I’m a video journalist/producer/person and my 2010 macbook pro is starting to feel a wee bit slow. I’ve looked at putting a new solid state into it, but with resale value so high… i might as well just buy a new one considering I really want GPU acceleration for PPCS6 and whilst my current card is listed, it actually seems to make playback of files worse.

….so i was going to go and give a tonne of money to mr. Apple, but then thought…now i’m away from FCP7…why not go pc?

Well i looked through a few…and was surprised to see i can’t see anything which touches the apple?! Have Laptop manufacturers just written off the top of the market to apple?

One thing which i really really need is a nice clear, screen with a sensible white point, so my footage/images look like they should. I have always found mac screens more reliable than others for estimating colours, especially because most of my clients are on mac.

Any thoughts?

Why laptop?
Are you away all the time, I do all my video editing (badly) on a desktop, better value easier to upgrade better cooling & performance.

Look at some of the business ultrabooks if you want performance. However if you are serious then I would have thought a couple of external screens was normal? I have a nice 21″ for work and will be upping that to 2 shortly.

Yes. Unfortunately (Or probably fortunately) I’m on the road the whole time.

look at ultrabooks then or the new Google Pixel, swap a bigger drive in and windows and off you go.

Are you on Premiere Pro?

yes. Just started running premiere pro. There are still quite alot of things I don’t “get” on it and I seem to spend a lot of time trying to pull my hair out…but what ho.

You can buy laptops more powerful than anything that Apple sell for a fraction of the price. Check out pcspecialist.co.uk

Main problem is screen resolution, you can easily beat Macs for processor speed / ram / everything else, but getting a laptop with a decent screen can be more complicated. Dell Alienware is one option you could look into.

The new 15in is 4 core and they take 16gb ram plus with the thunderbolt port you could use one of the LaCie min-raids for fast in/out of your media files. Will be a lot faster than your current machine. You can also swap out the media drive and fit an SSD as a scratch or media drive. It’s the 5000rpm drive that’s the bottleneck.

I thought about getting a p.c. Laptop But when you spec them up with FireWire and thunderbolt (if you can even find one) they are not cheap. The only advantages I could see we’re fitting 2 hard drives and the decent graphics cards you get with gaming laptops. I stuck with a MacBook as I prefer the OS and use FCP-x a bit plus my capture software for shooting tethered is not very good on a P.C. Plus if you can find one with FireWire the pc ones wouldn’t supply enough voltage to power a digital back which is essential for me.

You can buy laptops more powerful than anything that Apple sell for a fraction of the price. Check out pcspecialist.co.uk

I just priced a 4-core i7 2.8 machine with a similar spec to a MacBook pro (no extra ram or 2nd HD as they are cheaper elsewhere and easy to fit) hi res anti glare Screen FireWire/usb3 750gb normal HD but with no thunderbolt as they don’t do it and it was a couple of hundered pounds difference if that, the graphics cards went up to 4gb though which are not an option on the MBP (I guess only gaming needs the high frame rates)
If you are using it as a tool for work I would buy it on spec and the software you use not price as the difference is not worth worrying about.

The rest of the world used USB 3 or e-sata thunderbolt is another apply thing. Firewire is fairly uncommon but you can get a card for that

Dell top end? http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/precision-m6700/pd?oc=svwm6712&model_id=precision-m6700

Playing in a non serious way with some older versions of Premiere an I like it as I’m used to it 🙂 I guess it’s just a short learning curve.

A lot of the Ultrabooks will not a have a GPU to support the PPCS6 GPU acceleration requirements as they rely on the built in Intel HD graphics.

I’ve just had a look at the config file in PPCS6 for Cuda Supported cards and it lists these >>

GeForce GTX 285
GeForce GTX 470
GeForce GTX 570
GeForce GTX 580
GeForce GT 650M
GeForce GTX 680
Quadro CX
Quadro FX 3700M
Quadro FX 3800
Quadro FX 3800M
Quadro FX 4800
Quadro FX 5800
Quadro 2000
Quadro 2000D
Quadro 2000M
Quadro 3000M
Quadro 4000
Quadro 4000M
Quadro 5000
Quadro 5000M
Quadro 5010M
Quadro 6000
Tesla C2075

So a laptop with the GT 650M chipset is the one to look for I guess.

Just found this http://www.pointsinfocus.com/learning/digital-darkroom/enable-cuda-in-premier-pro-cs6-without-a-quadro/
Think I’ll have a test of it as my laptop has the GT 640M in it (Samsung Series 7 Chronos)