Final Cut ibook

sjeh

Hi, I am student from England, looking in to getting a Mac.



Most of my work involves digital video, and I have been told ?final cut express 2? is worth checking out.



However, I have a decent spec PC (256mb video ram, 1 Gig normal) with adobe premier running sweetly.



The problem being, I can only spend about $1250 ? and I need something portable.



The 12? Ibook with 768mb of ram seem to fit perfectly. Although ? I am concerned about the internal video card ? which you cant seem to upgrade (!)



Also is the screen big enough to do editing?



Does anyone have a 12? ibook Mac with Final Cut running?



(Looking at the minimum spec for the software ? there is no indication it wouldn?t run.

?AGP graphics card?

?550MHz for PowerBook G4?

?Mac OS X v10.2.5 or later?

?512MB Ram recommended for RT Extreme?)



The 768mb ibook covers all these bases, but? Is there much point me getting FC2 ? when I have a good PC for editing? Going from a 256mb Geforce ? down to a 32mb card seems stupid.



Any help would be wonderful.



Cheers,

Steve.



Ps - please don?t say ?get a PowerBook? - the 768mb PowerBooks starts at $1,900 ? not an option!

cake

I have a 1Ghz iBook with 768MB of RAM and it runs fine. Playback sometimes gets a bit choppy, but it's definitely useable.



The biggest issue is screen size, but I got used to it because my iBook couldn't drive my Cinema Display.







So, to answer your question - yes, you can edit on the iBook using FCE.



EDIT: Forgot to mention that DV eats up hard drive space like crazy, so you might want to budget an external HD for workspace and/or storage.

sjeh

Thanks Cake, perfect answer.

Your screenshot proves it is possible!

I will try and get an 80GB version if possible, to ease my DV concerns.

Cheers,

Steve.

ipodandimac

Quote:

Originally posted by sjeh

Thanks Cake, perfect answer.

Your screenshot proves it is possible!

I will try and get an 80GB version if possible, to ease my DV concerns.

Cheers,

Steve.

eh i wouldnt be so optimistic. i do a lot of video work as well, and i would definitely recommend a powerbook. if you use many effects like color correction or make videos longer than about 10 minutes, you really need the extra power.



also, regarding hard drive space... while it's true that an 80GB hard drive would allow you to hold more video, filling it up to near full capacity will turn your computer to shit. you really need to get an external drive so your capture scratch isnt on the same drive as the OS.

sjeh

Quote:

Originally posted by ipodandimac

eh i wouldnt be so optimistic. i do a lot of video work as well, and i would definitely recommend a powerbook. if you use many effects like color correction or make videos longer than about 10 minutes, you really need the extra power.



also, regarding hard drive space... while it's true that an 80GB hard drive would allow you to hold more video, filling it up to near full capacity will turn your computer to shit. you really need to get an external drive so your capture scratch isnt on the same drive as the OS.

Thanks for the concern about the extra power.

However, i think it will be less of a problem due to the type of work i do.



Almost everything is <5min (web-related) projects for University.

Finished work is kept on CD (for the exact reason you mention) because my PC curled up and died when it had 50GBs of raw DV left on it.



Thanks for the comments.

grahamw

I've been using my ibook to produce some pretty stellar looking stuff in iMovie over the past few weeks. I've got an authorized educational copy of FCE from the department at schoo - as soon as I can afford to get a 512 stick installed I'm going to get it done and start working with FCE.



With all of the experience I've had working with my PC and Premier Educational Edition I've got to say that moving over to the mac was the best move I could have made.



Now all I have to do is sell my PC and fund my Powermac purchase