C300: Laptop for editing C300 Mark II 4K

Eric Coughlin

Eric Coughlin

Veteran
Right now I've got a 3-4 year old laptop with the following specs...

MSI GT70
NVIDIA Geforce GTX 775M / 4GB GDDR5
16 GB DDRIII RAM
256 GB SSD
750 GB HDD
17.3" 1920 x 1080 Screen

Works fine for editing 1080. Playback on 4k C300 Mark II footage is choppy in both VLC and Premiere. I've heard Mac is handling C300 Mark II 4K smoothly, both in regular playback, and in Final Cut X (not so much in Premiere?).

So should I buy a Mac laptop and learn Final Cut X from scratch, or is there a better alternative? What laptop should I buy? I suppose I could use proxies, but that route seems like a pain for regular use.

I often edit in mobile locations, at my office, at home, at Starbucks, etc., so I definitely want a laptop, and I don't want to have to use a large external display (not setting that up at Starbucks), so the bigger the screen the better. I really like my 17.3" screen I currently have. I see Mac's biggest laptop screen is 15.4", unless you get the older Mac Pro which has a 17" option. Is the older 17" Mac Pro good enough for C300 Mark II 4k editing?
 
I used a 17" MBP from '09-13' and loved it. I bought a maxed-out 15.4" RMBP in '13 and at first I missed the extra screen real estate, but after a few months I got used to it and I couldn't imagine carrying around and traveling with the 17" anymore. It was way heavier. I also wouldn't want to go back to the "lower rez" screen. At first, the retina display didn't seem like a big deal, UNTIL I went back and used the older lower rez screen. THEN I could really see the difference.
 
David W. Jones said:
Are you spooling your media off a fast hard drive setup?
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I often edit and play off of the 750GB HDD that is internally in the computer. Not sure of the specs on it and don't know how to find those specs; I think it's 7200 RPM but not sure. Or, I'll play clips directly off of the CFast memory cards when just viewing clips before editing. A co-worker's, I think it was 17" Mac laptop, played directly off of the CFast fine, while my computer does not.

Sometimes I'll edit off of Seagate Backup Plus 2 TB drives, but typically not. Now that I've got a 2 TB project I need to edit, I'll need to edit it off an an external hard drive since my internal drive is not large enough. Are the Seagate Backup Plus drives not good enough? Any recommendation for external drives to edit off of? Preferably something portable.
 
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Eric,
I use the 17 inch Macbook Pro 2012 version. Bought it the moment I heard Apple is discontinuing the 17inch version. I wanted the bigger screen.

I use FCP X. For mobile editing, I use a Lacie rugged 2TB hardisk which is connected through the Thunderbolt port. The library and files are in a Lacie. It works fine. Also, I just placed an order for the 4TB Lacie Rugged RAID

If you use it as RAID 0 then it will even be faster.

For home I use the GRAID. Earlier while carrying a GRAID to locations, it crashed. So now using the Lacie rugged.

I use Sandisk external hard disks to take backups. Since macbook pro has only one TB port, I have to connect the external hard disks with USB 3. Copying big libraries from one hard disk to other for backups takes time.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi
 
Eric,
these two articles may be of help

this one talks about the data transfer rate required for editing various formats
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora...ns/hard-drive-solutions-video-editing-studios

this one talks about file sizes & drive size
http://www.4kshooters.net/2014/06/25/how-much-hard-disk-space-do-you-need-shooting-4k/

On a Mac, I suspect you will need Thunderbolt as your connection. You may achieve the data transfer speed required by using HDD in a RAID-0 but be aware that if either disk fails you will lose ALL your work.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
I suppose I could use proxies, but that route seems like a pain for regular use.
Click to expand...

I use proxies all the time for Ninja ProRes 422 HQ footage (originals stored on a NAS) on a MacBook Pro.

If you want to be mobile then you prolly don't want to lug around an external drive. You'll also have a max 1TB internal SSD as the new MacBook Pros are hard wired and I don't think they sell > 1TB.

Using proxies means you can just pick up and go, and conserve a lot of disk space, while your originals are safe at home.

FCPX creates them easily, so I usually just set it to generate them overnight (but it doesn't take long anyway - especially from ProRes HQ) and switching between proxies/originals is a flick of a switch.
 
For onsite work I'm using the latest Retina MBP to edit/colour 4k XAVC from my FS7 and FCPX has been absolutely flawless. The 15.4" screen is plenty big enough and I've never felt cramped for room even with waveform up in the viewer.

I cannot recommend FCPX enough and I'm sure the learning curve will be short should you make the leap. I have found going back to track based NLEs feels like going back in time as not only is the performance of FCPX stunning but Apple have made the editing experience much more productive. You quickly take for granted the ability to locate your footage in the clip browser, the excellent multicam tools, auditions and the completely pain free proxy workflow. When a client asks you to change the running order of a complex project you won't have heart palpitations you'll simply select the clips you want to move on the timeline and drag them to the new position and the magnetic timeline will do the rest. It's as simple as cutting and pasting a paragraph of text in a text editor.

Get the Color Finale plugin for excellent grading tools and LUTs and you're set.

If you're working in Starbucks I thought it was mandatory to be using a Mac anyway. Not sure how you've got away with using a PC in there for so long...
 
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