jonpais

The Samsung 840, as superb as it is, isn't the solution for you, since you can't replace the drive in your Mac (and even if you could, it's substantially slower than what you've already got in your machine). I haven't begun to edit the mini-doc I've been shooting yet, but I should begin by the middle of the week. The Seagate Backup Plus Fast is bus powered USB 3 and will reach speeds that are over double what you are experiencing now: you should see a significant decrease in transfer times. It should be adequate for editing ProRes 422, if not lightning quick. Unlike the slower (and considerably more costly) WD My Passport Pro (another portable RAID released at the same time) though, it is only configurable as RAID 0 (meaning, if one of the disks fails, you will lose all of your data), which rules it out as a sole storage solution. I think you really need to evaluate your storage needs. Continuing to buy cheap, low capacity drives will only end up costing more in the long run, with the added risk of losing data. I know: I used to own a WD My Passport for Mac. A single drop from a couple feet off the floor, and you will lose everything. Fortunately, I noticed it was clicking and was able to save the files to another drive before it died completely. Which is why I would normally not purchase a portable drive that wasn't shock resistant. And remember that a 4TB drive should really be thought of as 2TB, as performance drops as spinning drives fill up! By the way, it's not USB 3 that is the bottleneck in your system, it's the 5,400 RPM drives. The limit is around 120 MB/s for a single spinning disk, nowhere near saturating the USB 3 protocol. To sum up: if you must get storage now, the LaCie 5big 10TB has the capacity you are looking for, with read and write speeds comparable to the 840 (I'm not trying to suggest they are alike, however!). Think of it this way: if you wanted to buy 10TB of Samsung SSD 840s, it could cost over $4,000!

Why did you get rid of your G6? Why do you think a GM1 would be a replacement for the G6? A GM2 is not coming out soon. And I think I can safely say that a more reasonably priced, full-featured 4K camera than the GH4 will not be hitting the shelves in the next few months. Maxotics and I have been through this before- I love my GM1, but it has far too many drawbacks as a primary video camera, two of them being the lack of a viewfinder and swiveling monitor. That means shooting in bright light is a pain. ND filters are more difficult to come by (impossible to find in Thailand or Vietnam, anyway). It is very unstable with longer lenses. It can't be mounted directly to a tripod or shoulder rig without some sort of spacer. It can only shoot a half hour or so of video on a single battery. You can't manually focus the kit lens (well, unless you call the slider in the LCD a focusing aid). It doesn't have slow motion or 60fps. No hotshoe and microphone jack. No weathersealing. And on and on... Like I said, I wouldn't part with it for the world, but I wouldn't have it as my one and only camera.

@Brellivids That's a great deal on an awesome drive. Still, the OP needs a large capacity external drive, preferably more than one for secure backup. 1TB external storage is inadequate for video professionals, though I am seriously considering purchasing the soon-to-be released LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 1TB drive just for editing, not as a standalone storage solution. It contains 2 Samsung SSDs and achieves read speeds of over 1,300 MB/s, which will be way more than enough for editing the compressed 4K video from the GH4.

Michael, you are missing out on the 100 degree heat we're enjoying here every day as the rainy season approaches ;) if you got your app directly from pluraleyes, just search for them in your mailboxes. I got mine free with the purchase of my Rode mic. PluralEyes has since been bought out by Red Giant, but that shouldn't affect anything. lynda.com has the most thorough and engaging tutorials for FCPX, but they're not free. Larry Jordan's training at YouTube is not as comprehensive: it doesn't cover many of the important functionalities included in FCP - but it IS free.

@Michael There are over 200 changes and new features in Mavericks. It offers improved battery life, better iCloud keychain integration among devices, improved notifications, 4K support for MacBook Pro and Mac Pro, etc. http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/os-x/ In order to run or update many apps, it is necessary to go with Mavericks. As far as I can recall, I just opened PluralEyes on my new computer and entered the code. FCPX does have audio synching, but I have never tried it.

I was synching with PluralEyes on my MacBook Pro 2011 and had no problem getting it to work on my 2013 Mac. I'm not understanding here - are you buying a used MacBook? Are you purchasing it from the Apple store? All the new models come with Mavericks, NOT Mountain Lion. Or are you getting a 2012 model? I'm confused...

A 500GB SSD is NOT the solution to your problem. Are you going to continue deleting files to make room for new ones? Because you say you regularly shoot events that take up to 200GB on your drive, I am going to suggest something like the LaCie 5big Thunderbolt, a RAID with 10TB of storage with close to SSD speeds. If you are willing to wait, LaCie will be releasing a Thunderbolt 2 version with much faster speeds this quarter, as well as a couple of other Thunderbolt 2 models with read and write speeds of over 1,000 MB/s. I believe the 5big will run you about $1,000. There are many less expensive solutions, but they will be considerably slower, and turnaround time is important. Good storage does not come cheap. If you are looking for an inexpensive portable solution with read and write speeds over 200 MB/s, have a look at the Seagate Backup Plus Fast, a 4TB RAID that costs $270. I purchased one a few weeks back and am very happy with it. /edit/Could you tell us what external drive you are using, and what the read/write speeds are? /edit2/8GB RAM is insufficient for editing. Unfortunately, with the rMBP, you can't add more. 16GB should be considered the minimum. For example, with only 8GB RAM on a similarly specced late 2013 rMBP, If I have so much as one other app open at the same time I am editing in FCPX, I am working with virtual memory, which is going to hurt overall performance considerably. And you can forget about working in real time in DaVinci Resolve, especially without dedicated graphics. From what I've been reading here in the forums, far too many professionals are spending big bucks on gear but skimping out on their editing suite. One common reason for that is they are only taking into account present needs, without considering that in the future, they may be editing uncompressed files or 4K, using NLEs like DaVinci Resolve or using power-hungry plug-ins like Neat Video. Incidentally, there is no mid-2013 Macbook Pro: there is an early and late.

Wao! Very nice. If I'm not mistaken, your old Macbook only has USB2 ports, the new one has 2 USB3s, so if you pick up any new portable drives, they will also have transfer speeds that are ten times quicker. I haven't researched it yet, but you'd probably better start checking about FCP6 compatibility with Mavericks. Your new laptop is also rated at something like 9 or 10 hours battery life, best in class.

I hope it works out. For others wondering the same thing, that is, which CPU is best, if you're on a budget, for better performance, it's wiser to invest in extra RAM and external storage.

Very cool... I would think that the slider is reducing stability quite a bit. Perhaps mounting the slider across two tripods? Or spreading the tripod legs further apart? But you probably don't have a surplus of space in the workshop...

Let us know how it works out, Michael. I must say I'm a little envious - I wish someone had advised me before picking up my current MacBook. The trouble is, most sites that evaluate performance aren't videocentric, and video is one of the most demanding tasks for a computer. On the other hand, it is what spurred me to get the iMac, so now I have the best of both worlds. And now you'll be able to work with LUTs, Neat Video, DaVinci Resolve and even 4K, probably without a hiccup. Because of VAT here in Vietnam, I paid much more for a considerably less equipped MacBook. I have a question about your video: did you just set it up on a tripod and prefocus before rolling? In a couple of shots, it looks as though the camera is shaking while you are shaving away, almost as if the camera was on the same support as the guitar. The sound is very impressive, though. What are you using? Not the in-camera mic, I imagine... I see so many professional filmmakers balking at spending a couple thousand dollars on their computer, while at the same time, they are willing to spend several times that on camera bodies and equipment, which I still fail to understand. In many cases, it appears to be a case of just looking at immediate needs, rather than possible future demands. For example, today I might only be shooting 24p MOV files at 28 MB/s, while tomorrow I might need to process RAW, 4K 60p or something else equally processor intensive. A fast computer can save a day or more each week in time spent rendering, allowing you to spend more time shooting or with your family, as well as reducing stress levels. Some people, myself included, actually used to have feelings of aggression toward my computer because of the enormous amount of time it took to do tasks like rewrapping AVCHD. In fact, if you keep your laptop for five years, it will only cost around $1.50/day. /edit/ since your new rMBP is equipped with Thunderbolt 2, you would be able to take advantage of RAID drives with read and write speeds of over 1,300 MB/s, almost double that of the boot drive. Of course, you don't need that now, but that's what I mean when I talk about future needs. No USB 3 peripheral can attain performance like that.

Fixing the laptop will easily run over $600, and replacing your slow HDD with a high performance SSD like the 840 another $500 (for 500GB), so I would definitely bite the bullet and invest in a new machine.

Here is the link to a great little site that has comparisons and shopping advice for Macs, including benchmarks for all the CPUs you inquired about: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/index-macbook.html I upgraded from a 2011 MacBook with an aftermarket Samsung 840 drive and I was overwhelmed by the responsiveness, so I'm sure whichever model you choose, you will be too.

On a sidenote, when I moved to Asia almost eight years ago, I had to leave behind a collection of some 800 CDs and 400 DVDs. When I tried purchasing some of the titles I missed most from here and Korea, most of the retailers' websites responded with something like "not avaiable in your region". And this applied even to some 50-70 year old broadcasts of classical music. They won't ship here, and they won't allow me to download either. I think the masterpieces of classical music are the world's heritage - and at the time I was very angry. I will leave it to you to guess how I dealt with that. As far as music for non-commercial work uploaded to the Web goes, I used to use a site with tens of thousands of tracks that charges only 99 cents. As little empathy as I have for the conglomerates, I'm not quite sure how I feel about using music without paying royalties... In any case, I don't think switching from Vimeo to YouTube is the answer. Recently, I've been seriously considering hosting my own videos on my blog to avoid the ugly clutter and advertising at YouTube, and readers wouldn't be redirected from my site.

The slowest component in your computer is the hard drive, and you will experience performance that is ten times better just by upgrading to SSD. I only have experience with the 15" rMBP 2013 2.0 and I can assure you it is lightning fast. My mistake was getting the model with 250GB SSD and 8GB RAM. Storage size is no biggie, since I prefer fast attached storage to using the boot drive for editing but 16GB RAM is the minimum you should have for video editing. I would also suggest getting the one with Nvidia graphics card, not Iris Pro. You can always google for benchmarks between CPUs. Absolutely go with the 15" MB though, not the 13". At the risk of repeating myself, unless you must go portable, a 27" iMac is much more practical than a MacBook.

Hi jnorman, I just took delivery of the 27" iMac I ordered 7 weeks ago and it only confirms what I knew all along but didn't want to believe - a desktop computer is the only really good platform for editing anything of consequence... Without question, I would prefer to be able to edit video on a laptop at the coffee shop, but nothing can beat seeing your video on a larger monitor. Perhaps the most striking benefit is being able to discern whether clips are truly sharp or not. And of course, composition, detail, color and everything else that is simply not visible even on something as good as a 15" Retina display. In fact, though I have a slight twinge of buyer's remorse that the iMac doesn't and probably won't have a Retina display for a long time to come (as well as Thunderbolt 2), the size alone on a good display is superior to the extra pixels for editing purposes. Not to mention how wonderful it is to view your clips without eyestrain. The audio quality is also unquestionably superior. But even if you don't go with a desktop, you should make certain that you evaluate your storage since you are dealing with archival footage.

@maxotics Thank you so much. Just so other readers know, this isn't the same video linked to above - this one was shot with the Stereo VideoMic Pro on camera without any separate audio recorder. I'm working on a sort-of documentary about young people in and around the park, so I thought I'd round it out with some interviews. After all, I've got all this equipment just gathering dust in my closet! I have some friends and co-workers who should be able to help with the translation. Actually, some of the young people can speak English, but I thought it would be more authentic if they spoke their own language. Incidentally, we went out to the park to wrap up the interviews last weekend, but because of the protests (against China), police didn't allow taking any pictures. I am a Vimeo member, but I've only uploaded one video there since they have such horribly small file size and time limits, and I don't want to pay any fees. I have thought about paying Wordpress to be able to host my own videos over at my blog, however.

@jnorman34 Very good to hear, and I'm glad to learn you stuck with the GH4.

Right. On the Sony, you've also got to hit record, then press play to begin recording. Not sure how important phantom power and a tripod socket are, since I've never found the need for either. Will you be using an external microphone, or just the recorder? I always use mine in conjunction with Rode microphones and a boompole. If you've never done this before, remember that inches count. Get that microphone as close to the source as is humanly possible and make sure that you set the recorder on manual, NOT auto. The level should be adjusted so that the green lights flash at -12 dB. Always monitor the sound with headphones. PluralEyes is an excellent solution to synching the audio and video, but Final Cut, and I'm guessing other editing software, will do the same. Here is a sample from a sort-of mini-doc I'm currently working on, using the Sony PCM-M10 along with a Rode VideoMic Pro atop a Rode Mini Boompole. My assistant had never handled sound equipment before. Listening to it again, perhaps I should have used the low-pass filter to cut out some of the traffic noise. Sorry, it's in Vietnamese - a co-worker is in the process of translating it for me! http://jonpais.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/impressions-of-saigon/

Is your budget capped at $100? Are you just using the recorder for this one occasion? I can highly recommend the excellent Sony PCM-M10, which I think is very reasonably priced and should give years of good service.

@Andy Lee It is and it isn't... music is totally subjective... beauty is totally subjective... filmmaking is totally subjective... are there really any absolutes when it comes to filmmaking? Does that mean there aren't any criteria by which we can judge whether a particular look is effective or interferes with the mood we are trying to create? With all due respect, if grading was completely subjective, we'd have nothing to learn by watching and listening to the guys at Colorista, or watching tutorials by fellows as gifted as Matt Scott, who show us how they achieved the looks they were after, the reasoning behind their decisions, the most efficient way to arrive at the desired result, or to get aspiring filmmakers to think about the different possibilities... I really don't think it's just about technique, as important as technique is - it's learning about the thought processes that were behind the decisions that I think we can all learn something from. Anyhow, color grading is one of the most fascinating aspects about filmmaking for me (even more than storage solutions, believe it or not!) :) /edit/ sad that these craftsmen are often listed in the credits behind the caterers and so forth, when they are the ones responsible for the look of the film

Yeah, I was concerned about the same thing... I ordered an iMac without thinking about trackpad vs. mouse, and now it looks like I'll be shelling out some extra dough for the trackpad... while I see some editors appear to use tablets with styluses (is that the plural of stylus??) It definitely helps to learn the shortcut keys, too, I guess!

+1

ND filters

A viewer mentioned seeing moire (I assume they were referring to the aliasing on the books but I could be mistaken) and Johnnie replied that when they projected the original, it was virtually free of moire.