"white" macbook, FCE and Hi-Def

M

mcsean

Member
The newest 2.4 ghz Macbooks dont seem to come with firewire ports, so it looks lilke if we want to use Macbooks we will have to go with the so called "white" macbook-- but its 2.0 ghz....

our question is how effectively can FCE handle HDV footage on the new white macbook?

We arent in a position to use the macbook pro, bc we are supplying tech for about 15 teams and the budget wont allow it..
 
thank you for the quick reply...

I am working with a macbook pro 2.5ghz and doing some minor post stuff and it seems noticeably slower working w HDV.....i guess the reasons for that are pretty obvious...but i guess i am wondering how slow the white macbook is for these teams (who are gonna be rookies) when they start doing simple trans and adding filters....? will it be so slow that they as beginneers might feel bogged down before ever feeling that excitement that comes with putting toghether some nice moves....
 
Makes me wonder Where is apple going ? That's not a upgrade , That a downgrade.

Rob,
 
Beginners shouldn't be allowed to use filters or transitions lest they make something that looks like a horrible home movie so that's a moot ponit. :D

Is working w/HDV going to be as snappy as working w/DV? No. But there's no reason a current, white MB won't be fine to use. At work I have around 10 editors working w/HDV on old G5 towers, towers that would get skunked pretty much by anything intel, and it doesn't keep any of them from meeting deadlines.

Also, since you will be using FCE you won't be working w/HDV natively but w/AIC which means renders should be better, but you'll need to bigger drives since AIC is about 4x the size of HDV, IIRC.


-A
 
Thanks for the real-world advice..! very very helpful. SO , with the file size of AIC might that mean we will prob also need to supply some external hard drives?--(we are looking to get them the macbooks w 250 gig hard drive)
 
mcsean said:
SO , with the file size of AIC might that mean we will prob also need to supply some external hard drives?--(we are looking to get them the macbooks w 250 gig hard drive)
Click to expand...

You should never work on a MacBook without an external drive for your media. Keeping media on your operating drive will slow the project down even more, as the computer has that much more that it has to pull from the drive at the same time.
 
THANKS, plus when i read somewhere else that using AIC equals 45 gig/hour of footage,, an external is mandatory...thanks to every one in this thread for helping us sort this out....
 
Just a quick point. Many of the MacBooks have an INTEGRATED graphics card. That tags the processor pretty hard. Comparing a G5 Tower that has its own GFX card is different than a MacBook. Just my 2 cents.
 
Not really, FCP doesn't use the gpu, cpu and ram are most important. Also the new white macbook has the same gpu as the macbook pro, the 9400m, the difference is the macbook pro also has the 9600 to boot into if you need it. For anything except motion and color booting into it won't be that big of a deal.
 
My white macbook with 4GB ram handles FCP6 perfectly. Back when I had 1GB ram, it ran out of memory when I had too much stuff imported in the bins.

I assume if my white macbook can run FCP6, FCE should definitely run with no problems.
 
Last edited:
The only issue as I see it is one FW bus and no way add another, a second internal HDD, or eSATA.

This may produce issues when capturing HDV off cam to external FW HDD.
 
David S.

Have you tried, or are familiar with, daisychaining the cam through an external HD when doing capture --esp capture of HDV ?

the white has only that one 400 port of course, and i suppose we could first capture to the laptop and then off load to the external, but if that extra step could be avoided....

thanks
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top