Rendering or Exporting iMovie bottlenecks

[daigohgoh]

Hi, I'd like to increase my rendering or exporting to movie time in iMovie.

I heard that it's all about the CPU and RAM, but since I don't know how to change the CPU I was wondering if SSD would make a difference?

I have a MacBook Pro 13" Mid-2009.
I've upgraded the RAM to 8GB of RAM.
I was wondering if I put an SSD in an OptiBay just for iMovie work (editing, exporting), will the Exporting be faster?

Or is Exporting really on CPU + RAM.

Perhaps GPU is on editing only?

SSD is on how fast iMovie loads up and shuts down but not really on Exporting the movie?

Thanks for explaining if you could

 

[rmitchell248]

Hi, I'd like to increase my rendering or exporting to movie time in iMovie.

I heard that it's all about the CPU and RAM, but since I don't know how to change the CPU I was wondering if SSD would make a difference?

I have a MacBook Pro 13" Mid-2009.
I've upgraded the RAM to 8GB of RAM.
I was wondering if I put an SSD in an OptiBay just for iMovie work (editing, exporting), will the Exporting be faster?

Or is Exporting really on CPU + RAM.

Perhaps GPU is on editing only?

SSD is on how fast iMovie loads up and shuts down but not really on Exporting the movie?

Thanks for explaining if you could

The SSD will not help you in these cases unfortunately. The HDD in your computer can read and write faster than the CPU can give it data to write. You cannot upgrade the CPU you would need to buy a newer model. More than 8 GB RAM most likely would not help you either.


A SSD will help with the opening of applications and the opening and access speeds of very large files that are already written to the drive.

 

[daigohgoh]

Hey thanks for answering my question! Now I'm just pondering what's another good use for my Optibay.

But seriously, thanks for clearing this up!

 

[rmitchell248]

No problem. I would say that 95% of the people with a SSD and a HDD both in their MBP see no gains from it aside from booting faster and opening apps faster. But they will tell you that you NEED it (maybe to be cool?). Do not get me wrong, if you were to put the SSD in and use it to boot off of you would love the quickness that it provides. The bottom line though is that it will not actually speed up the actual encoding or processing that you need to do.

 

[daigohgoh]

Wow, that totally made it even clearer than before.

1. I'm in no rush for faster bootup.
2. I'm in no rush for faster app launch.

What's hard for me to understand is identifying the bottleneck.
1. the ability to play the latest games (cpu/gpu)
2. Compile or export movies faster (cpu/ram)
3. Smoother use of the machine. Not so much switching between apps but there'd be no lag when I use a single app. Be it Safari or iMovie. (cpu/gpu)
4. Maybe even copying GB's of files from a HDD into an SSD.

But I was hoping SSD would solve all of the above. I just can't afford to get a new MacBook Pro every time a new one comes out. (or can i? did i already miss my window of opportunity to resell it?)