Panasonic AG-AMC150 and MacBook Pro

[weasel82]

Hey guys,

I'm currently finalizing my purchase choices for both a HD Camera and a Mac and my top choice at the moment for a camera is the Panasonic AG-HMC150. In my research, many articles I read suggest the need for a powerful Mac for the video editing process of this camera. (pointing out a need for a quad-core)

Will a MacBook Pro be able to handle this stuff, or will I need to purchase a box? Since I will be in Morocco over the next year, I have a need for portability, thus wanting the laptop, but if it can't handle the editing, I'll have to re-think the issue. I know MacBook Pros state something about hyper-threading acting like a quad, but I'd rather hear first-hand if anyone has dealt with this issue, or currently edits with this type of camera.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[spinnerlys]

Which editing application will you use? iMovie, FCP or FCE, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer?

The camera uses an MPEG-4 codec to store its footage, in order to edit it with the first three applications I mentioned, the footage will be transcoded to use a less compressive and CPU intensive codec. Premiere Pro and Avid MC can edit the footage natively (without transcoding), but it will be CPU intensive.
Also know, that MPEG-4 is not an editing codec, but only meant for delivering footage (either raw or edited).

 

[weasel82]

Spinnerlys,

Thanks for the response. It's most likely that I will use FCE, so that being said, what do you think?

 

[spinnerlys]

Spinnerlys,

Thanks for the response. It's most likely that I will use FCE, so that being said, what do you think?

FCE will transcode the footage to use the Apple Intermediate Codec for video and Uncompressed for audio, encapsulated into the .mov container/format.

A MacBook Pro will be more than capable of handling that, just know that you need a lot of storage, 40GB per hour of AIC encoded footage, thus get an external 2.5" HDD, preferably with FW800. Look at www.macsales.com for external FW800 enclosures and maybe get the HDD of your choice yourself and combine them.

Btw, even my 2007 iMac with 2GHz and 4GB RAM is capable of editing HD footage using either the AIC or ProRes (FCP) codec.

 

[KeithPratt]

If you're using FCE, the reason you might want a more powerful CPU is to increase the speed of the transcoding to AIC. But how many cores can FCE access for this task?

 

[bearcatrp]

The HMC 150 is an awesome cam. Sometimes regret selling it. Records in AVCHD format. You will want an i7 Mac book and at least a 1tb external hard drive for a scratch disk. When FCE converts it to AIC, it will make a very large file depending on how much to convert. Pretty sure panasonic has a converter you can download once you register. Enjoy the cam. Very nice.