MacBook Pro for video editing

[George Adey]

I have around £700/800$ to spend on a MacBook Pro or Mac Pro 5.1

I see on here that the 2015 MacBook Pro is considered great value whilst not sacrificing too much on performance.

I edit in FCPX and in 4K.

any Advice on recommended models to look out for?

thanks

 

[bsbeamer]

What flavor of 4K and codec? Makes a big difference for recommendation.

Assuming you already have SSD storage capacity? At least SATA SSDs if not NVMe? If neither, what drive speeds and capacity do you already have?

 

[George Adey]

I have external SSDs, unsure off the top of my head what the write speeds are. The codec is H.264

 

[bsbeamer]

MP5,1 does not natively accelerate H264 unless you enable. There’s an entire thread dedicated to that in the Mac Pro forum. You will need an AMD GPU. Unsure the spec machine you’re looking at, but prices will plummet in few weeks as more and more receive their MP7,1 machines.

Activate AMD hardware acceleration

[For existing OpenCore users, you can always download my latest OpenCore package at post #1314 for update] Full HWAccel achieved now! Everything is covered in the OpenCore thread. The step by step tutorial to enable AMD hardware acceleration is now at here, but I strongly recommend you go...

forums.macrumors.com

If it’s “too much” for your level to get through that thread and/or don’t want to figure it out, you’ve made your decision easily - a machine that does accelerate H264 via hardware/GPU.

 

[George Adey]

MP5,1 does not natively accelerate H264 unless you enable. There’s an entire thread dedicated to that in the Mac Pro forum. You will need an AMD GPU. Unsure the spec machine you’re looking at, but prices will plummet in few weeks as more and more receive their MP7,1 machines.

Activate AMD hardware acceleration

[For existing OpenCore users, you can always download my latest OpenCore package at post #1314 for update] Full HWAccel achieved now! Everything is covered in the OpenCore thread. The step by step tutorial to enable AMD hardware acceleration is now at here, but I strongly recommend you go...

forums.macrumors.com

If it’s “too much” for your level to get through that thread and/or don’t want to figure it out, you’ve made your decision easily - a machine that does accelerate H264 via hardware/GPU.

thanks! Occasionally in AVCHD as well, but I will take a look at that thread

 

[vemac575]

I think you should give more info on what you are planning on doing.

 

[apw100]

I have around £700/800$ to spend on a MacBook Pro or Mac Pro 5.1

I see on here that the 2015 MacBook Pro is considered great value whilst not sacrificing too much on performance.

I edit in FCPX and in 4K.

any Advice on recommended models to look out for?

thanks

I have a 2015 15” MBP with an i7, 16GB RAM, and the Radeon M370 with 2GB VRAM.
It’s fine for editing h.264 (AVCHD will be no problem either), you will only run into trouble with h.265/HEVC since it doesn’t support hardware encoding/decoding.

 

[AppleMyI]

If you don’t need the portability, get the 5,1. Even in 2020, it’s still a relevant machine if you upgrade it correctly with your $800 total budget.