Macbook Pro: HD video & photography?

[nickmehn]

Hello:
I have a Macbook Pro that I purchased about a year and a half ago. I'm starting to get into doing HD video and photography and I just purchased an expensive DSLR camera. I tried doing the trial of Adobe Premiere and editing video, but it was very slow.

I was wondering if my computer is fast enough (or good enough, really) to edit HD video really well. Also, if it is not, what can I do to improve it or make it so that it can handle it all?

Here are my specs
Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256 MB

Thank you!

 

[eviltotoro]

There are few things you can do to boost your performance. The first thing is the type of video format yu are using. Most DSLR's cameras use either AVCHD or another mp4 packaged codec, these formats don't play too nice with non-linear editors unless you have a pretty fast machine. So to get around this you can transcode the video files into AIC or apple proRes They are much bigger in terms of file size, but edit much better.

I was in the same boat as you, I had a uMBP 2.8 ghz core 2 duo, with 8 gbs of ram, but editing avchd in premiere cs5 was not fun. My current rMBP does a much better job at editing those formats, but its still not as good as using a more editor friendly format.

There are a couple of programs out there that can transcode your formts, Final Cut Pro 7 has one built in.

Hope that helps.

 

[TurdFerguson]

You could make some hardware improvements easily. Find out what the maximum RAM is for your Mac and upgrade that first. It should be less than $100, for me it was $33. You could also look at getting a smaller solid state hard drive, and removing the optical drive to make room for a 2nd larger disk drive.

My MacBook Pro might be the same as yours. Mid 2010 13" 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. I upgraded it myself to:
8gb Ram
240gb Solid State Drive

750gb 7200rpm Hard Drive in the Optical drive bay.

I do Photo/Video work also, before I made these upgrades it was painfully slow. Too slow to be productive.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Maybe this can shed some light:

Video Compression
Why It Matters & How To Make The Most Of It

which includes the following sections:

• GOPs, Macroblocks & Wavelets
• Acquisition Formats
• Editing & Post Formats
• Final Cut Pro
• Avid Media Composer
• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Which Codec Should I Edit With?
• Conclusion
• Camera Codec Summary
• Apple ProRes Variations
• Avid DNxHD Codecs

I have a 2009 MBP which can edit 1080p footage quite fine, from a 5D Mk II and from a 650D, but I also have my footage transcoded to a proper editing format.

 

[nickmehn]

You could make some hardware improvements easily. Find out what the maximum RAM is for your Mac and upgrade that first. It should be less than $100, for me it was $33. You could also look at getting a smaller solid state hard drive, and removing the optical drive to make room for a 2nd larger disk drive.

My MacBook Pro might be the same as yours. Mid 2010 13" 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. I upgraded it myself to:
8gb Ram
240gb Solid State Drive

750gb 7200rpm Hard Drive in the Optical drive bay.

I do Photo/Video work also, before I made these upgrades it was painfully slow. Too slow to be productive.

So after these upgrades, your video/photo editing is no longer lagging at all? Thanks for all the info! Are there any cons of doing this at all?

 

[nickmehn]

Maybe this can shed some light:

YouTube: video​

Video Compression
Why It Matters & How To Make The Most Of It

which includes the following sections:

• GOPs, Macroblocks & Wavelets
• Acquisition Formats
• Editing & Post Formats
• Final Cut Pro
• Avid Media Composer
• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Which Codec Should I Edit With?
• Conclusion
• Camera Codec Summary
• Apple ProRes Variations
• Avid DNxHD Codecs

I have a 2009 MBP which can edit 1080p footage quite fine, from a 5D Mk II and from a 650D, but I also have my footage transcoded to a proper editing format.

Thank you so much for this! It actually helped out a lot!

 

[NazgulRR]

You could make some hardware improvements easily. Find out what the maximum RAM is for your Mac and upgrade that first. It should be less than $100, for me it was $33. You could also look at getting a smaller solid state hard drive, and removing the optical drive to make room for a 2nd larger disk drive.

My MacBook Pro might be the same as yours. Mid 2010 13" 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. I upgraded it myself to:
8gb Ram
240gb Solid State Drive

750gb 7200rpm Hard Drive in the Optical drive bay.

I do Photo/Video work also, before I made these upgrades it was painfully slow. Too slow to be productive.

So after these upgrades, your video/photo editing is no longer lagging at all? Thanks for all the info! Are there any cons of doing this at all?

I am curious about this as well! I am using the same machine which I have already upgraded to 8GB ram, but still with slow stock hdd. Also, what software do you use for editing video?

 

[TurdFerguson]

Just saw these replies! sorry.

I am curious about this as well! I am using the same machine which I have already upgraded to 8GB ram, but still with slow stock hdd. Also, what software do you use for editing video?

I use FCPX, Motion, AE, Technicolor Color Assist and FX factory. (FXfactory sucks with FCPX 10.0.8)

So after these upgrades, your video/photo editing is no longer lagging at all? Thanks for all the info! Are there any cons of doing this at all?

I wouldn't say It doesn't lag at all, but it's much faster. Make sure to do the most of your editing with proxy media! The only con I've experienced is not having an optical drive! It's ok though. I put my superdrive in an external enclosure. I bought some usb flash drives and had them engraved with my intials. If I ever want to burn something on the fly, I'll put whatever I want to share on the USB drive and most of the time they load it on their computer and hand it back. Sometimes I'll let someone take it home if they have to.