Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

question about using fcp on mbp

jetjaguar

jetjaguar

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 6, 2009
3,555
2,331
somewhere
Hi all.

I just started a video editing class that uses final cut pro 6 and we are going to start working on projects in the next week or so. According the teacher for every hour we do it in class we will need to do another 2-3 hours on our own using either the lab at school or if we have fcp at home we can do it there. My question is I really don't like the idea of being at school any longer than I have to and their lab is old and dated. I have a 17in mbp that is in my sig and i have fcp 7. In order to edit on it am i going to have to get an external hard drive to store the media files on ? or can I just put then on the drive in my mbp which is a 320gb 7200 rpm drive ... as long as I have enough space? I don't want to go and buy an external hard drive if I don't have to yet because i plan on buying a mac pro desktop probably after the next refresh in may or june.

Thanks
 
Yes, you can put the footage on the your MBP's harddrive.

BUT, I would not recommend it if you have the $ for an external harddrive because it will decrease the life of your MBP's harddrive (as the excess read/write to the video clips). Also, if your MBP harddrive crashes, you lose all your footage along with everything else.

However, I am a hypocrite because I used my MBP's harddrive for a "capture scratch" before though because I did not have enough money to put toward an external. :D
 
Never edit media stored on your OS drive... ever... never....

get an external FW drive they really aren't that much and you can use it with your future mac pro...





....never ever....
 
bigbossbmb said:
Never edit media stored on your OS drive... ever... never....

get an external FW drive they really aren't that much and you can use it with your future mac pro...





....never ever....
Click to expand...

I have to agree with this. I do my editing on a MBP and I have an external 1TB drive that is only for video editing. Don't forget to send all of your scratch files there too. Since you've installed to the MBP and have run it it will assume you want things there. Make sure you take those off the laptop. It's always better to be using a full sized drive for such things anyhow. It will be easy to then incorporate that into your new computer when the time comes as said above. You certainly don't want to be offloading hundreds of gigabytes of files from the laptop when the time comes.
 
well this is only going to used for this class .. i have fcp installed but never used it before just opened it to navigate around so i havent set anything up .. i might just get a 640gb drive and an external enclosure .. not sure yet .. i have a 1.5tb drive in my pc but that has all my x264 movies .. so i cant use it
 
what enclosure would u guys get to store the drive ?? the mercury pro one from macsales .. or something else ?? i hate how it has the name etched in the side of it however lol ..
 
did you check out the glyph portagig?

they are real small and are bus powered..glyph hard drives are pricey though..
 
well i have a 1,5tb im taking out of my pc and using it for fcp .. just need an enclosure .. prolly just going to pick up the one from mac sales
 
You can pick up an enclosure from any vendor that has the best price. I've bought some items from MacSales but I usually use NewEgg for most things.
 
Dont forget that you won't be able to open your FCP7 project files back in FCP6, unless you export & import them as XML's (may cause issues!)
 
jetjaguar said:
do i need the FW 800 one .. or is the FW 400 enough ?
Click to expand...

That will depend a great deal on what video bandwidth you're using. I have a 10 month old MBP and it really chokes on 24Mbps video. I have to drop to recording in 17 to keep things usable but that's all in the processor. It pegs out at 100% and stays there when playing the video and there are a lot of stutters. If you're using a lower bandwidth then 400 should be fine but if there's no significant difference in cost between the enclosures I'd go with 800 just to be more useful on a Mac Pro down the road.
 
coldsweat said:
Dont forget that you won't be able to open your FCP7 project files back in FCP6, unless you export & import them as XML's (may cause issues!)
Click to expand...

hmm didn't know that .. my teacher said it wouldn't be an issue editing the stuff we do in school on fcp 6 and using fcp7 at home
 
bigbossbmb said:
Never edit media stored on your OS drive... ever... never....

get an external FW drive they really aren't that much and you can use it with your future mac pro...





....never ever....
Click to expand...



Not to hijack the thread, but I have a question. I'm not a new Mac user, but new to editing on a laptop machine and I'm curious as to why you should not edit media that is stored on your OS hard drive?

Also, if I'm doing video editing with video shot from a power shot camera, what would be the best system for editing (ie how to edit from an external drive such as the Time Capsule)?

Sorry in advance if this is a dumb question.
 
Software like Final Cut, Premiere and Photoshop recommend having an alternate scratch and storage disk. Performance suffers if you have actions related to the ordinary tasks of the software going on at the same time you're trying to read and write large files. You have massive reads/writes going on while the program is trying to do its own thing all on the same drive. The heads are thrashing around trying to keep up with things going on in two different places.

On a different aspect, your laptop drive will be doing very hard work and, at the same time, increasing the heat inside your laptop shell. The processor is pumping out enough heat on its own (mine tends to hit 180 degrees when rendering) and adding hard drive heat doesn't help.
 
avaloncourt said:
Software like Final Cut, Premiere and Photoshop recommend having an alternate scratch and storage disk. Performance suffers if you have actions related to the ordinary tasks of the software going on at the same time you're trying to read and write large files. You have massive reads/writes going on while the program is trying to do its own thing all on the same drive. The heads are thrashing around trying to keep up with things going on in two different places.

On a different aspect, your laptop drive will be doing very hard work and, at the same time, increasing the heat inside your laptop shell. The processor is pumping out enough heat on its own (mine tends to hit 180 degrees when rendering) and adding hard drive heat doesn't help.
Click to expand...



What is the easiest way to assign a different storage disk (ie Time Capsule) to edit from? Is it as simple as drag-and-drop, or is it something more complex than that?
 
bobfreakinvilla said:
What is the easiest way to assign a different storage disk (ie Time Capsule) to edit from? Is it as simple as drag-and-drop, or is it something more complex than that?
Click to expand...

under easy setup in final cut pro .. bottom right of that window lets u select the scratch disk
 
jetjaguar said:
under easy setup in final cut pro .. bottom right of that window lets u select the scratch disk
Click to expand...

I presume it would be the same using Final Cut Express then. What if you're using Quicktime files that have been transfered into iPhoto via S-Card? Is it still a big no-no to edit off that?
 
bobfreakinvilla said:
What is the easiest way to assign a different storage disk (ie Time Capsule) to edit from? Is it as simple as drag-and-drop, or is it something more complex than that?
Click to expand...

I would NOT recommend setting your scratch disk to your time capsule... You want a drive connected to your laptop via firewire (not ethernet or ...ugh... wifi).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back