Which MacBook Pro for Premiere Pro? Or a PC?

[Guest grantellis]

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Unfortunately I am the guy doing FX work on 5K RED footage [img]http://www.eoshd.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif[/img]

Of note though, in the six projects I have going simultaneously, the 2-hour feature shot on a DSLR was editable on a PC laptop and desktop, with some interop done on a friends MacBook Pro, which I think captures the spirit of this site.

There’s a lot you can do on a budget, and I think Andrew makes some very good points in this blog post.

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[Guest dombra]

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What about new ASUS G74, looks like a beast, only missing SSD…

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[Guest demetris]

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Actually I have just done a test with Canon dslr footage to make sure.
Just one video track as soon as I applied Premiere’s RGB Color Corrector the playback was not in real time.

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[Guest oliveralexander]

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hey andrew, thanks for the article!
i’m going to embark in an independent documentary journey for 1 year and I was looking for the computer that would be my editing companion. i’m basically going to deal with footage from a 44mbit hacked gh2, and wanted a machine that would be both extremely transportable and durable and at the same time potent enough to edit this footage (1080p 24f) in premierepro. since i’m a mac person and won’t migrate to windows, i have basically two options: macbook air 13″ or macbook pro 13″. now, while the air saves you 700 grams of weight, has a better resolution and an ssd, the pro has 1ghz more clockspeed and 8gb of ram. do you think the extra weight compensates for the extra processor + ram performance i would get from the pro?
cheers!!
oliver

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[Guest Fandongo]

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Awesome. The Sata III optical bay instability seems to be a complete downs syndrome-scale oversight. Supported on the 13″ (again) but not the 15″ + 17″. They could still fix it, i just can’t get on board with the idea of an optical disc drive that can’t burn Blu-ray taking up 39% of a Macbook body and not being able to get 1k write speeds.
With two OCZs 1TB SSDs, It could be a sick monster able to support all programs and working projects.
Oh, and you could work freely while in a car/bus/carriage.
Of course $2500 + $2500 is a bit pricey for a laptop.
I just have a strange feeling with the next release of the MBPs (Ivy Bridge) an Air-like redesign sounds unlikely to have space for 2x drives.

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[Guest Fandongo]

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If that’s your main editing machine, I don’t think you would ever regret splurging on a refurb 2.3 (2.2 or 2.0 if you want a worse video card) 15″ quad core. The Air is a cool machine. But ultra portables will benefit the most from Ivy Bridge next year, using about half the power at equivalent clock speeds. A quad core MBP is a powerful workwhore in a very skimpy outfit.

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[Guest Fandongo]

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*edit – 2.2 has the same graphics, 2.3 just has bigger cache. 2.0 has 512 while the others have 1gb. The 13″ has 384 shared : /

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[Andrew Reid]

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They really should offer an option with RAID SSD drives in place of the DVD drive now. That drive can be connected via USB anyway. I never use mine.

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[Guest miseducation]

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Can’t believe no one’s mentioned it thus far – Thunderbolt can also be used for external PCIe connections. The Magma ExpressBox 3T is an example of one. This means you can hook up a CUDA enabled NVidia card to your current blazing fast Macbook and have it be just as fast a native card.

Not only that, but theoretically you get the advantage of using a desktop GPU instead of a laptop one. People on RedUser have successfully used a Red Rocket with a thunderbolt Macbook.

I suspect this is why Apple would want to do away with Mac Pros and focus solely on iMac as top of the line option. If the professional user can add eventually SSD and GPUs externally, the Mac Pro’s heavy premium isn’t nearly as appealing.

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[Andrew Reid]

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Agree go for the 15″ quad core MacBook Pro. The Air isn’t fast enough.

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[Andrew Reid]

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Wow… unbelievable!! This is it: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/07/magma-introduces-thunderbolt-pcie-expansion-box/

But can you really use the external graphics card as your main card to power a display and the OS instead of the internal one, or is this still just a theory? Is it as easy as selecting it in the Display control panel?

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[Guest Fandongo]

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“Having a fine working system now decreases the need for an upgrade to CS6/7.”

I don’t know, CS6 makes the entire movie for you. You don’t even have to shoot it.

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[Guest Fandongo]

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I wouldn’t be surprised to see Mac Mini Pros.
They should just be stackable, want more power? daisy chain more.
Currently we can only use additional computers as a render farm (cpu only)…

The theoretical limit of future TB is, i guess, 100Gb/s
How close to that does it have to be to be able to stack whole computers, so you can utilize all the additional
ram (without paying $300 per 8GB mobile stick) graphics, and processing power for all tasks?

Everything should be LEGOs.

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[Guest Fandongo]

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Mac Mini Pro… or the most brilliant marketing name ever – The Mac Medium.

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[Guest gl0g]

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The OS discussion aside, as that’s as subjective a topic as which camera handles better, Macbooks certainly do not have better displays. They’ve got decent TN displays, but compared to the RGB-LED/ISP panels of high-end non-Apple laptops, they come up short in color-accuracy, gamut and viewing angles.

The MB 15: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4205/the-macbook-pro-review-13-and-15-inch-2011-brings-sandy-bridge/10

HP DreamColor: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4673/hp-elitebook-8760w-color-so-dreamy/7

And as you already experienced yourself, Macs are far from hasslefree. Such a computer is yet to be invented.

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[Guest tobyloc]

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Have to agree with demetris here, I’ve got a maxed out i7 desktop and CUDA makes a huge difference in speed and I don’t do heavy FX or RED, less of a speed increase on my i7 laptop but still impressive enough to never consider switching it off.

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[Guest oliveralexander]

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hey guys, thank you very much for the excellent comments. cheers! oliver

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[Guest jgharding]

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Yeah the pre unibody ones meltdown. In my work one the fans are loud, the optical drive has gone mad and eats half the discs I put in because the slot has sagged (as nasty as it sounds). Uniboy is very nice.

These things are pretty fit: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4985/asus-zenbook-ux21-review

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[Guest Umbrella]

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I’m typing this from my brand new 13inch MBP latest model, it’s pretty good I bought it for offloading memory cards mostly, as well as i didn’t have one but now i do, it means i don’t need to sit at my desk in front of the big boy. anyway

going off topic Lion OS X greatly improved FCP 7.03 performance for me and my system as i’m refusing to use premier, i’m wondering if people who made the switch ever harnessed FCP 7, it’s a pro power house full stop. But without 64bit, i don’t care YET, I’m guessing i’ll use it till FCPX is ON PAR haha or they stop support for FCP7.I never was a sheep. Hense no premier and no canon haha LUMIX for life.

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[Guest abortabort]

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I would like to add a few points to your article, which I found very interesting and for what it’s worth is mostly correct. First I think you have missed a C2D series of Unibodies between the non-unibody and the dual core i5/i7 series – I believe they had the 9600 in them? I can’t remember, but I have one on my desk at work. Secondly, I believe the problems you had with your Aluminium MacBook Pro ‘falling apart’ is mostly constrained to the 17″ model (not considering Logic Board failures) – these issues date back to the original 17″ PowerBooks, they are too thin and too wide and not nearly strong enough – they quite literally bend and yes they fall apart quite badly. 15″ models never suffered the same fate (in my experience).

Next up is that although you have touched on Thunderbolt, you may have missed one important factor – TB actually gives you the option of adding a faster (potentially CUDA enabled) graphics card. So yes while on the go it is all ATI (for the moment) you could always add an Nvidia card through an expansion chassis, which is probably one of the biggest advantages with the 2011 MBP’s – the ability to make your laptop into a desktop with a single connection.

This isn’t to suggest that PC’s can’t be a viable alternative – for one PC’s do offer more choice. If you hadn’t been steadfast in your desire for OS X you would never have had to make any of the other ‘sacrifices’ or deliberate over which features to leave out. Good quality PC’s (such as the Lenovo W520 mentioned in your article) are just as well built as a MBP (though to most not as sexy – personally I like them and I am a Mac guy), offer more features, more speed, better support, better quality displays with a similar price tag. I just bought a new 15″ i7 2.0 MBP, which I purchased when the new models arrived at around $700 off, which I am very happy about, but I could have bought a nice Lenovo, with similar specs to my unibody C2D but with a better Quadro graphics and higher quality full high definition display for 1/5th of the price and 1/3rd the price of an equivalent MBP. In the end, like you it came down to OS X, however being stuck with Lion is making it that little bit harder.

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