which laptop for editing GH1/GH2 footage?

Caesar said:
How do you know that?
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I played with the xps 17 with major games maxed out, and ran some tough encoding through it, for a while, and I didn't see any throttling issues at all.... only thing I didn't like was that the 17 inch still only has a 720p screen.. or actually some middle screen 1600 x whatever... I hate that... and it was too bulky.. the 15 is perfect for editing on the road. I could be wrong, but it's what I am ordering in about a week or so.
 
Random thread for this but I am (excitedly) getting a Macbook Pro 15" 2.8GHZ i7 with 8GB of RAM. :)

Oh yeah, and the high res display (glossy because I am a sucker for it despite matte being better [and more expensive on a mac]...)
 
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Blackout said:
Ben - how do you handle authoring blu-rays on mac? It seems sony and apple are at all out war.
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I haven't found myself with the need to author blu-ray yet...everywhere that I've had to show my films that had an HD projector could take a ProRes file, and everyone I know with a bluray player also is tech savvy enough to know how to (and often have) a laptop hooked up to the TV.

That said, I would use the PC tower under my desk.

I honestly don't care much about blu-ray or any optical drive tech. In fact Apple is likely removing optical drives from the Macbook Pro in april...along with adding some goodies...but I really can't wait that long; I have a huge project I am working on in the winter.
 
Ben_B said:
Random thread for this but I am (excitedly) getting a Macbook Pro 15" 2.8GHZ i7 with 8GB of RAM. :)

Oh yeah, and the high res display (glossy because I am a sucker for it despite matte being better [and more expensive on a mac]...)
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I got 15" mbp with i5, matte, hi-res. Just upgraded to 8GB. SSD is on the way. Hehe. The biggest complaint is the weak gpu. Why don't u wait for next mbp product refresh?
 
Blackout said:
I played with the xps 17 with major games maxed out, and ran some tough encoding through it, for a while, and I didn't see any throttling issues at all....
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But did you check multi-task like real time editing, color correcting, grading, etc?
 
stonebat said:
I got 15" mbp with i5, matte, hi-res. Just upgraded to 8GB. SSD is on the way. Hehe. The biggest complaint is the weak gpu. Why don't u wait for next mbp product refresh?
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Doing my senior thesis project this winter and I need a faster machine for FCP editing. Also being able to do Maya rendering on either my mac or PC will be nice. Spec'd with the 512MB GPU and the 2.8GHZ i7 should be set for power for awhile. I am still using mid-raoad mac hardware from 4-5 years ago and doing ok, so I'd imagine high-end hardware will last me a good while longer.
 
Caesar said:
But did you check multi-task like real time editing, color correcting, grading, etc?
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No I didn't do that but i rendered several avchd files out to full 1920 x 1080p mpeg 4s and all 4 cores / 8 threads were a blazing 100% for 10 mins without any hickups...

@Ben... clients don't want blu-ray? What market are you in? I am finding the opposite in New York City, everyone is wantng blu-ray like wild fire and dvd is dead here, and some indie film makers have macs yes but I am positioned at what you would call the "high end of the low end" so I charge between $1200 to $8000 a day for a shoot depending on if it's just me or full crew, the package I work out, equipment ect... but I get a lot of music video and smaller artists who want a $1200 to $2500 package, something simple, and they want it on blu-ray, as well as a youtube playable perfect encode.
 
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Blackout said:
@Ben... clients don't want blu-ray? What market are you in? I am finding the opposite in New York City, everyone is wantng blu-ray like wild fire and dvd is dead here, and some indie film makers have macs yes
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Isn't it possible to add an external Blu-Ray burner to a Mac?
 
Blackout said:
Yes but only to burn.... I think... If thats even possible... Blu rays wont play on mac.
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You can burn them and I believe compressor can encode them now.

One alternative is AVC-DISK (DVDs burned HD that play in blu-ray players.)
 
Ben_B said:
You can burn them and I believe compressor can encode them now.
One alternative is AVC-DISK (DVDs burned HD that play in blu-ray players.)
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Yes to both. Very basic Blu-ray burning with the current version of Compressor 3.5.3:
http://documentation.apple.com/search/#q=blu-ray

Either burn Blu-ray discs using a 3rd party Blu-ray drive, or burn ~30-min. of AVC HD video onto a blank DVD for playback in standard Blu-ray players.
 

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new dells look juicy but missing critical components:

no expresscard
no vga
no firewire

these features may not matter for most but are important for me (i have audio interfaces that require these ports)
 
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