Some questions about MBP's and FCS 2

[brendanryder]

Optional:
i have been chosen to be 1 of 8 students in our 800+ student graduating class to put together a video highlighting our past 3 years in high school. This video will be shown at our graduation ceremony that will have over 2000 attendees. I have seen some of the previous video and have not been very impressed haha. So this year i want to make it absolutely stunning so i can have it in my portfolio as i plan on attending university for video editing. I have run into a few problems and we haven't even started yet haha. The computers we have at school are just way to slow and take up precious time that could be spent on editing the actual footage instead of uploading and dealing with crashes. I currently have a MBA which is was to slow. So i have decided to invest in a new MBP. I am going to sell my MBA and possibly my iMac to fund this new purchase.

Macook Pro Questions:
i plan on getting the new 17" and upgrading to 2.93GHz because that would improve rendering time, right? Anything else that 2.93 would really help with? Also plan on getting the 7200rpm drive to improve load/save times. Video card wise, is the 512mb(and 4g RAM) powerful enough to run FCS on another monitor instead of using the 17". What about it running 2 monitors?Any other recommendations or things i should know about getting a MBP for video editing? Editing on a MBP with 2.93 GHz, 512mb VRAM would be alot better and faster than on a 2.4GHz iMac with only 256mb VRAM on a older card right?

FCS:
For the project, the group has used adobe premiere in the past but only the teacher knows how to use it and it will be used. So i planned on getting a new macbook pro for this project anyways but i watched the FCS tours and read some reviews and i think we could make an absolutely amazing video using FCS and motion is a real seller, it will defiantly allow for some jaw dropping effects that will make this video the best one. Would you recommend using FCS for the project? how easy is it to learn? Is there anything i should know before jumping in? Also how much of a difference will FCS be over FCE when it comes to making impressions and creating jaw dropping effects. I know FCS is $1400 but if it will make this video a hit and allow me and my group to create amazing video that will hopefully further my career the i think that it is worth it.

Anything else i should consider or look into? Do you recommend this upgrade/downgrade? or would you have a better idea?

Also, since these 2 things will run me $4,848.00. My MBA will probably only fetch $900, iMac would only get around $1100. i am a few papers short. So i am taking donations hahahahahah. just kidding.

Thanks in advance.

 

[mcpryon2]

I ran FCS2 just fine on my 2.4GHz 24" iMac with the Radeon 2600 GPU. I don't think I'd give up the 24" screen to downgrade to a laptop, even if it's 17". The 24" iMac display is really nice with video editing, and using an external monitor to view is nice...especially if you happen to have access to an NTSC monitor for using Color.

Check out the educational discount for FCS2, it's $699 on apple.com. Most likely there will be an announcement for FCS3 at NAB this year and you can't upgrade the academic version, so keep that in mind.

I would also really suggest using an external hard drive for media storage.

Personally, I'd keep the 24" iMac, get the academic FCS2, and get an external HD. Take the leftover money and buy beer.

 

[brendanryder]

I ran FCS2 just fine on my 2.4GHz 24" iMac with the Radeon 2600 GPU. I don't think I'd give up the 24" screen to downgrade to a laptop, even if it's 17". The 24" iMac display is really nice with video editing, and using an external monitor to view is nice...especially if you happen to have access to an NTSC monitor for using Color.

Check out the educational discount for FCS2, it's $699 on apple.com. Most likely there will be an announcement for FCS3 at NAB this year and you can't upgrade the academic version, so keep that in mind.

I would also really suggest using an external hard drive for media storage.

Personally, I'd keep the 24" iMac, get the academic FCS2, and get an external HD. Take the leftover money and buy beer.

I guess i forgot to mention 1 thing.
The reason i need to MBP is for portability. We would be working on the video at school on fridays and weekends so the transportation thing is an issue as well as the rendering time and graphics would be a nice upgrade. im hoping i can somehow get the educational discount through a friend or something because educational discount is only for university students and i live in canada so amazon is out. Thanks for the help tho.

I just sent steve jobs an email asking for an educational discount on both haha, its a huge shot in the dark but w/e, its worth a try lol.

Thanks for the reply man, i appreciate it.

 

[tcgjeukens]

Brendan,

Is there anything i should know before jumping in?

Sure

Now if you want to impress the 4000 eyes audience, the most important thing to consider is what you want to show them. You need a good story.
Technology will help you but you will need to do some reverse "engineering".

1. Decide what you want to show
2. Create a script
3. Select what camera is best to shoot each shot (the first time you hit technology)
4. Select an editing tool that is capable of handling the output of the camara in an easy way. Can it handle the clips in native form or does it require transcoding.
5. Depending on your editing software and the degree of compressing used by the camara, select CPU muscle.
6. Already start thinking in what form you want to distribute the result. In case one of the outputs is a DVD, be aware of the complexity to make HD DVD's.

To your question about FCS, many good flicks are made in iMovie. FCE does give you more control and options. FCP even more. Do you really need them?

Regards
Coen (shooting in HDV, editing in FCP)

 

[brendanryder]

Brendan,



Sure

Now if you want to impress the 4000 eyes audience, the most important thing to consider is what you want to show them. You need a good story.
Technology will help you but you will need to do some reverse "engineering".

1. Decide what you want to show
2. Create a script
3. Select what camera is best to shoot each shot (the first time you hit technology)
4. Select an editing tool that is capable of handling the output of the camara in an easy way. Can it handle the clips in native form or does it require transcoding.
5. Depending on your editing software and the degree of compressing used by the camara, select CPU muscle.
6. Already start thinking in what form you want to distribute the result. In case one of the outputs is a DVD, be aware of the complexity to make HD DVD's.

To your question about FCS, many good flicks are made in iMovie. FCE does give you more control and options. FCP even more. Do you really need them?

Regards
Coen (shooting in HDV, editing in FCP)

i guess i forgot to post that were basically just editing. the only filming we will be doing is the credits and a little bit of video for the "theme" we pick. Other than that its just putting together all the clips a teacher has taken over the past 3 years. and theres going to be tons of transitions and things like that where i think Motion could really help with. i just downloaded FCE, the "trial" version and im going to play with it a little, and then try and find someone who has FCS and kinda compare. which ever i choose i will buy. I dont believe in Pirating things that i will use to make money off of or sell for non profit, because that in my mind is wrong.

Thanks for your help, and i will defiantly bring those list points up when we have our nnext group meeting.