Premiere or FCP X on Macbook Pro?

[nolken]

All my experience is with Premiere Pro & AE CS5, but I'm considering the switch to FCP just for the better OpenCL support with my particular video card. I knew Premiere CS6 will run OpenCL now, but from what I've heard it only runs good on video cards with 1gb or more of VRAM. My graphics card runs OpenCL, but it is only 512mb AE CS5 sucks to run TBH on my MBP, and Premiere is okay but not great with large projects, overlays and effects. I'm thinking that FCP X will run better on my machine. My main holdback is that I may want to switch back to to Premiere for use on a custom PC. A thunderbolt graphics card or dock would be the perfect solution, but that probably will not be available (for less than the cost of a brand new computer) in the near future.

Anyone else run excessively on a MBP and are restricted to a 512mb graphics card? If so what do you use?

Late 2011 15" MBP
512 MB AMD Radeon HD 6750M
16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
2.2 GHz Intel Core i7 Quad Core
OS X 10.8.2

EDIT: I should probably mention that I use DSLR footage mainly.

 

[Vultch]

Just on this topic, I have been offered a macbook pro 2011 15 inch beast with:

i7 processor @2 Ghz
4 Gigs of RAM

but the video card is the intel HD graphics 3000 with 384M of video RAM.

Any ideas on this would run FCPX and Motion, the Apple site says both applications will run on this spec, but how well?

thanks

 

[Exact]

I have both installed on my 17" MBP and FCPX runs a LOT better than Premiere Pro, and in fact a LOT better than either of my desktop machines (8 core with 5770).

My specs are :

Late 2011 17" MBP
Core i7 2.5Ghz
16GB Ram
HD 6770M with 1GB vram
Intel HD 3000

So, I can't comment directly on your graphics card only having 512MB.

Have you downloaded the 30 day trial? It seems to me that's the the first ting I would do. If you haven't used FCPX before it's going to seem clunky, maybe even "toy like" for a few days, that is until you get used to it. However, once you're familiar with it and have done a couple of projects then it makes Premiere Pro seem like an old farm tractor and FCPX is the Ferrari! No kidding!

FCPX is not for everyone, but if you're mainly in to DSLR footage I'd say it's a no brainer. If you have *any* problems editing footage (e.g. you're in to large multicams etc) then the built in Proxy workflow totally kills Premiere Pro's sluggish playback.

Premiere Pro scores in a number of areas, including the footage types it will ingest without copying (FCPX often likes to rewrap footage - without transcoding it), but the time it takes to conform audio on large projects drives me nuts! The audio editing / mixing in Premiere Pro is still a long way ahead of FCPX, but then FCPX is constantly being updated by Apple (for free) so I can see that changing over time.

I have both. I use both. When I have the choice and/or the need to get something edited quickly then FCPX is the one I go to. Rendering of effects is real time or better. Premiere Pro gets really sluggish and the built in 3 way leaves a lot to be desired. The colour grading in FCPX is streets ahead of Premiere Pro's built in effects. On the flip side, Premiere Pro is due an upgrade (read: Adobe want some more $$$ from you) so it may be worth waiting until NAB to see what's coming.

If you're building a custom PC, it doesn't have to run Windows

 

[Vultch]

Thanks Exact, have you tried running FCPX on the Intel HD3000 card..is it a big difference in performance

 

[Exact]

Yes we tried it (iMac 21.5" with 4GB Ram + Intel HD3000). The results are pretty predictable. It's useable, very usable, but it's not as perky as our more powerful systems. There are times when you need to render a little more that we would on the other systems, and it's much less tolerant to playing unrendered footage in high quality mode, but that's what proxy is for right? The Proxy workflow in FCPX is second to none and there is nothing that can't be edited on these systems if you're willing to use proxy and then switch to optimised / original media in high quality mode for final review / export.