Workflow question with tons of material: Edius Neo Booster on Macbook Pro?

NEEL

Active member
Hi. I am planning a documentary with about 50-70 hours of rushes in the caucasus mountains. Since its too far away and too expensive to travel back and reshoot anything, I want to be shure not to miss any important shots or parts of the story. Now this may become tricky, but I would like to view and roughcut the rushes on location during the shooting period. Any transcoding would probably eat up too much time and disc space. Native AVCHD would take less than 1 Gbyte on an external drive. I thought maybe it would be a good idea to roughcut the AVCHD-files on Edius Neo Booster on location and to transcode the timeline into Prores once I'm back home. Would this be a good workflow or does anybody have any idea how to handle the roughcuts on location (using the Macbook Pro would be best)? Thanks for help, Neel
 
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on a mac you'd have to use Adobe Premiere CS4 to edit avchd natively without transcoding....and i'm pretty sure it can't handle avchd anywhere near as well as Edius.
FCP has to convert avchd to edit.

for your situation, you want a PC laptop with the fastest cpu you can afford.
www.alienware.com makes the most powerful laptops i know of.
 
Hi Averan, thanks for the link. Alienwares notebooks definitely come pretty close to what I need. Actually I was hoping to shift to a Mac soon, eagerly waiting for the new Macbook Pro, but now it looks like Apple will take some more time on that release. What do you think of Windows 7 on a Macbook Pro for running Edius Neo Booster? I know this might sound quite strange, but won't this be as fast as an Alienware solution (assuming the use of the rumored new Core i5 Macbook Pro)? Thanks
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while i've heard that windows actually runs better on a mac, the issue is still (imo) limited by processor speed.
raw avchd takes a very fast cpu.
the fastest laptops i've seen are made by alienware.
to put it in perspective, i do not edit raw avchd on my quad core (q6600) overclocked to 3.2Ghz because it is just not fast enough to edit quickly and easily (realtime).

best would be to do some real tests if you have the time.
can you even wait long enough for a rumored core i5 to someday appear?
 
to put it in perspective, i do not edit raw avchd on my quad core (q6600) overclocked to 3.2Ghz because it is just not fast enough to edit quickly and easily (realtime).
Did you try edius Neo Booster? I've just ordered it, since its said to run AVCHD-editing on a "normal" machine due to software acceleration. I also use the q6600:love4: and hope to edit raw avchd on it soon...

best would be to do some real tests if you have the time.
can you even wait long enough for a rumored core i5 to someday appear?
I dont think I have that much time left. Maybe I just cancel the idea of roughcutting on location and watch the rushes with a good viewer... :cry:
 
no. i use Edius 5 and never tried out the free trial of neo + booster.

here's another idea, have you tried Panny's free AVCCAM viewer tool?
it can supposedly do simple cuts and editing.
i've only used it for reviewing clips on my old laptop, and can even playback at 1080p, albeit at 10 frames per second.
the app is available for download online:
https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/support/desk/e/download.htm

if you only plan to do simple cuts, and don't absolutely need realtime scrubbing and such, you can probably get away with using a brand new mac, windows 7, and neo.

i just get frustrated with not being able to scrub the timeline in realtime.

worth a try anyway if it's important enough to you.
 
here's another idea, have you tried Panny's free ?
it can supposedly do simple cuts and editing.
i've only used it for reviewing clips on my old laptop, and can even playback at 1080p, albeit at 10 frames per second.
the app is available for download online:
https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/support/desk/e/download.htm
Yep, I installed the AVCCAM viewer tool and this works fine on my PC, so it should do on a Notebook. Thanks for that link. As I told you previously, I ordered a Neo II Booster. Now it arrived!

if you only plan to do simple cuts, and don't absolutely need realtime scrubbing and such, you can probably get away with using a brand new mac, windows 7, and neo.
i just get frustrated with not being able to scrub the timeline in realtime.
I just installed and tried Edius Neo II Booster on my PC.
I am using a Q6600, simple Asus Board, 4 Gig of RAM and a 9800GT graphics card. With this fairly old configuration AVCHD-editing runs like hell!!!!! Two video tracks and two filters at the same time are not leading to any stuttering. Just smooth and highly fluent editing!!!

Neo II Booster rocks!!! :2vrolijk_08:I just edited an AVCHD-shot shortfilm on it and was surprised how easy it works. I' am already thinking of standardwise doing roughcuts on Neo Booster. Just transcoding the timeline for further postproduction would save a lot of discspace.

Now I need to find a notebook with specs comparable to my PC. Maybe the Macbook with a Geforce 9600 really will do, if only I get Neo Booster started on the Windows partition.... Anyone out there with this kind of experience?
 
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that's really reassuring to hear!
will have to see if the booster thing is just a part of neo or is something that can be added to edius as well.
 
that's really reassuring to hear!
will have to see if the booster thing is just a part of neo or is something that can be added to edius as well.


Word is we'll see it in Edius 6.. Hopefully at NAB. They gotta keep up with Adobe and the Mercury engine in CS5 also due for a showing at NAB.
'Tis a good year for us.
 
That laptop is custom made by George Dame at EditHD and it rocks! It can do pretty much anything that my workstation can. This leaves any other laptop that I have seen in the dust. Not cheap but if you need portable power, this is the way to go.

Booster will be in Edius soon.

AFA as keeping up with the Mercury engine, I think it would have to be the other way around since GV came out with the real AVCHD editing first ;-)
 
That laptop is custom made by George Dame at EditHD and it rocks! It can do pretty much anything that my workstation can. This leaves any other laptop that I have seen in the dust. Not cheap but if you need portable power, this is the way to go.

Booster will be in Edius soon.

AFA as keeping up with the Mercury engine, I think it would have to be the other way around since GV came out with the real AVCHD editing first ;-)

True.. But I was talking about in the full app... GV beat Premiere Elements to RT AVCHD... Now let's see if they can beat P-Pro to it.

=)
 
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