New Macbook Pro "Thunderbolt" - Savior for pro-video on laptops?

Terry_Lasater said:
I did earlier, but somehow overlooked the 7200RPM option. Probably because I had SSD on the brain. :)

I've been the victim of several HDD crashes over the years and really want an SSD. I'd still like to know if I could order a MBP with an HDD (to save a few $$$), then switch it out at a later date with an SSD?
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... or u could get one with a smaller ssd now and switch it for a bigger better one later as the price drops.
 
Rick Burnett said:
For instance, FW800 is OVERKILL for many of the hard drives I hook up. Sure, a stripped raid could benefit, but for my simple backup drives, FW400 is sufficient in throughput. What really needs some innovation is hard drives. Even solid state are fairly slow for writing for most of them. I find my drives are the single biggest bottleneck of my computers.
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You should really consider upgrading your drives then. I haven't seen a reasonably sized 3.5" HDD in 4 years that FW800 would have been "overkill" for especially during sustained reads. If you are quite happy using slower <40MBps buses for your applications, that is another thing.
 
I would always recommend buying a 3rd party SSD rather than anything a computer manufacturer allows you to configure your laptop with. Bundled SSDs are known for being relatively slow and old and extremely overpriced. Of course if convenience is your top priority, they might be alright for you.
 
nyvz said:
You should really consider upgrading your drives then. I haven't seen a reasonably sized 3.5" HDD in 4 years that FW800 would have been "overkill" for especially during sustained reads. If you are quite happy using slower <40MBps buses for your applications, that is another thing.
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I benchmarked the drives internal to the computer and external on FW400 and FW800. FW800 was WAY faster than any recent drive I have tried, although it was a small set of drives. You do realize that FW800 is 100Mbytes per second right?

For random access most drives perform under 40MB/s that I have seen. I have tried quite a few. Raided of course is a different story as well. So while the peak performance can be great, the biggest problem with HDD is random access. If you are pulling lots of files off of one drive at a time, you are going to get hit with the seek issues. (Where SSD is awesome)

(FW800 is just under 800Mbps)
 
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nyvz said:
I would always recommend buying a 3rd party SSD rather than anything a computer manufacturer allows you to configure your laptop with. Bundled SSDs are known for being relatively slow and old and extremely overpriced. Of course if convenience is your top priority, they might be alright for you.
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Glad you are recommending. Recommending with links is even better. :)
 
The ones at macsales.com have some nice numbers. Though, I have not personally benchmarked them. If I were buying an SSD, that is who I would try first.
 
Be carefull wit SSD drives as per video purposes. Last models using 25nm (ocz, corsair and some others) are super slow on writing.
DO NOT BUY SSD for video until you're sure the model or until a friend tell you (and even in that case be sure to not get 25nm models).

We are testing some ssd drives. 25nm give us on CDM (crystal disk mark) an average write of 33MBs. So be carefull.
Velociraptors sata2 gives 85-95MB/S write&read. New Velociraptors sata3 (sata 6G) gives around 150MB/S read & write.

Only 35nm SSDs can supply the same numbers for write, yet they give +-200MB/Second but on reads. Writes are around 150MBps.
Only fewer SSD models do more. SSD is a world ! trust me.

For video testing purposes do not use ATTO references as its not sequential.
Thats my recomendation.
 
Cheap Samsung Spinpoints deliver me 108MB (Bytes) a second over Esata. I have a double WD Black RAID 0 that delivers 161MB/Second. Firewire 800 is weak.
 
Oetam said:
I really hope this can become a standard and not Intel and Apple's next failed experiment.
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Intel has not been adding USB3.0 to their motherboards and chipset specs. Now we know why.

This is "light peak", but copper. It should become a standard as Intel drives it home on their motherboards. My guess is it'll replace Firewire as the "faster professional" interface alongside USB3.0.
 
Soooo... on either the Intel or Apple site, it states that all you need is cheap adapter, and this will work for VGA, DVI, and HDMI. I get that for output, but what about input? Specifically, if I buy a $15-$20 HDMI>Displayport adapter, can I just plug my HMC150 (or any camera with an HDMI port), and record that way, bypassing the need to buy an at least $200, and in most cases north of $600, HDMI capture card? Even in my case, where I prefer PC's to Macs, if I could just buy a $50-$75 TB Expresscard for my laptop, that would be a much better deal and provide far more utility than a dedicated capture card.
 
Nice! I would SO love the....wait I saw what you did there! You changed the 500 to a 256 :) I was going to say I'd so love the 500GB SSD but that $1.5k is keeping me away from it! :)
 
Lets say Blackmagic releases a thunderbolt version of their Intensity Shuttle / Ultrastudio pro capture sollutions. I would need to use a high capasity (both in storage and speed) external raid as the digital capture storage device. Would this be achievable with daisy chaining? (given the fact that only one port is provided on MBP)
Thanks
 
The nice thing about this is, depending on your camera, you may not need to buy a BlackMagic Intensity. If your camera has HDMI out, just stick a cheap adapter on it and plug it straight into the TB port.
 
Rick Burnett said:
From the demo video I would say no, it should be NO problem at all. It has two lanes of 10Gbps in it.
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Hopefully it will work, but this requires that all thunderbolt devices consequently provide the second daisy chain connector on the unit. And what if we need to connect external montor? I don't think any monitors now will provide any thunderbolt daisy chain functionality? So if it would be possible at all, I guess it must be connected in the end of the chain? And would that even work, concidering that it would be a display port signal?

Macbook Pro <-> External Storage device <-> Black magic capture device <-> External monitor (display port?)



Mike Harvey said:
The nice thing about this is, depending on your camera, you may not need to buy a BlackMagic Intensity. If your camera has HDMI out, just stick a cheap adapter on it and plug it straight into the TB port.
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Good point, hopefully many workflows will benefit from TB. But e.g. I hope to capture to a macbook pro from a live production video mixer (HD SDI), and separate sound via XLR. So I guess blackmagic will stay in capture device market in the near future aswell :)
 
The big thing is there isn't a lot of devices yet I see that support it, so until that happens, just not sure what to expect.
 
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