Does GHz matter in video editing?

J

jeremyhung

Hi everybody,
I'm looking forward to purchasing my MacBook Pro... There are 3 versions for me to choose from:

2.2Ghz, 120 GB Hard Disk, 2GB Ram
2.4Ghz, 160 GB Hard Disk, 2GB Ram
2.6GHz, 160 GB Hard Disk, 2GB Ram

The last option is about 200US more than the second last option. I was thinking of saving a little and buy the 2.4Ghz version, however I do want great video editing experience. So does Ghz matter in video editing? What does GHz change anyways? Is it just for gaming...etc. because I heard the higher the RAM is, the better video editing is.

Thanks
Jeremy
 
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Ghz relates to processor speed and faster is better... but for video editing RAM is even more important.

Now, I edit on G4's and Dual Core G5's all of which have much slower processor speeds than even the slowest of the ones you've quoted. They all cope with pretty much everything I've ever thrown at them.

If it was me, I'd save the $200 and put it all into RAM. In fact I would stick in the maximum amount of RAM the laptop will take.

The other thing you'll want to check is what ports this laptop has... the new generation Macbook Pros have gone wireless for everything, so you don't have the ports that the last generation have.

I have no idea what effect that will have on video editing... and until I know I'm going to stick with firewire. I know that works.
 
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Speed matters, but so do other factors.

The format you're shooting on will determine the minimum specs you need.
  • SD: 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM, 7200RPM HD (This is plenty)
  • HD: 2.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 7200RPM HD (This is _just_ the minimum)
Shooting HD? You *really* want to get a Mac Pro workstation with at least 4GB of RAM to be truly efficient. Core 2 Duo processors in the MacBook Pros are just barely cutting it with true HD rendering. I know, I'm playing with it now.

I have a 17in MacBook Pro / Core 2 Duo, 2.33GHz that's less than 1 year old and LOVE it.
 
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I would love to get a Mac Pro, but first of all, next year I'm required to get a Mac Laptop, and I don't want to get 1 Mac laptop and 1 Mac desktop at a time. (Again I'm just 13). Second, Laptops are so good to work with because I can bring it to many places obviously. Third, I'm also a photographer and Laptops are just awesome... I'm currently helping my school take studio photos and I need to bring a laptop around so I can plug my camera in and take at same time.

2.4 Ghz should be good... 2.6 Ghz is just a little more expensive, and I'll be using this long term so I should get a better one. I'm going to decide a little bit more, thanks for answering :)
 
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Hey guys, I'm on a dual core PC and what I noticed is that the CPU is of supreme importance when rendering not the ram. Are you saying the RAM is more important when you are editing? I don't see my Ram % being maxed out like the CPU use.

Tony
 
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Hey guys, I'm on a dual core PC and what I noticed is that the CPU is of supreme importance when rendering not the ram. Are you saying the RAM is more important when you are editing? I don't see my Ram % being maxed out li
Click to expand...

It's a FCP thing... it'll do some incredible things in real time if you have enough RAM... as FCP renders in an 8bit environment you want to minimise rendering during the cutting stage... because rendering eats into the quality.

For Mac users RAM is good, more RAM is better, maxing the RAM is perfect.
 
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clive said:
It's a FCP thing... it'll do some incredible things in real time if you have enough RAM... as FCP renders in an 8bit environment you want to minimise rendering during the cutting stage... because rendering eats into the quality.

For Mac users RAM is good, more RAM is better, maxing the RAM is perfect.
Click to expand...



The reason I went with Sony Vegas is because it does everything in real time from what I can tell so far--I can see any changes immediately. If I was on a Mac, which many of my buds in video have, FCP hands down.
 
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Jeremy, I cut several feature lenght movies on an iMac running
800Mgz using 256MB RAM - it can be done. My current laptop is an
older G5 1.8Ghz with 1BG RAM running the most recent version of
FCP.

My point is, you can do good work with less. If you can't afford
more Ghz and more RAM don't let that slow you down. Next year,
when you are required to get a laptop, the available Ghz and RAM
could very well be double what they are now.

Even if you were using what I have now, you would be just fine.
 
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Sounds like you got the imac and laptop processor speeds the wrong way round

1.8Ghz was a G5 processor, commonly found in imacs

800 ghz is about right for an early G4 powerbook, possibly the Titanium

But what's important is they can both still be used for editing... although I would have thought the powerbook would be too slow to run later versions of FCP... I think 1Ghz is the lower limit for Final Cut Studio

Personally I've recommending that people buy Dual and Quad G5 Towers at the moment. Companies are all up grading to Intel... so there are a lot of good cheap machines out there... and those suckers will take a stack load of RAM.

As a stand alone editing machine I think a G5 with 8Gb of Ram and the fastest drives you can buy is the way to go. But saying that, i still run two G4 powerbooks as well... and edit on them both.
 
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This is off topic, as the original question was about a laptop, but I've noticed that the G5 seems to be able to handle heavy I/O better than a similar Intel Core Duo. I believe the PPC bus is wider and faster, but that is just an aside on this discussion.

Directorik, thanks for bringing the voice of reason to this discussion. People just love to throw out numbers like 16GB of RAM, and I know it is intimidating to people who are just getting started. I have 4GB of RAM on my G5 and I often run FCP, Motion, Lightwave3D, DVD Studio Pro, X Windows with a few heavy apps, my e-mail client, a browser, and my calender at the same time. I seldom overcommit my RAM. In most cases, I have close to a GB that is unused. My recommendation for getting started would be to get 2GB RAM, if possible. If not, you may not have optimal performance, but you'll still be able to do the job.

What Knightly said about hard disk space is also a critical factor. If you run out of hard disk space while capturing or rendering, you may be in a real bind. I don't think you can have too much disk space, and it's dirt cheap these days. I have a stack of FireWire drives, a network hard drive, and about 720GB internal.

Any modern processor is going to give you tolerable render times. A faster processor will render faster, but anything you buy now will probably be faster than my G5 dual 2GHz, which performs quite well.

One of the most processor intensive and time consuming tasks I run into is using compressor to export a high def sequence to H.264 (or even less CPU hungry compression algorithms). In case anyone else is encountering this and hasn't discovered this trick, I've found that if I am compressing to SD or smaller and I first make an SD sequence in FCP and drop my HD sequence into it, the SD sequence compresses an order of magnitude faster than the HD sequence would, and the result appears to be identical. Apparently, compressor's scaling algorithms go overboard, or something. One caveat is that I've still not installed Final Cut Suite 2, so I'm not running the lastest version of FCP and Compressor.
 
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knightly said:
probably a G4 rik...apple never did release a G5 lappy :( I wanted one though ;)
Click to expand...

Me, too. When I bought my computer, I even looked a a dual core, but I didn't want to get it in a G4 when the new computers were just about to show up in the stores. Oh, well. I figured, the last Godfather movie was edited on 4 G4 computers.

That's good enough for me until I hit the lottery :D

-- spinner :cool:
 
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Clive, motion is the app that requires the 1Ghz speed within FCS, everything else will work on a slower machine.

I use a product by wiebetech called a drive dock which allows me to plug internal drives into my computer using just a firewire cable and switch between the drives as I fill them up without a screwdriver. The drawback is that the circuitry of the drives is exposed, I'm just careful not to lick it ;)

I've got about (that's aboot for you spatula) 1.5Tb of drives laying around full of video projects.
 
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Yep. I typed a 5 instead of a 4 when mentioning my current laptop.

My point is only that new editors shouldn't get bogged down with all
the numbers. Even on a slower machine good editing can be done. If
you are just starting out and don't have paying clients demanding
to see product right away then even an 800Mhz iMac with only 256MB
RAM will work.

The larger the numbers are the faster machines. But if all a new movie
maker can afford is something smaller and less powerful, it's my
recommendation to get what you can afford right now. If rendering your
short film with dozens of transitions and effects takes 6 hours instead of
3 hours you'll learn to live with it.
 
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