Ultralight notebook for editing.

[rlynch]

13' MBP with optical drive then bump it up to 16gb ram for $90 and add an SSD hd.

 

[JamesK]

13' MBP with optical drive then bump it up to 16gb ram for $90 and add an SSD hd.

I am guessing that I have to go to an Apple store to do that? I was planning on purchasing one at the PX here on Fort Stewart.

 

[diversteve]

I thought you could use the GoPro Cineform program to do lossless conversion to .avi's which should be much easier to edit. Or did I miss something? (I don't have a GoPro)

 

[Tigerman]

For high resolution video and pictures, the laptop does well to store it till you get home and get an idea if the shots are ok.
If you want to do more to your shots, you really do want a bigger screen and for video, as mentioned much better cooling..

I know first hand, my screens keep getting bigger, but I still do travel with a 15" laptop for the above mentioned reasons.

 

[JamesK]

My problem is I spend much much more time traveling then I do at home. I would never get videos done. I guess I will just have to deal with it. It can't be worse then the laptop I do everything on now!

 

[Tigerman]

You could always get a BIG laptop with lots of power and better cooling - like a 19"+ gaming laptop?
Bit more cumbersome to lug around but lots better to work with as well..

 

[hellhole]

It's all about what application you are comfortable with.

 

[Eff]

Eff,

Do you feel the 13" Mac Pro 2.9 running i7 might be sufficient?

thanks

Yeah, it should be just fine! Certainly faster than the MacBook Air I was talking about earlier.

I would still recommend an SSD and Retina display, but I understand that may not be affordable.

The main issue of the macbookair is the fan if you really press up on the CPU it can get to the point of self switch off, this may be because I really stress the compression

Wow, I'm sorry to hear that.
I've never had my Air overheat and shut off while encoding/compressing.
It did get quite hot, but the processor seemed to throttle back into some kind of equilibrium that the fan could support.

To clarify, I did have it doing 8+ hour encoding jobs, but it was on a hard desk with plenty of ventilation in an air conditioned room...

Did you call AppleCare; and if so, what did they have to say?

Thanks for the heads up on that.

 

[Interceptor121]

The issue was it was not in a air-conditioned room as I switch off the aircond when I am on boats so it was not in the best environment
Went back and it was just off no job completed there was a log in the console but I did not bother calling apple it was a one off occasion I don't usually do lot of encoding
I use the x264 plug in for iMovie and that is hard in the very slow preset. In placebo iMovie crashes

 

[JamesK]

Thanks. I am going to go ahead and order one. The retina is not out of my price range, but the hard drive space is just too dang small. I know SSD is better, but once I upgrade to a decent size drive, the cost is astronomical. 128g is simply not enough. I know I can always place everything on external, but I was trying to avoid doing that.

So here are my choices:

MacBook Pro 13" 2.9GHz i7 w/ 750GB hard drive and 8GB RAM $1499
MacBook Pro 13" Retina 2.5GHz i5 w/ 128GB SSD and 8GB RAM $1699
MacBook Pro 13" 2.9GHz i7 w/ 128GB SSD and 8GB RAM $1599

So, I guess my question is, WWYD? What Would Y'all Do? is the Retina worth loosing processing power and an additional $100? Is the SSD worth losing over 600GB of hard drive space, and an additional $100?

I want to stay small, and in the lower price points of a Mac. I know I can get much more out of a PC for the cost, but we already have iPhones, iPads, Apple TV, and Mac Mini is on the way. So I would like to change my wife and I over to Mac for our portable device.

Thank you everyone for your help, and OP I am sorry about the hijack, but I think this goes right in line with your topic.