EX3 Footage on a Mac Book Pro 17"
 

Apologies if this has been discussed before. Is anyone using the MBP for editing EX3 HD projects. If yes what is your workflow and software? .....and your MBP Setup?

I'm looking at using final cut for field editing on the MBP and as a 2nd edit suite when multiple projects are going and i cant use my main suite.

any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Shawn


this is what i will be working with...

MacBook Pro 17"
2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM 2X2GB
320GB Serial ATA @ 7200 rpm
SuperDrive 8X
DISPLAY-HI RES, GL,Widescreen

I am editing w/ 17" 2.4 duo 2 with great results
 

I use an early 2008 mbp 2.4ghz w/ 4gb ram and an internal 500gb 5400rpm drive. I use the hard drive mainly for dumping footage from the camera and as a system/application drive. You can edit 1080p on it but not more than two XDCAM EX 35mb streams. What works great, and what I just finished editing a 60min documentary with is the LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra. I bought the 1tb drive which is buss powered via fw800. It is a striped raid. Using this as my scratch/video drive, editing was really fast. I can play 8 video streams in xdcam ex 1080p at 50% opacity without rendering. I would say this setup is about 70% as fast as our 8-core mac pro with an sata raid. The only thing you need to make sure of is that you are doing some sort of routine backup. I setup a mirrored backup via Dejavu of the raid drive every night to an external USB drive. Don't put all your eggs in one basket... Hpe this helps :-)

Carl...
 

... do you have any device to enable a HD preview on external monitor? Is it possible to hook up to the MBP external monitor to see the footage on a bigger screen, but in the manner that still enables image on the MBP screen at the same time?

If you use Final Cut Pro there's a function called Digital Cinema Desktop Preview that is made for this exact purpose. You can view the HD picture on monitor 2 while still having all the Final Cut Pro windows visible on monitor 1, which in this case would be the Macbook Pro screen.

Another way to do this is to get the Matrox MXO and an Apple 23" Cinema HD display. This setup allows you to turn your 2nd display into a broadcast colour grading monitor for a fraction of the cost os buying an I/O capture card device and a very pricey broadcast monitor. The Matrox MXO is Mac only. Since the Apple 23" has been discontinued you would have to go with the new 24" or find a 23" that's still for sale somewhere.

Matrox MXO - Overview

- Don

Thanks a million Don...
 

... you've just solved my big dilemma which way to go.

Monitor out
 

That is what I did as well. I connected a a 23" Apple LCD via the DVI port on the mbp. Since we had so much raw footage, I like to have lots of bins to organize footage. What I ended up doing was using a wireless apple keyboard and mouse. I then used the attached 23" monitor as the main screen with the time line and the two video windows (it is a much brighter and larger screen), then I used the macbook to the side as my footage bin. This works great and really is a desktop experience. You can also press F5 or F6 (can't remember which) to toggle the MBP screen to be the cinema display video out from the canvas. This really makes it like having three monitors almost... I also use the iFold MBP stand, which raises the laptop to the same height as the 23" monitor. It's a pretty sweet setup that fits in a laptop bag. If I travel somewhere (by car) I can sling the bag over my shoulder and carry the 23" in my hand.

Thanks guys
 

I just read that the new MBP 17 inch permits for the new 24 inch Apple LED Cinema display to be connected directly to the macbook, even without the matrox interface. Is it due to the updated all new MBP 17 or am I missing something?

Yes, The LED Cinema Display connects to your MacBook Pro with the New Mini DisplayPort connector

the apple site also says "Use the Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI to connect to a 30-inch display, such as a 30-inch Apple Cinema Display HD, and enjoy the ultimate widescreen canvas with a resolution of 2560 by 1600 pixels."

You've always been able to connect another display to any Macbook Pro via DVI. The reason the MXO exists is to turn the YUV signal into an RGB broadcast signal for colour grading on a monitor that wasn't originally designed for colour correction/grading. So for about $1100.00 plus the cost of the Apple display you get a broadcast accurate colour space that comes very close to the same thing as a broadcast CC monitor costing several thousands of dollars more.

- Don

I see.
 

Thanks for this clarification.

Has anyone done compositing on a new MBP without headaches? I've tried cutting on an older G4 MacBookPro and it won't play HD sequences at all. I've been able to use an iMac G5 2.8Ghz, 2GB ram for editing HD, but not compositing. It burps at DVGarage's Conduit for greenscreening.

Don-does that Matrox allow for 2 outputs from the laptop, so you could screen via dvi to a desktop lcd and via hdmi to a 1080p monitor at same time?

No, the MXO has one DVI input and one DVI output. What you could do to achieve what you want is to buy a DVI splitter: one end connects to the DVI out of the laptop and the other end has two DVI output connections. You could connect one of those to the MXO which is in turn connected to a computer display such as the Apple 23". The second DVI output from the laptop could then be used with an HDMI adapter to be connected to an HDMI HDTV. This supposedly works in theory and I've heard of some success depending on the type of graphics card in the laptop.

- Don