Best upgrades for smooth HD video editing?

I love video editing and plan on making the jump to HD.
I intended on upgrading to a Quad Core...
but I read somewhere that processors for Late 2008 Unibodies are not upgradeable, bummer!
So, will an upgrade to 240GB SSD and 8GB RAM suffice?
All I want is smooth editing and exporting,
while regularly making the most of Adobe Premiere CS6 and inputing video from a Canon T3i DSLR.
Anyone else using the 2008 unibody for editing HD video?
What adjustments have you given your laptop?
Will a SSD and RAM upgrade suffice?
Your advice is well appreciated
(p.s. I will probably be uprading to Mountain Lion, as well)

I have two late 2008 Macbook Unibody.
A 2GHz with a 120GB OCZ SSD and a 2.4GHz with a 128GB Kingston SSD. Both have 8GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM installed.
These are the two Macbooks I use at work - I use Photoshop and Premiere with no issues.
Because of the speed of the SSD and the 8GB RAM upgrade - these Macbooks can keep up with my Late 2011 with 16GB of RAM and 240GB SSD.
So your upgrade plan will have a significant performance boost to what you'll be using it for.

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2009 & 2010 MacPro upgrading for today´s Video-editing (Premiere Pro CS6 & After Effects)

I have now two MacPro´s: MacPro4,1 (Early 2009/Nehalem) and MacPro5,1 (Early 2010/Nehalem) and I was wondering how to get the best of them for video-editing with Premiere Pro and After Effects (CS6 or later CC) for todays standards.
The specs of the machines:
MacPro5,1
Early 2010 Nehalem
(http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-quad-core-2.8-mid-2010-nehalem -specs.html)
2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon W3530 (256k level 2 cache, 8 MB of "fully shared" level 3 cache)
32GB RAM "1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM" (PC3-8500) modules (4 x 8GB)
ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory is installed in a double-wide, 16-lane PCI Express 2.0 graphics slot.
single 1 TB (7200 RPM, 32 MB cache) Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive.
+ I have added a 480GB SSD-drive via PCIe (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID )
The 480GB PCIe SSD-drive is now the boot-drive and gets writes over 500MB/s and reads over 600MB/s testing with "BlackMagic Speed Test"-application. The 480GB SSD-drive that is connected via PCIe-card has also two eSATA ports on it. How could I take advantage of them? Is this just a bottleneck, what would you think. Would I get the same results if I had just Samsung 840 SSD installed with adapter-device to the internal drive bay 2.5" SATAII connections?
What about the graphic card?
What would you suggest to do for the setup to maximize it´s potential (For now it´s working fine)? Would it be good idea ome 7200rpm hard-drives for media and cache storage or do I need that or can I see significant improvements over it since there is still 3 3,5" internal hard drive bays with SATA II connections (and the two eSATA ports).
MacPro4,1
(Early 2009/ Nehalem)
(http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-eight-core-2.66-early-2009-neh alem-specs.html)
- 8-cores: powered by two2.66 GHz Quad Core 45-nm Xeon X5550 (Nehalem) processors with a dedicated 256k of level 2 cache for each core and 8 MB of "fully shared" level 3 cacheper processor.
- 34GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM
-NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512 MB of GDDR3
A lot like the MacPro5,1 but does have a bit different graphic cards and more memory and cores.
Any ideas?

jsssi wrote:
What about the graphic card?
What would you suggest to do for the setup to maximize it´s potential (For now it´s working fine)? Would it be good idea ome 7200rpm hard-drives for media and cache storage or do I need that or can I see significant improvements over it since there is still 3 3,5" internal hard drive bays with SATA II connections (and the two eSATA ports).
First and foremost: keep an eye on that 480G PCI-E SSD that you dumped a lot of money into. Those OWC drives aren't known for their robustness or reliability (OWC folks will argue with that statement. Ignore them). Since OS and apps are easy to re-install, it may not be a big deal. But don't put any of your projects on it, even though it's a fairly quick device.
Second, start adding SATA drives to the other 3 bays. Fill them up with the biggest drives you feel comfortable buying. Make one of them a 10k RPM drive for your scratch space. The others can be 7200RPM drives; since you're limited to SATA2, there's not much use in trying to crank serious disk bandwidth through the system.
Video cards. Get rid of those OEM garbage cards. Drop them into a chipper/shredder, in fact. Contact this guy about getting flashed nVidia cards that will work in both Macs, and will help with Pr and Ae. Dave can sell you a flashed GTX780 that will boot (with grey Apple screen) and run in the Mac just fine. And it'll outperform anything Apple has ever sold for those Mac Pros.

Best MBP for basic HD video editing?

So I am staring to get into some basic video editing and want to upgrade to a macbook. I do video game stuff (reviews, walkthroughs, etc.) but I record in HD. I dont plan on editing the video too much. Just voice overlay, cropping, and basic title transition screens. Can a 13" do this? If so, how much better would a 15" do it? Im concerned solely with performance. I can deal with screen size and I will have a external for stoarge. Thanks in advance!

Macbook Pro 15" (or 17") high res, anti-glare 2.2/2.3 Ghz with a 500Gb 7,200 RPM drive, 8GB of RAM
(or replace the HD with a larger one youself and add more RAM yourself, won't void your warranty if you don't break anything)
External RAID 0 Firewire 800 drive or Thunderbolt (new)
SSD is overrated and way too expensive per GB still, can't secure delete and has limited writes.
Case and AppleCare is a must, a external drive or two for Carbon Copy Cloner which is hold the option key bootable.
Software.
Come back in 5-7 years. Lowest cost of ownership (provided you don't abuse the machine)
The 13" is all poor integrated graphics, the 2.0 Ghz 15" has a poor video card, mostly consumer level machines that overheat.

What is the best format for a new video editing hard drive?

Hello,
I would like to know how to properly format a new 2 TB Hitachi hard drive that I have for my early 2008 Mac Pro that will be installed in drive slot 3. Information at the following link explains that:
"Journaling is essential for OS disks (boot drives), but for disks used for video media, used for editing purposes, Journaling is not advised, as it can affect the speed of data being written. For video media (scratch) drives you would want to select the Mac OS Extended, no journaling."
"Journaling only affects the speed of either writing to or modifying a file, it has no effect on the read speed of files. If you're writing a lot of data, for for a long period of time, like capturing video, the write speed of the data will slow down, as the Journaling record keeps updating it's self."
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/formatting_hd_macstone.html
My question is, is this information legit and should I format my new hard drive using Mac OS Extended? I will be using it solely for the purpose of reading and writing HDV and AVCHD video files using Final Cut Pro 7.
Thanks
Tom

Hi there,
Ive always followed the idea that journalling is turned off, so I would follow the advice given and turn journalling off.
In addition I would also make that drive "private" to spotlight so it doesn't search or catalogue there.
If its of interest, I've always formatted my drives in the following way
make 2 partitions,
partition 1 - make this about 10% of the drives capacity and label DO NOT USE
partition 2 - make this the remainder of the capacity
the reason being (So Im told by the drive gurus) is that the first sector contains the volumes boot block - this can get corrupted/damaged so having it partitioned like this means you can erase it safely whilst keeping your media.
Ive followed this for years and it has worked on the few occasions a drive has misbehaved.
cheers
Andy

What is the best All in One program for picture and video editing?

Hello i am new to photoshop and would like to really make some fantastic photos and video for my family and friends. I want to add effects to video and Edit photos to the 10th degree. Can someone please recommend an Adobe program. Should i get CS4 extended should i get master suite? Also where can i watch Video Tutorials that start from the basic and lead to the complex. Thanks in advance

What is the best All in One program for picture and video editing?
There is no such thing. If there were, nobody would bother writing different applications. If you are primarily focused on still image editing and video, Adobe Production Premium is the way to go. You can find any number of tutorials just by searching Google and many good ones are linked from the Adobe help systems as well.
Mylenium

Need advice on computer for photo and video editing

I do mostly routine stuff on my home computer (word processing, e-mails, internet, etc), except for photo and video editing (hobby, not professional)
I'm upgrading my 4 year old set up, as it has 2 GB ram, dual core vs quad core, 256mb video card, etc, etc. Better to buy a new rig than upgrade several different components.
Costco has a pretty nice set up in the store (HPE 257 c-b), but for an extra $200, I can order online and get the HPE 170t, which is essentially the same except for 2 upgrades:
-Radeon HD 5770 video card vs Radeon HD 5570
-Two 1 TB 7200 hard drives vs one 1 TB 7200 hard drive
My question is this.....is it worth the extra $200 to get the better graphics card and the dual hard drive set up? Will it really make that much of a difference in the performance? I'm thinking it will, especially the ability to set up the 2nd hard drive as my scratch disk.
For what it's worth, both systems have the i7 860, 8 GB ram, and Windows Home Premium 64 bit.
Thanks.

In very general terms, the requirements for Video will exceed those for Photoshop (PS). If you are looking at PrPro CS5, then the video card WILL make a difference, and PS CS5 now takes advantage of the video card, than before.
For PS, the minimum HDD setup would be a 2x system with physical (not partitions) HDD's. Video has more requirements in this area, and I would say that a 3x setup is the minimum. Do read Harm's linked article, as it is the best that I have ever run across.
For the PS setup, just locate the Scratch Disks for PS on your extra HDD's, the ones with your Project and PrPro Scratch Disks.
Enjoy the new computer, and welcome to the forum,
Hunt

Which would be the best upgrade for the money?

Here is my situation:
My school has a six year life cycle for macs, and we have a 2006 Mac Pro (1,1) that is reaching the end of its useful life. I had recently tried Final Cut Pro X and it pains me to say that it took 4 hours to export a 14 minute 720p video. This mac is used for our school news and has to be a beast video editing machine. We have been saving money for quite some time and can now afford a decent upgrade. So my question to you is which would be the best upgrade for the money: a 21.5 inch iMac with an i7, 8gb RAM, and Fusion drive or the cheapest Mac Pro with after market SSD? This mac needs to be the fastest at Final Cut Pro X and able to usefully last us another 6 years. Please help I am forever perplexed with this!

Id go for the I7 with minimum 8 Gig ram and as much SSD as your money will buy.
It's not only about having a fast CPU but just as important is to get the data in and out as fast a possible.
Without a real fast drive your CPU will spend a lot of time just waiting for the data to get to it and then wait more time while it has to write back to the drive.
You can always add a slower drive for archiving and large amounts storage.
Cheers!

Is the Dv7t or ENVY better for gaming and video editing?

Hello everyone!
I currently own a Pavilion dv7t Quad Edition notebook PC and have had it since December 2009. Ever since the beginning, my dv7t has always gotten incredibly hot when playing the simple online game RuneScape, and, quite frankly, whenever I would do... anything. Now, however, it will not turn on past the Windows OS introduction 80% of the time and the wireless detector will rarely work. Instead of sending it in for a massive repair fee, I think I'll just buy a new laptop.
So my question is: Which laptop is better for playing Runescape, video editing with Sony Vegas Pro, and general web surfing, word processing, etc: The Pavilion dv7t or the Envy 17? Do you have any information on how hot they get? I would really appreciate all support.

Hi,
Check the configurator as both can be configured with the 2nd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2820QM (2.3 GHz, 8MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 3.4 GHz.
Split your monitor screen and put on model in each window and walk thru the configurators and pick chose your desired options noting the change in price.
HP DV9700, t9300, Nvidia 8600, 4GB, Crucial C300 128GB SSD
HP Photosmart Premium C309G, HP Photosmart 6520
HP Touchpad, HP Chromebook 11
Custom i7-4770k,Z-87, 8GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650,GTX 760
Custom i7-4790k,Z-97, 16GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Plextor M.2 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650, GTX 660TI
Windows 7/8 UEFI/Legacy mode, MBR/GPT

Best site for uploading iMovie videos

Best site for uploading large videos (42 minutes).
thanks

Here's a link to what I'm after but the solution is in CS4 with AS 3.o and I'm using the previous versions
http://www.gotoandlearnforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=25095

Which project settings for project for Canon Powershot Video Editing?

Which project settings for project for Canon Powershot Video Editing?
I want to edit video taken with a Canon Powershot SD 550 taken in NTSC 640 x 480. When I start a new project, which project settings should I be using? Also when exporting the project to view on a computer should I stick with the AVI or will MPEG or another universal format give me better end quality?

Hunt,
This user has two thread topics here that are identical to ones at the forum which I frequent. Early on I downloaded video from the Canon Powershot that he says he is using for the basis of my comments. So, I have put that video through gspot myself. Since the user is going between the two forums (mostly here), I did not want anything lost in the back and forth. The goal is to help attainment of the goal. That is why I am including comments at both locations:
At The Other Forum
Project Settings Thread
http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52299
Rotation Thread
http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52298
The user has gotten back to me on the video rotation issue, thanking me, but telling me that another workflow was identified...and, as I note, generously shared with both sites. I am in the process of personally checking out what he said worked for him in that regard. However, the user has not gotten back to me on the topic of project settings.
So to expedite matters, when you get a chance, could you please check out my comments in that thread? I would be interested in your perspective on the matter and what I wrote.
Thanks.
ATR

Which of these two hard drives is best for SD-only video editing?

Before I begin, I will start by saying that I realize the BEST hard drive is generally one's internal drive... but, ignoring that, my question is this:
I have 2 external drives available, and can't afford to buy a new one yet. Which of them is best:
1. 7200RPM drive, connected via FW400.
2. 5400RPM drive, connected via FW800.
I guess another way to phrase this question is, which is the more important factor, rotational speed, or connection method?
Just wondered, as I do not have a 7200RPM drive that can use FW800. I want to use the best of these two until I can afford to get a 7200RPM FW800 drive.
Thanks for any insight, and happy new year!

William,
A few people had chimed in great advise, but I like to add my own. Perhaps you will find this useful.
The speed of the hard drive these days are hardly measured by the spindle numbers anymore. 7200 or even 5400 means really nothing other when it was made. That's the same as saying that my old 2.4Ghz Macbook is going to be slightly slower than a new 2.4Ghz Macbook or Macbook Pro. So just looking at the spindle rate is one thing. You need to look at drive generation, link speed, cache size, platter size and platter amount. For example, today's Seagate 7200 RPM drive is at 7200.12 and last year was 7200.11 (a disaster year for them as the drives would click themselves to death!)
Let's start with link speed. The reason why internal drives are faster (at least with the all in one iMac, Mac Mini and Macbooks) is the fact that even at SATA I, it can operate up to 1.5Gbps, which is fast. FW800 is no match against SATA II at 3Gbps and SATA III at 6Gbps. Secondly, the throughput is well sustained with the help of DUAL PROC (Dual Processors) available on 2 Western Digital Blacks (one in SATA II and the other in SATA III flavours!). Digital Blacks come in 500, 640 and 1Tb. BUT, there is a Seagate most fastest drive in the 7200RPM category that is a 2Tb Barracuda XT which has a SATA III interface, though I doubt mechanical drives will achieve such high rates. These drives will simply saturate a FW800 interface port easily.
When we are taking about throughputs, the 60-70MB/s the 5400RPM puts out is only good for the first 30 to 40% of its capacity, because they lie on the outer platter. As the head moves in, the throughput drops. This is a problem with a single drive. However, if you RAID 2 small drives together, then not only your throughput will more than doubled (saturate the FW800), it can be sustained for more than 40% of its stored capacity. Which is why RAID drives are used by professionals. It's easy to built a RAID drive. You can even buy one from the store. So if you want to buy a 1Tb drive, then you will be buying a 1Tb drive in 2 500Gb hard drive sizes RAIDed together.
Another method I use if I only plan to have 1 drive is to "Short Stroke" it. Short stroking is very popular in the PC gaming world. Basically, what they do is run a program like HD Tune to determine what the best sweet spot that would give maximum throughput before it drops. Say a 500Gb gives the best speed for 140Gb, then they would go into BIOS and force format the drive to 140Gb. For
yourself, you can partition 2 drives. First partition would be the smallest and that can be your "render" drive. The second partition would be for storage. It's quasi short stroking, but this will give you the most throughput if you need maximum speed for real time SD video editing.
And Tom is right, always have a separate drive for rendering and never rely on your internal. However, if your internal happens to be 2.5" laptop drive, you can stick in a Seagate Momentus XT drive with its 4Gb SSD cache, it's enough to reduce disk access to the main drive so that's what I use for my Macbook. That's my read and OS drive and the Firewire 400 as my render drive and it's barely doable. FW800 would be nice!
Good luck on your purchase!
Message was edited by: Coolmax

What is the best upgrade for the new Air?

I am looking for a new Macbook Air for college and was wondering what upgrade would be the smartest decision. I was thinking of a 13" air with:
1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz
8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM
128GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
or a 13" Air with:
1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor
Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz
8 GB memory
256GB PCIe-based flash storage1
The former option would save me approximately $60. What are the benefits of an upgraded processor? I have heard they would make my computer overheat more easily and the fan would be significantly louder. This is making me question if the processor is worth it. In addition, I am unsure of how beneficial the 8GB as opposed to 4GB of RAM would be. How can I optimize the speed of my laptop if I want to run Windows through Parallels? That is essential.
Please advise, Thanks.

If you buy a 2013 model you can save up to $400+ from online resellers who are clearing out the "old" model.
However the "old" model is nearly 100% identical in performance .
to answer your question, unless you plan on gaming or video editing, get the I5 with 8GB of RAM with 256 SSD

What is the best media for long-term video storage?

I will be loading several MiniDV tapes into my Mac and want to store the video long-term (in a safe-deposit box). These are going to be home movies with some digital photos or scans as well.
I am curious what folks believe is the best medium for this. I am considering a Passport-style HD like those from LaCie, Western Digital and others. Has anyone had good luck with these? Or am I on the wrong track?
Thank you in advance for your opinions,
jf

I considered getting one of the DVD recorder products from Sony (they say you can plug right into the camera, hit a button and get a DVD copy of the footage in real time)
You understand that a DVD recorder will convert and seriously compress the material in the transcode from DV to mpeg2?
DVDs like this are not a storage system if you are looking to keep original material in a) as close to original quality as possible and b) in an editable format.
40 1 hour DV tapes is just over 500 GB when captured. Get 2 1 TB drives and make two copies of the material. Use one for editing on-line and put the other on a shelf (not in your house). Just be sure to get it back and spin it up every month or so.
The tapes need to be seriously secured. If the safety deposit box is too small, look into a fireproof home vault. 40 tapes do not take up that much space. Just store it in a cool and not humid location.
x

Best encoder for broadcast SD video

Need to encode :30 spots for Internet delivery from DV master. What is my best encoding setting to get broadcast quality SD at the smallest file size for TV stations to use? Also, what tools would be best used for this purpose? Currently own iLife 2006 but will purchase the optimal tool for the job.

Several things you should consider...
Using the quarter-size trick is not going to be acceptable for broadcast. But you are talking about a 30-second spot. In DV-25, that's about 95 Mbytes. On a slow (1 Mbit) broadband connection, that's a twelve minute download. The advantage to using the DV codec instead of compressing further is that while you have to move a lot more data, what you get at the station is identical to the original clip.
You need to consider what compression format the station is going to use at the other end. Is this something you can control? Is this something you happen to know? If you can possibly use the station's native compression scheme, you will do everybody a favor because video does not hold up well under successive recompression. I saw a dramatic example of this recently. One of our instructors brought me a DVD containing a project that had been shot on Mini-DV. It looked great. I copied it back to Mini-DV so that I could import it into my editor, and it still looked great. I did the editing, then exported back to MPEG-2 for the new DVD, at the same bit rate as the old DVD, and it looked really horrible. Recompression is the worst thing you can do to video these days, and if you transmit in, say, MPEG-4 to a station that stores all of its clips as MPEG-2, they are going to get recompression artifacts.
If you have the network horsepower to do it, I would keep the clips DV-25 if at all possible, in spite of the file size.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Suitable iMac configuration for FCE HD video editing

Hey Guys
I'm considering buying an iMac for HD video editing. I will be using FCE.
I'd like to receive your feedback on which iMac configuration would be the most suitable.
Specifically, how much performance improvement can one expect by upgrading from 2.66 Ghz to 2.93 Ghz? What about upgrading the type of graphics card and video memory? Will the performance improvements be significant?
As the maximum length of my videos will probably be around 20 mins, will a RAM upgrade from 4GB to 8GB be helpful?
Thanks a lot!
-Max
Message was edited by: max55
Message was edited by: max55

There is some marketing speak here. This is the way graphics processing is described on the iMac site.
20-inch and 24-inch model with 2.66GHz processor
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
24-inch model with 2.93GHz processor, one of the following:
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory
NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory
ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory
This is the way graphics processing is described on the Mac mini page
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 128MB or 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
This is the same as the MacBook and the 13" MacBook Pro and the low end 15" MacBook Pro. The 2.66GHz iMacs use shared memory and are in the same configuration.
Only the 2.93Ghz iMac, some of the 15" MacBook Pros, the 17" MacBook Pro, and the Mac Pro have dedicated graphics processing that does not have to call on separate resources. I think all the lower end machines will have graphics issues with the FxPlug filters.

Best upgrades for smooth HD video editing?

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