# MacBook and editing 1080p video



## hokuto (Apr 19, 2006)

Hey everyone.

I have 2 MacBooks, the original Black one, not sure what speed it is but it's the retail version of it, the original black one. I also just bought a brand new MacBook the current one with the glass trackpad, the 2ghz one. Both have 2GB of ram but can easily be upgraded.

I'm looking to get an HD camcorder for Christmas that does 1080p. I've been shopping around but it just hit me, 1080p is going to be huge files, will the MacBooks be able to edit it okay? If it's all choppy and slow then I'll just avoid getting one all together but I only have an SD camera right now which is completely fine. Just thought I should find out before spending all that money on one just to find out it's horrible. Thanks!


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

The Macbook CPU and GPU are powerful enough to handle it, but isn't the Macbook screen going to be too small to handle it? The native resolution of a Macbook is 1280 x 800 which is too small, isn't it. Isn't 1080p, 1920 x 1080? Of course I guess you could scale it down.


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## jlcinc (Dec 13, 2002)

When editing your media should not be on the same drive as the editing software. It will work but could cause problems. Your going to need a large external firewire hard drive for the media.

John


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## fyrefly (Apr 16, 2005)

The *original* Black MacBook is a CoreDuo and cannot support more than 2GB of RAM and the Graphics card is non-existent in that model. I really doubt it will play back 1080p video.

Though some Mac Mini owners seem to be able to play back Blu-Ray files with the right software (like not iMovie or FCP  ):
1080p on MacMini - Mac Forums

The new MacBook Aluminum has a NVidia Graphics CArd in there so it should be fine. The Screen is small for HD Editing, but doable. There's also the HDCP Lock on the new Aluminum MacBooks that's something to consider... Not sure how outputting your own 1080p home made content works with that lock (and only locks playback on non-HDCP external monitors).


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## Macified (Sep 18, 2003)

jlcinc said:


> When editing your media should not be on the same drive as the editing software. It will work but could cause problems. Your going to need a large external firewire hard drive for the media.
> 
> John


Oops. The new MacBook doesn't have firewire. Silly Apple.


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## hokuto (Apr 19, 2006)

Sorry where are you getting that Core Duo doesn't support more than 2 gb of ram that makes no sense, when I bought it you could configure it from Apple with 4gb it just was supposed to be 2 matching pairs of 2gb x2.

Either way though I don't need to see it in full res, if its scaled down that's fine, but I also have 3 LCD tvs in my house, 1 is 1080p a 52" Toshiba, and the other 2 are 1080i could I not use the display port and just show the video on the screen and edit it on the mac then if it's a pain.

Also as for the external drive, these are simple home videos nothing major unless you're referring to performance being better having it there. Right now we have an SD camera and it's fine editing on the MacBook's with no external, but like I said I'm more at the point I don't want to buy one if I'm going to have lots of issues, thanks!


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## fyrefly (Apr 16, 2005)

hokuto said:


> Sorry where are you getting that Core Duo doesn't support more than 2 gb of ram that makes no sense, when I bought it you could configure it from Apple with 4gb it just was supposed to be 2 matching pairs of 2gb x2.


You said it was the first Black MacBook. That model was a CoreDuo (Yonah) Processor. CoreDuo doesn't support more then 2gb of RAM. Subsequent MacBook revisions were Core2Duo processors and support either 3GB or 4GB depending on whether it's Santa Rosa or Merom (in a MacBook). 

If the MacBook is a Black with 2.0Ghz processor it's a CoreDuo = 2GB RAM

If it's a 2.16 it's a Merom Core2Duo = 3GB

If it's a 2.2 or 2.4 Santa Rosa Core2Duo = 4GB 

Not 100% sure on the intel names, but the processor speeds I'm sure of.


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## Amiga2000HD (Jan 23, 2007)

Notice he said he wants to edit 1080*p*. That little p complicates things significantly and nobody who has been posting replies has mentioned that, and it's an important issue.

If you want to do editing in the 1080p formats (24, 25 for PAL areas but you probably won't be encountering that, and 29.97 frames per second), you will need software that supports the 1080p formats. iMovie doesn't and neither does Final Cut Express, so you're looking at Final Cut Studio 2 to do that.

That's why I saved up and bought FCS 2, installed it on my G5 and never looked back.

Final Cut Studio 2's system requirements will dictate the specifications for your computer. You can probably run that on either of the Macbooks but you will want to put in as much memory as possible and you will have to buy some external disks for media storage. For HD work, this means Firewire or eSATA. Since there's no express card slot on either Macbook, you're going to have to go with Firewire for your media drives so you're going to have to use the Blackbook and not the new MacBook as your editing system.

The best HD camcorder out for 2008 by all the reviews I've seen is the Canon HV30. It's an improved version of the HV20 which was considered top of the line in 2007. It does 24p and 30p as well as 1080i using the HDV format on MiniDV tapes, which are cheap. It can also record in SD too. But it's a MiniDV camcorder, which means you import the DV/HDV data using Firewire, so again, your editing system's going to be the BlackBook and not the new MacBook due to the absence of Firewire.

Between all the best HD camcorders being Firewire connected units and any media drives also being Firewire because of no express card slot ruling eSATA out, you will definitely want to hold on to that black MacBook because the new one that just came out is unusable for what you want to do. But, my dual 2.0 GHz G5 with 3 GB RAM isn't the greatest for running Final Cut Studio 2...on paper, your black Macbook should be able to run it but you'll probably want to buy something more powerful to do it comfortably; maybe trade in one of the laptops towards an iMac?

If you want any more information or have questions about video formats or my 1080p/24 workflow, just ask.


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## kb244 (Apr 23, 2002)

Having tried Fina Cut Pro on my early 2008 Macbook (2.1 Core2 Duo, 2GB rams), and with vga sized videos, I can pretty much tell ya that while I find the macbook suitable for coding, web development, and so forth, there's no way I would seriously consider it capable of editing 1080p. 

The newest macbooks utilizing a nicer 9400M chip would still suffer the same fate since the Core2 Duo processor is of the same type and L2 cache, but least the newer systems use faster DDR3 memory as opposed to the DDR2 specs of my own system. 

Basically on the mac side of things, in a portable at the very least (of the currently available model bought new) a 2.53ghz Macbook Pro as it not only has a graphic chip with its own 512MB DDR3 memory for hardware accelerated applications, but also 6MB of L2 cache to it's processor. 

Hardware wise, most of the video apps will 'let' you edit with the 2008 models of the macbooks, but it'll be somewhat painful. iMovie 7 and 8 seem to be the limit of comfort for me when it comes to videos off a standard HDD camcorder.


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## Amiga2000HD (Jan 23, 2007)

I put the FCS 2 on the dual processor G5 machine straight away and never tried on my laptop. I just thought it would be pointless to experiment with the laptop when I have the G5 I saved up for and bought a few years ago; why use the small computer when the big one's available? So, in that respect, I don't have any experience running FCS 2 on a portable system and it isn't something I'd really want to do.

The heavy system requirements of FCS 2 are only an issue if the original poster decides to go that route and buy Final Cut Studio which is very expensive, in addition to a 1080p capable camcorder. But, if he wants to edit 1080p, the cost and system requirements of FCS is the only way to do that without going to something even bigger and more expensive like Media Composer.

Given what some people have said here, I wonder how many people have actually done 1080p editing? Nobody identified the issues surrounding what software can even do 1080p editing, nevermind the system requirements etc. which are real issues. The MacBook is secondary because it only becomes relevant once you buy one of the software packages that can even do 1080p.

Some of the feel good fluffery about Core2Duos is totally irrelevant until you pick a software package that meets the poster's requirements, namely 1080p, and look at the system requirements and the data storage and transfer requirements of 1080p material based on the codec used to store it and the media drives you'll need to use. Then you can begin designing an editing system around a 1080p work flow.

Designing that requires you to do some serious thinking about what you want to do, how you intend to do it, and what will be required to do it. The whole "it has a nice 2.0 GHz Core2Duo and you'll want to buy an external hard drive because you don't want to store video on the system disk" does not hold water with things like 1080p video editing, which, to be truthful, is still very much a professional level activity (hence Apple requires you to spend on FCS 2). Did nobody who posted even know what 1080p editing implies for editing systems?


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## Amiga2000HD (Jan 23, 2007)

kb244 said:


> Having tried Fina Cut Pro on my early 2008 Macbook (2.1 Core2 Duo, 2GB rams), and with vga sized videos, I can pretty much tell ya that while I find the macbook suitable for coding, web development, and so forth, there's no way I would seriously consider it capable of editing 1080p.
> ...
> 
> Hardware wise, most of the video apps will 'let' you edit with the 2008 models of the macbooks, but it'll be somewhat painful. iMovie 7 and 8 seem to be the limit of comfort for me when it comes to videos off a standard HDD camcorder.


Thank you so much. It's good to see another voice of reason on the Mac forums.


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

Amiga2000HD said:


> I put the FCS 2 on the dual processor G5 machine straight away and never tried on my laptop. I just thought it would be pointless to experiment with the laptop when I have the G5 I saved up for and bought a few years ago; why use the small computer when the big one's available? So, in that respect, I don't have any experience running FCS 2 on a portable system and it isn't something I'd really want to do.
> 
> The heavy system requirements of FCS 2 are only an issue if the original poster decides to go that route and buy Final Cut Studio which is very expensive, in addition to a 1080p capable camcorder. But, if he wants to edit 1080p, the cost and system requirements of FCS is the only way to do that without going to something even bigger and more expensive like Media Composer.


I just looked at the requirements of FCS 2 and you don't even need a G5, a G4 will do. But Amiga, I assume is right, you wouldn't want to do it with anything less than a G5. But a Macbook Pro will easily run just as good as any G5, if not better, except for the Quad G5, maybe. The Macbook Pro also has a Firewire 800 port. You'd want to max out the RAM by the sounds of it, though.

Now the original poster was asking about a Macbook, and if the users above say you need fast hard drive access, to firewire or eSATA HDs then I would say a Macbook wouldn't do. You'd have to go Macbook Pro.


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## kb244 (Apr 23, 2002)

Kosh said:


> I just looked at the requirements of FCS 2 and you don't even need a G5, a G4 will do. But Amiga, I assume is right, you wouldn't want to do it with anything less than a G5. But a Macbook Pro will easily run just as good as any G5, if not better, except for the Quad G5, maybe. The Macbook Pro also has a Firewire 800 port. You'd want to max out the RAM by the sounds of it, though.
> 
> Now the original poster was asking about a Macbook, and if the users above say you need fast hard drive access, to firewire or eSATA HDs then I would say a Macbook wouldn't do. You'd have to go Macbook Pro.


Well also keep in mind, even back before the G4, Nvidia (Back when Voodoo was their main competitor), there did exist very expensive graphic cards (I remember something like an Nvidia Quadro or somehting of that name, would run well over a grand, and ATI had something similar later on FireGL or such, mostly for 3D rendering). As a result some rigs were at the time top of the line with the expensive add on components provided the software specifically allowed for processing thru them. 

So it wouldn't surprise me that a professional video tool might be fine with a G4, but that was also under the assumption that a digital processor of some sort was probably also hooked up via firewire.

But as said before... sure you could run it... but I don't particularly like waiting 5 hours for a simple dvd to get created in iDVD with the sluggishness added from trying to add video intros to the menu... and that's from four mpeg-4 videos formated for the ipod touch... imagine had I been trying to do the same at 1080p.

The Firewire 800 isn't as big a deal if the device uses a internal harddrive, or some form of memory card recording, as those could run over usb even and wouldn't be hurt by the hickup in speed in transfering, but least FW800 would be much quicker for importing large amounts of data. While the new macbook pros officially support up to 4GB, I'm hearing that unofficially it can support 6GB (2GB + 4GB, and test have shown no performance decrease in doing so).



> *BTW, 6GB WORKS IN OTHER APPLE LAPTOP MODELS*
> We received a notice from Other World Computing that the 6GB configuration also works in MacBooks and MacBook Pros released November 2007 or later. Check with them and with Trans International for pricing on adding one 4GB SODIMM to your MacBook or MacBook Pro.
> 
> *NO, 8GB WON'T WORK*
> Just for fun we tried the 8GB configuration (2 x 4GB). Though the MacBook Pro will boot and Activity Monitor sees all 8GB, there are serious operational issues. For starters, if you use anything beyond 4GB of real memory, the MBP goes into "molasses" mode. And if you manage to quit out of the memory hungry app, the reported amount of real memory in use does not recede. At a certain point, our operation was so crippled that we had to push and hold the power button to force a shutdown.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

Just for the record, I downloaded and played a 1080p movie trailer on my Black MacBook (Core2Duo).

It struggled, but it played (scaled down of course).

No way would I try editing using FCP on this machine.


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## kb244 (Apr 23, 2002)

chas_m said:


> Just for the record, I downloaded and played a 1080p movie trailer on my Black MacBook (Core2Duo).
> 
> It struggled, but it played (scaled down of course).
> 
> No way would I try editing using FCP on this machine.


Hell to play 1080p on the macbook you need to tell quicktime to fit to screen since the video spans past the size of the screen.


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## Moscool (Jun 8, 2003)

I have yet to make the jump to HD because I am far from confident that there is a sensible amateur workflow i.e. the quality jump justifies the hassle. I would strongly recommend you read Michael Reichmann's primer on video for still photographers: it covers all the topics from capture to editing is is pretty sensible.


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## hokuto (Apr 19, 2006)

K I'm confused, I downloaded movie trailers from quicktime in 1080p, my new macbook plays it fine. When it first loads it hangs over the screen but plays smooth, or I can make it full screen and runs fine.

I have iMovie 08 or whatever the newest one is. I clicked import and it had an option 1080p content. I'm not on my mac right now but it had tons of details on importing 1080p. I selected the 1080p video it imported, took maybe 2 mins for a 2 min clip. I could edit it, transitions, drag it around, preview, everything just as fast as any SD content I had no issues. Mind you it was a 2 minute trailer, using an hour of video is probably different, but I experienced no hangups or slow downs or anything like that.


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

While a MacBook could technically edit 1080p video it's going to be fraught with limitations. It's entirely dependent on what codecs are going to be used, what kind of editing and such. If you're looking for quick and easy editing (eg. iMovie '08 which uses Apple Intermediate Codec) you can get away with it (as said above it will be edited in 1080i). If you're looking for more serious editing (Final Cut Express or Final Cut Studio) you'd be MUCH better suited to get a Mac Pro or a MacBook Pro for the better graphics card, much better hard drive throughput, etc.

Playback is completely different from editing. Just because it can playback H.264 doesn't mean the computer can play back that same clip in 10-bit ProRes.

Moscool's link is an excellent introduction into some of the basics of video editing but suffice to say it gets very complicated very fast.

EDIT: Added 1080i and 1080p clarification missing. Thanks Amiga2000HD.


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## Amiga2000HD (Jan 23, 2007)

Chealion said:


> While a MacBook could technically edit 1080p video it's going to be fraught with limitations. It's entirely dependent on what codecs are going to be used, what kind of editing and such. If you're looking for quick and easy editing (eg. iMovie '08 which uses Apple Intermediate Codec) you can get away with it. If you're looking for more serious editing (Final Cut Express or Final Cut Studio) you'd be MUCH better suited to get a Mac Pro or a MacBook Pro for the better graphics card, much better hard drive throughput, etc.


I'm kind of interested in seeing how one would get away with editing 1080p on a Macbook using iMovie 08 or Final Cut Express since neither of those programs support 1080p.

Those programs will do 720p and 1080i but that's it for the high definition formats. The only program made by Apple that'll do 1080p is Final Cut Pro, as I've already explained.


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## absolutetotalgeek (Sep 18, 2005)

You really can't use a laptop for editing video now, just get a Pro or something. 

Doesn't really matter what you're using for software, FCP or Avid, use a tower, 7200rpm+ drives, tons o' ram, decent video/capture card, nice monitors and output and away you go.


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## Amiga2000HD (Jan 23, 2007)

I agree about using a laptop for editing, up to the point that budget constraints put a stop to it.

Think about it this way: If 1080p is a must have, that dictates having software that supports it. Out of a limited budget, that means buying one of a couple of expensive software packages that have 1080p support and if you own something that can run the software, even if it limps, you can stick with it until you can afford a better machine. On the other hand, if money wasn't an issue, I'd personally have bought a Mac Pro and installed some upgrades long ago...


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

Amiga2000HD said:


> I'm kind of interested in seeing how one would get away with editing 1080p on a Macbook using iMovie 08 or Final Cut Express since neither of those programs support 1080p.
> 
> Those programs will do 720p and 1080i but that's it for the high definition formats. The only program made by Apple that'll do 1080p is Final Cut Pro, as I've already explained.


Sorry typo. Should have stated 1080i as one of the many limitations for anything but Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro will run on the MacBook but it would hardly be ideal.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

PS. iMovie 7 uses thumbnails of the video, not the video itself, to do the editing. That's how you can edit HD video on something that really doesn't fully support it (like a previous-gen MacBook, or earlier machines).


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