putting together 1st fcp suite - mbp or mac pro?

R

robfilms

Veteran
later this month i'm launching production of a short form documentary. i will be shooting w/the sony ex1 which employs a flash card system. these flash cards fit into the slot of a macbook pro. that is why i'm thinking of using a santa rosa 2.4 mbp as the center of my 1st fcp edit suite. i will be using fcp2 and using the prores codec to work with the sony ex1 footage.

i am a very fledgling fcp user. i wanted to use the 2.4 macbook pro so i can ingest the sony's flash cards and have some portability between myself and my producing partner. i imagine that i would use the mbp fw800 and/or a esata adapter to hook up some type of a raid 1 mirror set of hard drives. i've read and have been instructed that internel drives are faster but that fw800 and/or esata drives are also fast enough.

i know the mac pro offers much more firepower and much more expansion flexibility. the 2.4 mbp does have a 256 video card and can handle 4gig of ram.

but being so fledgling, i imagined that i would use my novice fcp skills simply to get to a ruff cut and then bring the project to a more experinced editor to "finish". i cannot imagine that i or my system would use motion or color on this project. by the time i am at that skill level, i might be ready for a mac pro level machine.

so u fcp gurus, what u say: think a macbook pro will be adequate for my immediate modest needs?

i welcome any and all thoughts

be well

rob
 
lairhair-

if i'm ingesting the sxs cards in the field then i don't know how to work around the need for a macbook pro.

any and all thoughts appreciated.

be well

rob
 
No need to work in ProRes instead of staying native in XDCAM, IMO. Staying native will make the ingest process faster, require less HDD space, and if you set your timeline to render in ProRes you pretty much get the benefit of working in ProRes w/o having to transcode your footage.


-A
 
Sounds like you'll be just fine with an MBP.

You can buy a Cinema display, keyboard, mouse, external HDD(s) and hook all that up to create a good editing station, plus you'll have portability.

The only thing you'll miss is the ability to have faster processor/more cores and more than 4gb of RAM. That stuff is nice, but you really don't need it for what you will be doing. And the majority of editors don't really "need" it, although when working on effects intensive stuff or doing a lot of rendering, the extra speed boost sure is nice...
 
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