video editing on new retina macs

[ygys]

hey guys. Few weeks ago my 2011 15" macbook pro was stolen.
It was the top of the line macbook and I used it mostly for video editing.
Final cut pro and adobe premiere were the apps that I used the most.

Right now I am using my "web machine" 2010 11" macbook air. But for my purposes it is almost unusable

So I am searching for new computer

I have to travel a lot so I need a laptop, so no iMac or Mac pro

screen size is not a dealbreaker since everywhere I go, I have a access to connect my computer to an external monitor.

I have no idea what is the real world performance of todays computers (since my mbp was 3,5 years old )

I definitely do not want a computer with dgpu since it was failing in my last one.

I am sure that I want 16gb of ram

so my options are

middle rmp 13" with 16gb Ram (1699$)
+ smaller for traveling
+ longer battery life
+ faster processor when considering one core applications
+ less expensive

-worse graphics card
- 2 vs 4 core processor


my question is if I will choose bto faster processor, is it going to be worth the buck considering the change in the final performance ?

how many monitors am I able to connect to this computer ?


base 15" (1999$)
everything vice versa from the 13" version

I am not able to update any of the parts because of my budget.


what would you recommend according to your own personal experience ?

 

[GoldfishRT]

You'll want the quad for video editing and rendering. Go for the 15".

 

[Cloudsurfer]

The dual core and 8gb is fine for Final Cut Pro in my experience. what kind of video editing are you looking at? Casual or very complicated/long projects?

 

[boast]

Is this in the US? Can you do refurbished?

 

[ygys]

in my country there is not even an official apple store 😀 (Slovakia)
so no refurbished macbook pro for me :-/

guys and how many monitors can I connect to the 13 rMBP?

Am I going to feel the difference between 2,6ghz and 2,8ghz i5 ?

length of the videos varies form 5 minutes to an hour.

I do not care about rendering speeds because I can let the computer to render things overnight .. only thing that worries me is the overall snappiness while editing .

 

[Cloudsurfer]

in my country there is not even an official apple store 😀 (Slovakia)
so no refurbished macbook pro for me :-/

guys and how many monitors can I connect to the 13 rMBP?

Am I going to feel the difference between 2,6ghz and 2,8ghz i5 ?

length of the videos varies form 5 minutes to an hour.

I do not care about rendering speeds because I can let the computer to render things overnight .. only thing that worries me is the overall snappiness while editing .

Do yourself (or rather your wallet) a favor and go with the stock 13". The 2,6 is very responsive with Final Cut and exporting speeds are very satisfying. A one minute 1080p file takes about 40 seconds exporting to h.264 (single pass), which I find pretty amazing for a dual core chip.

I expect the difference between the 2,6 and the 2,8 to be negligible in your case, unless you do hours of transcoding before you start your project. Based on your needs, I also don't think you need 16gb purely for video editing.

As for monitors, I think you can hook up at least 2 displays to it. Not sure about more.

 

[Badrottie]

MBA 13 in with Haswell based is a perfect solution for your need. It has a best battery when you traveling a lot. And it is cheap than 13 in rMBP. It can handle heavy duty apps like FCPX very well. Good luck.

 

[sevoneone]

Do yourself (or rather your wallet) a favor and go with the stock 13". The 2,6 is very responsive with Final Cut and exporting speeds are very satisfying. A one minute 1080p file takes about 40 seconds exporting to h.264 (single pass), which I find pretty amazing for a dual core chip.

I expect the difference between the 2,6 and the 2,8 to be negligible in your case, unless you do hours of transcoding before you start your project. Based on your needs, I also don't think you need 16gb purely for video editing.

As for monitors, I think you can hook up at least 2 displays to it. Not sure about more.

I will toss my hat in here in support of this. I just recently did a similar trade-off. 2010 15" to a Refurbished Late 2013 rMBP 13" and have not been disappointed so far. It was actually Cloudsurfer's advice that convinced me to go for it. I have yet to encounter anything that runs slower than it did on my 2010 15", everything is the same of faster.

I find memory management in Mavericks and Yosemite to be very good, especially from what I've experienced with Yosemite on the 13" rMBP. Final Cut X will take all the RAM it can get, but it works very happily with a system with 8GB of RAM.