Mac Book Advice!

mdslammer

mdslammer

Well-known member
Hi Guys,

I'm taking an editing class this semester and the program being used is FCP. Personally,
I've been a PC guy all my life but am thinking about buying a Mac Book
or Mac Book Pro to run FCP. Therefore I can actually use the program at home and
hopefully get more proficient using the program.

So, for all you "Mac" people, any help would be appreciated. I spoke to a sales
person at Apple and they will accommodate me with a student discount for FCP (still pricey at $699.00).
But they had me getting a machine that was totally maxed out for video use. Is this absolutely necessary or just the salesmans hype?

I know the faster the better, but what do I need to run the program efficiently without getting killed financially?

Thanks.

Mark
 
i've got 5 macs at the moment, and been running fcp for the last 4 years, i still have it running on a G3 powerbook that is about 6 years old.
it's slow but it works. so if you can only afford a mac book, then it will be fine, you will want to put extra RAM in it, and you will have to be a little patient with render time's
but you will love it.
Make sure you buy a good external hard drive, and keep your raw footage on that.
best to keep footage and programme seperate

ian
 
Ian,

Thanks for the reply. I agree totally with having the OS on the C drive and any/all data on a second or external hard drive. That is how I have my audio PC's setup for my post production studio.

Any thoughts on the Mac Book Pro?

Mark
 
It's all down to what you can afford,
if you can get a macbook pro, then you are less likely to need to upgrade it as quickly as you might with a macbook.

ian
 
I got a G5 desktop and a Macbook Pro laptop. My MBP is the 15inch and I had them install the 160gig HD and add 2 gigs of memory. I use an external 250 gig HD for all my video content. I am running the whole FCP studio except for DVD Studio Pro on there. It might be on there I can't remember. I know the entire studio plus AE, Photoshop and other stuff is on my desktop. Excluding my external HD the MBP came out to be $2389.00 and this is also the Dual Core macbook pro.
 
I got a MacBook Pro 2.o core duo with 2gb or ram, and it works just fine with HDV, for SD its a child game. So you probably dont need the strongest machine, even though the apple guy must convience you to buy excact that one. Only problem with notebook editing is exporting wich can be pretty time consuming especially if yousing AE,Motion..
 
Macs are not pricey for the components they contain. Yep sure a Dell is cheap but its got cheap components an equivilant PC with the same components would be a fortune, Macs are not expensive for the price point I REPEAT MACS ARE NOT EXPENSIVE FOR THE PRICE POINT.
 
Nicholasraeburn is correct.

Also, it's not just a good idea to put the OS and applications on the system drive seperate from the media on a second drive, it's actually a stated requirement by Apple for FCP. You will run into major headaches putting media on your system drive. And FCP won't run off a non-system drive properly.
 
BenB,

Thanks, but I know about using separate drives for the OS and DATA. I have an audio post production studio employing
3 PC's. I use W.D. Rapture internal hard drives for all my media. They are very fast and work very well.

Regards.

Mark Dalzell / AudioScapes
Las Vegas, NV
www.markdalzell.com
 
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