most affordable Apple laptop for editing and color correcting, grading

[Cristina S]

Any tip for the minimum requirements but enough for a decent work (as much realtime as possible) ?

 

[Andrae Palmer]

The MacBook Air 11"... of course you'll have to lug it around with an Apple 30" Cinema Display to see what you are doing. I'm currently working on one in this manner (until my Mac Pro dual six core westmere arrives on Monday)... not bad at all.

Of course any pro video work on a apple laptop really requires a 17" Unibody.

 

[Cristina S]

Thank you. What configuration? Realtime? 1080p?

 

[Liam Hall]

For my money, I'd hold off buying an Apple laptop for a month or two - they are way overdue an overhaul.

Also, you shouldn't really do any color-critical work on laptop.

 

[Tom.Wong]

it CAN be done with the right set up, and if your online is PRO RES. i wouldn't suggest it for r3d, uncompressed, dpx, or any other type of file that needs some crazy hardware. but you'll need a I/O interface, something like a aja i/o, pci expander with black magic or aja, or the black magic so you get can proper SDI out to a reference monitor.

but honestly I think you'll find laptops for critical work always underwhelming. It's great for mobile offline edits. The other route is PC laptop with nice specs and running all adobe with it...

 

[Maria Costa]

The MacBook Air 11"... of course you'll have to lug it around with an Apple 30" Cinema Display to see what you are doing. I'm currently working on one in this manner (until my Mac Pro dual six core westmere arrives on Monday)... not bad at all.

Of course any pro video work on a apple laptop really requires a 17" Unibody.

With no express card, USB 3.0, etc how can you handle external storage?

 

[Julio Quintana]

Here are the specs on my 2-year-old MacBook Pro:

17" 1080p Display
2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

I have been editing RED footage for the last two years no problem. I bought a PCI Express card that gives me two eSata connections so I can transfer footage faster. And I recently got a MaxxDigital enclosure with a Red Rocket card, which has changed EVERYTHING. I can't imagine editing with proxies again.

 

[Julio Quintana]

Just to follow up, for dealing with a lot of RED footage, I would much rather have a slow computer with a RED Rocket card than a fast one without it. There really is no comparison.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

For my money, I'd hold off buying an Apple laptop for a month or two - they are way overdue an overhaul.

Also, you shouldn't really do any color-critical work on laptop.

You shouldn't do any color critical work on a laptop DISPLAY.

The laptop itself is fine, provided you are using an external display that is up to the task.

I agree with Liam... I'd hold off on a laptop purchase.

The new "Sandy Bridge" chips will have an impact, and not just on Apple's product lines.

Also, Nvidia just announced their 500 seres mobile GPUs which will have a significant performance benefit versus the 330M in the current machine.

In fact, I'd hold off on buying ANY computer that isn't critical for work at the moment. It should only take a few weeks for the various manufacturers to start delivering Sandy Bridge machines.

If you are buying for work, and have immediate need, I'd get the 17" Core i7. You need the expresscard slot. I'd check the Apple refurbished items.

The exception is the Mac Pro and other Xeon "Westmere" systems. I don't think we are going to get a whole lot more from Intel in the near future on those systems.

 

[Uli Plank]

Seconded!

 

[Fredrik Harreschou]

The MacBook Air 11"... of course you'll have to lug it around with an Apple 30" Cinema Display to see what you are doing. I'm currently working on one in this manner (until my Mac Pro dual six core westmere arrives on Monday)... not bad at all.

Of course any pro video work on a apple laptop really requires a 17" Unibody.

I would NOT recommend getting an Air. As Maria said, only one USB port.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

I would NOT recommend getting an Air. As Maria said, only one USB port.

Actually it has two ports. If you are looking for the most "affordable" way to grade on a Apple laptop a MacBook Air 11 inch is the way to go.

With no express card, USB 3.0, etc how can you handle external storage?

Two USB 2.0 slots.

Thank you. What configuration? Realtime? 1080p?

11-inch : 64GB
1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2GB memory
64GB flash storage1
NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics

Yeah you can get realtime 1/32 resolution playback of RED footage... perhaps even higher. 1080p playback is a little of a problem... but if you want full 1080p playback then the only solution is to get a 17" MBP due to less than 1080p res on the 15" models.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The 11-inch Air is freakin' awesome. For RED workflow it's pretty much worthless, IMO, but is workable if you HAD to. For writing (screenplays, programming code, etc..) on the go, it is a small marvel and thrashes any PC/Windows Netbook out there. Then again, it's 3X the cost of most netbook type systems.

...I wish it had an eSATA port. USB3 would be OK to have for future connectivity. I personally don't feel that that there are any current USB3 products (host chipsets or devices) on the market today that are worth buying. All that I have tried either don't met full specs of the standard or have glaring issues that need to be addressed. I fully agree with Apple's decision to not incorporate USB3 into their products until the chipsets from Intel have it rolled-in.

My biggest wish for my 11-inch Air is that the screen could fold flat against the back of the unit so I could hold it like a tablet with the screen open and it would have a full multi-touch display and iOS layer -- effectively becoming an iPad when folded flat.

As for editing and CC work on an Apple laptop -- or the core subject of this thread... I would pick up a used 17" MBP. There's a lot of good deals out there if you look at the previous generation C2D model with a 3.06GHz CPU can be had for well under $2K. I have one myself and it's great. Coupled with the CalDigit or Sonnet Pro eSATA card and a decent eSATA compact RAID, it rocks for a mobile edit station. Best bang for the buck, IMO is a late '09 17".

Otherwise, I would hold my breath just a bit. Sandy Bridge is shipping now. I expect new MBP and iMac announcements from Apple within the next 45 days -- most likely at MacWorld later this month.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Yeah you can get realtime 1/32 resolution playback of RED footage... perhaps even higher. 1080p playback is a little of a problem... but if you want full 1080p playback then the only solution is to get a 17" MBP due to less than 1080p res on the 15" models.

If you are determined you can definitely do 1080p on the smaller laptops... just use an external display. I think every Apple laptop now has a mini Displayport supporting at least 2500x1600- so you can theoretically handle 2K.

You can't grade without an external display on laptops anyway. Laptop displays are far too unreliable.

If you are bent out of whack about being cheap... I don't see any reason to cripple performance by going with the MBA.

The standard MacBook is a bit larger and has a lot more compute power for the money. (2.4GHz for the MB versus 1.4GHz for the MBA)

You also get Firewire 800, which lets you consider options like the Aja ioHD.

I'd still aim for the 17" because of the Expresscard slot... which lets you use solutions like Matrox's MXO2.

You also have the future option of a PCI Expansion chassis, which can be mighty impressive.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Rocking my girls MBA 11" (sold my unibody 17 to get westmere mac pro) with a Apple 30" cinema Display.

The main drawback other than the small display size (1366x768) is the lack of USB 3.0. You definitely can grade on this thing though. It's amazing how it feels like a workstation while I'm going through my day. The fact that the internal drive is an SSD definitely adds a level of snappiness to things that I'm not used to even on a Mac Pro.

So you asked what's the most affordable way... this is. I don't think professional grading is for laptops anyway... so this is viable as any other laptop to get a rough job done. A professional way to grade on a laptop would be to get a Unibody core i7 plus a Maxxdigital enclosure with a RED Rocket Card... like my previous setup below:

I wouldn't classify it as affordable though... at least for most people. With this setup you can connect it to pro grading monitors through the RED Rocket SDI out. The issue I had with this setup is that the expresscard slot is occupied for use with the maxxdigital card which slows you down to a FW800 connection... sometimes that becomes a shared FW800 bus which further slows down file transfers or reads. Plus REDCine-X is slow as molasses with this setup... Premiere Pro is faster with playbacks and can do 1/2 res. By the time you connect all this stuff up... then it defeats the point of having a laptop.

As for editing and CC work on an Apple laptop -- or the core subject of this thread... I would pick up a used 17" MBP. There's a lot of good deals out there if you look at the previous generation C2D model with a 3.06GHz CPU can be had for well under $2K.

Great advise... I'll personally be going this route after the MP westmere lands on monday. A dual core 2ghz+ 17" MBP is sufficient for most mobility purposes. Which in my case is mostly for fast eSATA file transfers and giving the footage a careful glance on set.

 

[Mate Marić]

I`m a bit confused. I was searching the web for the last few hours, and I couldnt find a single page which would describe exactly what red rocket does and how it can help me.
Can anyone tell me more details about how redrocket works?

 

[Uli Plank]

Simple: de-Bayering and decoding of RED RAW footage in full quality is a very time-consuming process, even on a powerful MacPro, leave alone any laptop.

The RED Rocket is specialized hardware, speeding this process up to realtime and with some software packages (like REDCine-X) it can play out via SDI as well.

So, if you have all the time in the world, you can do without it. But if you are regularly working under tight deadlines and/or high shooting ratios, it's a must.

 

[Mate Marić]

Im interested in way the redrocket works. Question like:
In which way does redrocket link with my editing software?
Could I edit larger files then Im capable of editing now? Does it help in that area. The biggest files I can edit now is HD prores footage.
How about editing 4k footage without go offline, is rocket capable for that?

I know that question maybe look dumb, but only thing I can find about Rocket is that save your time. But in which way, and what area? I will be gratefull for answer .

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Great advise... I'll personally be going this route after the MP westmere lands on monday. A dual core 2ghz+ 17" MBP is sufficient for most mobility purposes. Which in my case is mostly for fast eSATA file transfers and giving the footage a careful glance on set.

Let's see what happens at MacWorld at the end of the month. I'm willing to bet we'll have new MBP's announced using the Sandy Bridge platform. This will lead to yet another price drop on the current i5 and i7 models. All things considered, a 2.53GHz i5 w/ anti-glare screen is about $2500 with AppleCare. Our local Apple Store gives 5% off system purchases for business customers... Or maybe they just like me. A 3.06GHz C2D from the previous generation is comparable to that i5 system -- a bit snappier overall, but the i5 is slightly faster for intensive computations. The 2.8GHz i7 is of course even better, but it's a $400 premium. 8GB RAM is recommended, you can buy 8GB from OWC or NewEgg for these systems for under $160 instead of the $400 from Apple.

 

[Ben Brainerd]

Im interested in way the redrocket works. Question like:
In which way does redrocket link with my editing software?
Could I edit larger files then Im capable of editing now? Does it help in that area. The biggest files I can edit now is HD prores footage.
How about editing 4k footage without go offline, is rocket capable for that?

I know that question maybe look dumb, but only thing I can find about Rocket is that save your time. But in which way, and what area? I will be gratefull for answer .

For the most part, Rocket doesn't link to your editing software. A number of Color-Grading software packages support it, but I don't know of any NLEs that do.

The big thing that Rocket helps with is proxy creation. The more or less de-facto workflow with RED footage is to generate ProRes/DNX/Etx proxies and edit those. Rocket can help you run off those proxies quickly.

It's not going to help you edit bigger files. See "Not Linked to the NLE". If your system maxes out at 1080 with ProRes, you're still going to be limited to 1080. But you'll be able to generate those 1080 proxies a lot faster with the rocket.

Why would you want to *edit* 4K online? To be blunt, that makes no sense whatsoever.

To sum it all up, Rocket saves you a LOT of time in rendering. Both in generating proxies and in generating final/semi-final files for grading.