

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93 Ghz
4 GB DDR3 RAM
320 GB 7200 RPM
Geforce 9600GT 512MB / 9600M 256MB
Antiglare HD Display - 17-inch.
It's from April, 2009.

It's about one year old as you can see, and it's almost 1.000 dollars cheaper than buying this new i5 15-inch (in Denmark everything is expensive, and the price for this i5 15'' with Antiglare and 7200rpm hard drive is about 3.000 dollar and the price for the used one is about 2000 dollar):

2.53GHz Intel Core i5
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
MacBook Pro 15-inch Hi-Res Antiglare Widescreen DisplayNone
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with 256 MB

For me (i'm not an expert) it's really difficult to compare

the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93 Ghz vs the 2.53GHz Intel Core i5

and

the Geforce 9600GT 512MB vs the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with 256 MB.

I've tried to find some info about on this forum, and I found a test, where it looks like that even the slowest i5 with 330M, 256 MB is faster than the Core 2 Duo 2.93 with 9600GT, 512MB:

http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2010/04/macbookpro-benchmarks/

Does anyone no, what this mean, when you're editing HD? Is there a big different? Is it a good deal to buy the used one for 2000 dollar (remember i live i Denmark) instead of buying the new one for 3000 dollar? And is the MBP fast enough for editing HD at all?

Thanks in advance 🙂
 
Both laptops will do fine, but consider the 17", as it still has an ExpressCard slot, which will give you the ability to add more ports, like eSATA, which is needed if you edit uncompressed (or lowly compressed) HD footage, as the fastest port on the 15" is Firewire 800, which might be the bottleneck if you edit several layers.

If you don't use AMA, the MBP will be fine, as AMA only puts MPEG-2/4 encoded HD video in a wrapper, which is quite CPU intensive, but if you use the DNxHD codec, you will be fine.
 
spinnerlys said:
Both laptops will do fine, but consider the 17", as it still has an ExpressCard slot, which will give you the ability to add more ports, like eSATA, which is needed if you edit uncompressed (or lowly compressed) HD footage, as the fastest port on the 15" is Firewire 800, which might be the bottleneck if you edit several layers.

If you don't use AMA, the MBP will be fine, as AMA only puts MPEG-2/4 encoded HD video in a wrapper, which is quite CPU intensive, but if you use the DNxHD codec, you will be fine.
Click to expand...

Hi spinnerlys and TheBritishBloke. Thank you very much for your answars.

What is the reason you need eSATA to edit uncompressed HD? Is it because you have to connect the MBP to a external HDD with RAID? Do you know if the "old" 17'' has firewire 800 too? Is there a quality loss, when converting your material to DNxHD (I think that it's only possible to convert it to DNxHD 145 when using MBP, but I'm not sure.)
 
Sjogogo said:
Hi spinnerlys and TheBritishBloke. Thank you very much for your answars.

What is the reason you need eSATA to edit uncompressed HD? Is it because you have to connect the MBP to a external HDD with RAID? Do you know if the "old" 17'' has firewire 800 too? Is there a quality loss, when converting your material to DNxHD (I think that it's only possible to convert it to DNxHD 145 when using MBP, but I'm not sure.)
Click to expand...


Uncompressed HD, if you would edit it that way, takes up a lot of bandwidth, as uncompressed SD (Digital Betacam, 1:1) needs approx. 22MB/s for one track. Imagine you have several of them, and you will put FW800 (65 to 75 MB/s) to its limit.
But as HD is often edited compressed (DNxHD), FW800 might suffice your needs, especially if DNxHD 145 is the maximum, as that translates to 18.125 MB/s, thus FW800 will suffice.

And I know the 17" MBP has FW800 to, it just has the ExpressCard slot too, which might come in handy for breakout boxes (if there would be some).

Anyway, I have the June 2010 17" MBP and bought it because of the ExpressCard slot, as I previously had the October 2010 15" MBP with the same port and it got stolen last July.
It provides me with calm, as I know, I can use that port, if the need arises, even if I only want to add another FW800 or eSATA port.
 
spinnerlys said:
Uncompressed HD, if you would edit it that way, takes up a lot of bandwidth, as uncompressed SD (Digital Betacam, 1:1) needs approx. 22MB/s for one track. Imagine you have several of them, and you will put FW800 (65 to 75 MB/s) to its limit.
But as HD is often edited compressed (DNxHD), FW800 might suffice your needs, especially if DNxHD 145 is the maximum, as that translates to18.125 MB/s, thus FW800 will suffice.

And I know the 17" MBO has FW800 to, it just has the ExpressCard slot too, which might come in handy for breakout boxes (if there would be some).

Anyway, I have the June 2010 17" MBP and bought it because of the ExpressCard slot, as I previously had the October 2010 15" MBP with the same port and it got stolen last July.
It provides me with calm, as I know, I can use that port, if the need arises, even if I only want to add another FW800 or eSATA port.
Click to expand...

If you edit uncompressed HD in a proxy format and replace the proxy-files with the uncompressed HD files when you're finished editing, could you by doing it this way be able to edit the uncompressed video on a harddrive that is connected to the firewire-port (and not eSata)? And if you are doing it this way, wouldn't you be able to edit uncompressed HD on one of the mid-range Macbook Pros (or even on a slower computer)?
 
Are you tied to a software platform? Are there space issues?

For anything video-encoding related my 800 euros desktop outperforms my macbook by 5-6 times easily. You might want to consider that.
 
du skulle helt klart holde dig til i5, har du overvejet at købe fra udlandet? - feks refurbish store i USA, en kammerat fik hans 15" i5 for 9500,- altså 4500,- mindre end i danmark.
 
Hi,

I live in Denmark as well and the best option would be to buy the MBP in Germany, as Sweden has around the same Prices as Denmark.

You could if you know someone in Deutschland with EDU discount ask them you buy it for you as this would be huge savings and you could buy Applecare here in DK.

The Apple "Premium Resellers" like humac.dk are horribly overpriced.
 
maril1111 said:
Yeh i have the case cracking issue with my MB 4.1 and contacted them (attached) it's freakin expensive😡
Click to expand...

nope you didn't attach it.

take it to the US, got my logic board replaced for $300 - thats what I call service.
 
Thank you very much for your answars 😀
But does anyone know the answars to this question:

"If you edit uncompressed HD in a proxy format and replace the proxy-files with the uncompressed HD files when you're finished editing, could you by doing it this way be able to edit the uncompressed video on a harddrive that is connected to the firewire-port (and not eSata)? And if you are doing it this way, wouldn't you be able to edit uncompressed HD on one of the mid-range Macbook Pros (or even on a slower computer)?"
 
Macbook Pro

I used to have a 2.8 Macbook Pro 17" glossy but I recently sold it. I edit HD using pro res and it works fine on both systems. I am not sure if you are going to uncompressed route of not but the 17" has express card and you would need that as mentioned previously.

I know have a i7 15" antiglare I bought two days ago and it is significantly faster. I also have a Macpro 09" Quad and that is my main machine so I felt the 17" was a little big to be lugging around with my other gear. Also, I sell my macs after the first year or so and the i5 and i7's will be worth more to sell in the future.
 
Thanks for the answer 🙂

I have 2 questions:

1)
Practical speaking, will I ever need the Express Card / 34 slot? Do you know how expensive the camera should be, before the camera records at a bitrate where the Firewire 800 isn't good enough anymore?

2)
If you use an external hard-drive via Firewire 800 which is limited to 65-75 MB/s, and if your video has a bitrate that is more than 75 MB/s, isn't it possible to convert it to a proxy-format --> edit your film --> exchange the proxy-files with the original files and then render and export the video to the external hard-drive even though the bitrate is more than 75 MB/s, if you just don't mind have long it will take?

Thanks in advance.
Sjogogo.
 
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