MBP 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo and AVCHD Premiere workflow/software suggestions.

[jlee462]

I am looking for advice. After getting a GH2 and loving the video quality, I have started to try and edit on my Macbook Pro 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo with 8gb RAM and I am about to jump out of the window from frustration. I have gone back and forth from Final Cut Pro 7, Adobe Premiere 5.5 and FCPX and cannot figure out the best workflow to run on a mobile albeit older machine. I decided to move from FCP 7 to Premiere bc FCPX just doesn’t have the feature set I like. It seems like a nice idea but stabilization on it is useless, color correcting is a joke…etc. I started using Premiere and which said it utilizes AVCHD natively, but as we all know avchd is processor heavy and not the best codec to do post work on. I tried converting to Cineform/DNXHD/ProRes and all of them gave me terrible performance due to the 32 bit QT32 server process used to work with Quicktime. So right now I am using AVCHD with dynamic link to After Effects. Once I correct the clips in AE, I have to rerender them in Premiere Pro. All of it killing my CPU and running VERY sluggish. I am thinking about going back to FCP 7 due to its use of proxies and just sticking it out with that. Should I try to use proxies with Premiere? What codec should I be using in After Effects for post work and what should that be output to for playback in Premiere? Is Premiere unusable on a machine with my specs? Should I just stick with FCP 7 or FCPX and After Effects? Can I even get by at all on my machine? If not should I get a 15 MBP 2010 Dual Core model because of CUDA/Nvidia 330 acceleration and use Premiere or will I get more performance from a Quad Core new MBP? Basically I need to now what is the ideal process for AVCHD and a laptop because something is killing mine right now. Thanks for the help….I am going nuts.

 

[David Yoder]

I have also been looking at different workflows I have an older Macbook Pro and a Sony with AVCHD files and I have a Windows laptop with !7 four core and NVIDEA GTX 460 card with the hack. I can preview the files and make edits but the render is also long process. I have read the FCP 7 you need to convert to ProRes file to edit. Or using Avid DNxHD codec to transcode. I am sure you have probably run across similar material. My conclusion is that I will have to upgrade to a desktop for more practical render times.
Adobe does read the AVCHD files and does preview very fast compared to FCP. You can lower the preview resolution to improve your system operation. But you will have better performance with transcoded files. I would hope someone with actual experience could offer better suggestion.

David