Macbook Pro 13/FCP X 10.1 R3D playback performance ?

[Stewart Read]

Hi

Does anyone have any experience with the top spec Macbook Pro 13/FCP X 10.1 R3D playback performance ?

How does it perform when editing with R3D's in FCP X 10.1 ?

Thanks very much !

 

[Kalechi Noel]

My 2012 MacBook Pro eats through r3d's flawlessly. I simply convert to Proxy and i have no hiccups or drop frames. I edit offline on nyc subways all the time, and when i get back to my studio simply connect HD to my Macpro and continue where i left off.
No issues....

 

[AndreasOberg]

I'm using the Macbook Pro 15 2.7GHz wiht 650M card so should be pretty similar.
I edit using proxies which works perfect. You can also use the red raw at quarter resolution and its 90% smooth.
Simply put, no problem, render times can be a bit long though.
/Andreas

 

[Patrick Grossien]

Reviving this question! Biggest part about it is that the 13" only have i5 processors and the integrated intel iris graphics processors. You can only get the real juice with the 15".
So basically what I need it for is for fast offloads and occasional work and demonstrations.

Any input on that? Thanks!

EDIT: I won't be using a RR.

 

[David Kuhn]

On Apple's site it indicates that the 13" mbp's are 'i7 dual core' rather than i5... but the 15" is quad core (with the nvidia gpu ... not a great gpu but better than intel integrated) so while the 13's may be a bit more capable than you were thinking, the 15 will be much faster. With thunderbolt you should be able to offload satisfyingly fast to an external drive... I just ordered the 15" for the same work (with maybe some light editing), on another thread there was a suggestion for a tb<->eSATA (Lacie eSATA hub) and I also picked up an SSD Little Big Disk - the pair should allow for very fast offloads in a very portable package.

 

[Patrick Grossien]

Thank you David!
The eSata adapter thingy is what I'm hoping to use it with I'm pretty sure I could get the offload done with a MacBook Air easily, too. Biggest thing is that I don't know what the performance of the Intel processor is. The dedicated graphics card will always beat it but is the Intel enough to be able to preview at least a little bit without wanting to throw it against the next wall?
This is one of the things I dislike about Apples preconfigurations. You can't choose to have more RAM or a better graphics chip in whatever you like. Of course for the graphics card it might be space related because the Macs are always tightly packed. But RAM?

 

[Timothy Eaton]

Late 2013 15 inch Retina 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB Ram

Proxies... I just edit 1/4 resolution R3D's, full resolution on pause. I can even make this work off of a single bare SATA drive. Sometimes that gets a little quirky, but with a fast drive, you don't need proxies. Too much of a hassle.

I normally finish on a MacPro. But for on the road the MacBook Pro is hard to beat.

Tim Eaton

 

[Jonathan Petts]

I use a 13in MBP Retina(Im on a budget at the moment) on-set just for backing up really and for looking back at footage when I need to. I have the middle of the price range one with 8GB of ram and has an i5 in it. I have found that in terms of playback I can get around 1/4 and wait a few seconds for it to buffer up and I can play it fine.

I have not yet had to do on-set transcodes, but if you would like an time for back-ups on a 13in machine, when I get home this weekend I can do a test if you would like?


I would rather have a 15in MBP Retina with a built in GPU but I just could not afford it at the time and I really needed USB back-ups. I would also like to look into Thunderbolt back-ups with the LaCie hub but have not got round to it yet in terms of speed.