MBA and iMovie and DVD Creating

[phlabse]

Hello everyone,

I'm in somewhat of a peculiar situation. I am in the process of making an hour or so long movie filled with simple jpegs and .dv files. It's a commemorative type movie so I'll have script rolling, music playing, and video/pictures playing in iMovie. Is a project like this too big for the MBA to handle?

I know the phrases "music editing" and "video editing" get tossed around and they can be very vague. My "video editing" is nothing more than getting clips of old VHS to DVD then into .dv files and putting them with audio and script/transitions in iMovie.

Will this project be too much for a not-so-powerful MBA to handle because I'm thinking of getting a MBA for school and I hope to be able to work on it this summer.

I don't do video editing like this often at all. Also, since I will need an optical drive to burn the DVD, should I look elsewhere for a cheaper and more universal option for an external drive since the one Apple sells only works for the MBA. (I think that's true, if not I'm sorry I must be mistaken.)

Thanks for your help and advice in advance!

 

[roland.g]

Not sure that other external drives will work with the MBA b/c of the power requirements etc. Check on that. Otherwise if you don't mind having iDVD on your MBA, something most people reinstall the OS package to take off for space saving and realize that the MBA doesn't really do external HDDs and your movie will need to fit on there, at least prior to burning, at which point you can archive it off to an external drive if need be. Then yes, iMovie should run and perform just fine on the MBA. No different really than using say a Mini or a lowend iMac or MacBook from the past 2 years. The 1.6/1.8 with 2GB RAM is nothing to shirk at.