Is my next computer purchase "future-proof"?

October 7, 2009 8:27 AM

Can a 13" MacBook Pro comfortably edit 1080p AVCHD video from a Canon Vixia HF series camcorder?

I'm considering a 13" MacBook Pro as a replacement for an aging iMac G5. Eventually I'll add an external keyboard, mouse, and widescreen display to make it a true desktop replacement.

The most cpu intensive thing I can see myself doing in the next few years is editing HD video (with iMovie or Final Cut Express) from a flash-based camcorder, like the Canon HF series. Can this notebook handle that task without issues?

posted by jaimev to computers & internet (7 comments total)

I edited 1080p AVCHD in FCE on a MBP with 4GB of RAM, and it worked -okay-. I would be a tad worried that there might be a lag on anything slower....
posted by nitsuj at 8:34 AM on October 7

According to these specs you should be fine, if you go for the faster processor and at least 4GB ram.
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/specs/

Ask at the Apple store to play with FCE or iMovie on the model you want. Bring in some uncompressed HD footage even. Working with the footage should be ok, maybe a few dropped frames, but no serious lagging. Rendering is where the time will be spent, and depending on what you're doing, and how much you're compressing it, it's going to take a long, go-make-a-sandwich, amount of time anyways.
posted by fontophilic at 9:51 AM on October 7

Yes, with an external FW800 hard drive.

And just to correct the above, um, it is impossible to edit "uncompressed HD footage" on a Macbook Pro (or any laptop, or pretty much any machine without thousands of dollars of extra equipment).
posted by hamsterdam at 10:12 AM on October 7

If you're going with an external drive, you probably want to consider eSATA. The increased speed makes a big difference.
posted by drjimmy11 at 10:49 AM on October 7

I've read that a quad core processor, 2.6GHz or better, and 4gb of RAM or more is what you really want for a pleasant hd editing experience. I got by just fine on a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo with 2gb RAM MacBook Pro using iMovie '08 to process footage from my Vixia HF 100. A similarly powered PC couldn't handle it, at least with the few pieces of freeware and trialware I tried. I'm not sure why but I imagine there was some technical setting I had wrong - something to do with interlacing maybe. I didn't care enough to investigate since the MacBook worked. The Mac did warn me not to import at the highest quality level because performance would suffer due to my machine's specs. It worked anyway. Rendering did take a long time but not terribly so. Depends on how long/large a clip you're processing but I didn't mind watching tv for 20 min or so while it did its thing on some longer clips. It integrates automatically with iDVD btw. More on my experience here.
posted by Askr at 11:07 AM on October 7

I'd prefer to edit with lo-fi proxies & render with the original files, & choose an editor that supports that.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:20 AM on October 7

I'm far off being a video professional, but I have done similar, and ended up transcoding the raw footage to ProRes, which was much, much nicer to edit with. FWIW, this was on 2.16GHz C2D Macbook with 2GB of RAM, so you may have more luck.
posted by Magnakai at 6:22 PM on October 7