Please help me find the right MacBook for me!

December 27, 2010 11:45 AM

What are the minimum specifications for me to be able to edit 1080p 60fps video on-the-go on a Mac laptop?

The last time I used a Mac computer was when I was a kid, but it is the industry standard for video production, so I am considering moving over to a MacBook for mobile video editing. The output I will be editing is from a Panasonic HDC-TM700 camcorder; 1080p 59.97fps MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 in .MTS format.

Will a MacBook Air with the following specs be able to handle editing/rendering HD video like this? I've found it to be rather intensive on my Windows/Linux machines.

1.86GHz Intel Coree 2 Duo
2 (or 4) GB RAM
128 GB SSD HDD
nVIDIA GeForce 320M GPU

If not, what would the minimum specs be for editing this type of video on a Mac? I can live with a tiny bit of stuttering during editing, as long as I can still see what I am doing on the timeline and don't have to guess with syncing audio & video, cutting clips at the right time, and so on. If I am spending this much money I want it to work right from the get-go.

Thanks for any assistance!

posted by Nixie Pixel to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

FCP in it's current state supports a maximum of 4GB of RAM. So if you have any other apps open at the same time, you're probably going to have some lag in FCP for sure.
posted by captainscared at 11:59 AM on December 27, 2010

1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

No, this will not work well. I'm sitting on a 2.53gHz C2D in my laptop and I find editing/encoding 720p24/60 video with any degree of complexity proceeds only tolerably fast. The specs that would make 1080p60 editing/encoding enjoyable rather than a chore are unlikely to appear in a laptop, yet.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 12:21 PM on December 27, 2010

When it comes to video editing you want as high a spec as you can afford. I would go with the latest i7 MacBook Pro and upgrade the RAM to as much as it'll take. If I recall correctly, that's 8GB.
posted by dougrayrankin at 12:41 PM on December 27, 2010

You don't want just any ram, you want very fast ram.
posted by StickyCarpet at 12:46 PM on December 27, 2010

I've got a loaded 15" 2010 MBP (2.66 GHz i7, 8GB RAM, 500 GB 7200 RPM HD) and it totally kills at editing 1080p video, but it's a $3000 computer, so it doesn't really fall under "minimum necessary spec".
posted by Oktober at 2:16 PM on December 27, 2010

I would not attempt that on an Air. Also, if you are planning to use Final Cut Pro, double check compatibility with that specific camera. You will most likely have to use Log and Transfer to bring that footage into a editable format. H.264 is not an edit friendly codec (Adobe and Avid have made some strides, but still need raw power to even have a chance).

MacBook Pro, with i7 processor. 15 inch min, 17 is awesome. You must have an external FireWire 800 drive to work from - no media on the system drive, ever!
posted by shinynewnick at 9:21 PM on December 27, 2010

As an aside, I also own that TM700 camcorder and the latest iMovie will not import those 60P .MTS files directly. I had to transcode it first (see this post or use a commercial product like ClipWrap). I don't think FCP will import it 60p AVCHD files either.

I have an iMac 2.8 Ghz i7, and editing is snappy, but importing clips or exporting edited movies is still slow. I can imagine a Core 2 Duo is going to be painfully slow.
posted by jaimev at 7:25 AM on December 28, 2010