GH2 Help a newby get his Apple editing work station together.

Searcher

Searcher

Well-known member
I bought a GH2 a month or so ago. Next month I start shooting 10 one minute short films I hope to finish by the end of the year. They will be a mixed bag in terms of complexity but none of them will have effects or anything more complicated than a few fades and a colour grade. Some of them will be quite experimental and just be a static shot for the whole 60 seconds with a voiceover, some will have actors with dialogue and many cuts. It's a learning exercise mostly but I am a perfectionist.

While the content might be a bit all over the place I want the footage to look and sound professional (to the best of my ability!).

So I have a few questions.

1. Would the current 13" MacBook Pro with the basic 4GB memory etc do the job?
2. Could I use Final Cut Express? Surely the footage will come out of either FCP Express or FCP looking exactly the same? I assume FCP just has more fancy tricks?
3. What do I use for fancy titles?
4. Is it better to get a bigger internal hard drive or use an external one? How much harddrive would I need for 10 basic one minute short films? (IS that as bad a question as "how long is a piece of string"?
5. Is my 23" Apple Display going to do the job for critical viewing?

I'm going crazy trying to work out what to get. It's not really about price (within reason) I just don't need the fastest computer in the world. Just one that does the job within reason (whatever that is). I have a cinema display which I can plug into the 13" so that's why I'm considering it over the 15". But maybe I should just get a decked out 15" I'm just thinking that a basic 13" might actually be more than I need? People get carried away with always wanting the fastest... I'm trying not to.

Thanks for ANY feedback!
 
If you plan to shoot with the GH2 and want a really easy post process with the AVCHD codec buy a PC. No transcoding, you can view your clips on the computer and make any adjustments you need. CS5 is the bomb!
Thinking outside the Apple is not a popular thing to do but shooting and editing is not popularity contest, it a job that is sometime creative and sometimes maddening. Plus you will have money left over to buy more lighting equipment!
 
I bought a 15" macbook refurb from apple almost two years ago, I've had no problem editing with pro-res for small and large projects. So you can always go that route. However if I was going to spend around 2k for a new computer I'd load up a 27" imac.

You might also want to wait til June 1st and buy the new FCP (which is $300 I think) and forgo Final Cut Express. The PC route works as well, but if you buy a nice mac you will be set for more than a few years. Before my laptop I had a G5 that worked great for five years until I wanted to upgrade it.

I also always edit on an external drive, they are cheap to pickup so grab yourself a nice 1-2TB G Tech and be good for awhile.
 
I used to always edit on FCP with external firewire drives, but I bought a new MBP a year ago and got the 7200RPM internal drive option. Since I no longer have to log and capture DV tape, I've gotten lazy and I just drag files onto the internal drive. I end up just leaving them there, and doing the whole project on the internal. It's been working fine, but I haven't made a video over ten minutes.

Either the 13" or the 15" will be fine for your needs. I agree 100% with robmneilson. Wait for FCPX next month... forget FCP Express ever existed.
 
I edit just fine away from my desktop on a white unibody Macbook, not pro. This is entirely due to Premiere Pro CS5. Once you add any effects or grading you need to render, but until the it cuts up 1080 footage great. Color is another story though, the stock display in these are a bummer. You have a display already, though.
 
Tazza - You can get Premiere Pro CS5, et al, for the Mac, too.

Searcher -

1. If you're looking for portability, a MacBook Pro should be fine. If not, a new 27" iMac with Thunderbolt and your 23" monitor would be a really nice combo for years to come.
2. I'd get the new Mac and play with iMovie '11 (fun and exports to FCP) while waiting for FCPX (links to the NAB 2011 demo on Vimeo) due next month for $300 -- they're selling FCPX separate again, without requiring that you buy the full studio. It looks awesome! I'm stalling on a few projects now waiting for it. :happy:
3. Adobe After Effects, Apple Motion, and possibly some in FCPX itself, still waiting to see what else it does.
4. A bigger 7200rpm internal drive will suit you fine for a while, but you're still going to want externals eventually; backup, file management, general storage, etc. You can get a Firewire drive dock which allows you to slip in and out inexpensive internal drives as needed.
5. It should work fine for that, with a MacBook Pro or as a second monitor with an iMac.

Good luck!
 
Crosby! said:
Tazza - You can get Premiere Pro CS5, et al, for the Mac, too.

Searcher -

1. ... If not, a new 27" iMac with Thunderbolt and your 23" monitor would be a really nice combo for years to come.
2. I'd get the new Mac and play with iMovie '11 (fun and exports to FCP) while waiting for FCPX (links to the NAB 2011 demo on Vimeo) due next month for $300 -- they're selling FCPX separate again, without requiring that you buy the full studio. It looks awesome! I'm stalling on a few projects now waiting for it. :happy:
Good luck!
Click to expand...

Have ordered the new 21.5" iMac with i7 chip & 8GB memory. Has the Radeon 6770M with 512. Plan is to buy FCPX and edit GH2 AVCHD natively, no transcoding.

Is that going to work out well for me?
 
mikehohman said:
Have ordered the new 21.5" iMac with i7 chip & 8GB memory. Has the Radeon 6770M with 512. Plan is to buy FCPX and edit GH2 AVCHD natively, no transcoding.

Is that going to work out well for me?
Click to expand...

That's hard to say without FCPX being here. But at a guess I would say yes. Certainly as far as the hardware is concerned.
 
mikehohman said:
Have ordered the new 21.5" iMac with i7 chip & 8GB memory. Has the Radeon 6770M with 512. Plan is to buy FCPX and edit GH2 AVCHD natively, no transcoding.

Is that going to work out well for me?
Click to expand...

I bought a 27" i5 just last month, right before the new ones. Oh well.

I'll ripple what Stoneinapond said and say that everything we know now is speculative at best until FCPX hits the streets. Educated guess, you should be fine. Actually, now that I think of it, iMovie '11 will import/edit GH2 footage natively so FCPX should as well.
 
Any 13" mbp will handle what you are doing. I've seen refurbished ones going for 730 on the apple site with a one year warranty. It'll be slower than a tower, but it's also a lot cheaper. I mostly edit on my 8 core tower due to it's speed but in a pinch the laptop would be fine too.

cheers
 
I edit on a 13" core 2 duo (2.2ghz) and it's been surprisingly good. A quality 7200 rpm hard drive and 8 gigs of ram do make a world of difference though.
 
Wow. Thanks everybody. I was asleep on the underneath of the world while you all wrote your posts...

For some reason I assumed that imovie would be of no use. But it looks like I can at least use it to look at my footage till FCPX comes out. That's awesome news about FCPX. I'll wait!

Looks like any MBP would be fine.

Now I just have to decide on whether to get the SSD and Applecare...

And I am tempted by the 15"! But then then I'll get the matt screen...

Damn this abundance of choice.
 
Look, any Mac in the past 2 years will do a good job with editing AVCHD footage. When it comes to rendering speeds an imac or tower will be your friend. 4 Gigs is "just" enough for a 10min project.
Title work wont be a processor hog... its the color correction,slow motion, stabilization, After Effects/Motion, and generally heavy filters that will be a little slow. You have a long cushion for the final product, so comp speed wont be a huge game changer for you.
Storage, Memory, Monitor will be the larger factors... over a Sub-2year old computer.
My choice would to be, finding a used 8/16 core Tower (cheap memory, tons of expansion, and powerful....)

side note: iMovie, Live Type, Keynote, Motion, and After Effects all are good title tools. (AE and Motion are top)
 
If this is a long term investment it may be worth pausing before you commit to FC X. It is supposedly built from the ground up, so that could mean 'not tried and tested'. The recent Mac event left more questions than answers. It is being heralded as the next big thing without anyone having seen it. It could be great but who knows?

On the other hand Premier Pro is well tested. It will take GH footage and almost anything else without transcoding and seamlessly works with After Effects.

Having tried FCP 7 and PP 5 I went with Premier and am using a Mac, it may be worth considering. The good news is that you can trial the full version of Premier Pro 5.5 for 30 days.

Just a thought.

Martin
 
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