You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Relax - i's not Mac v PC! I have PCs but recently bought a 2007 MacBook 13inch 2Ghz Core 2 Duo. It runs Lion 10.7.5 and I have upgraded to 4Gb and an 128Gb SSD. The real value of the buy was the software including Adobe CS6 Master Suite etc.
My interest is photo and video editing. Whilst Photoshop runs well, video editing and rendering is a struggle. What are my best options for an economical upgrade? Obviously, a new MacBook Pro would be lovely but short of that what older models should I be looking at. It doesn't need to be a laptop so a Mac Pro is an option. Advice please.
Whilst a newer model (especially anything 64 bit) will help, you will need to get expensive before it makes a huge difference.
Video struggles because encoding/decoding formats like h.264 is really, really hard. There is a lovely little device from Elgato ( http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Turbo264HD/product1.en.html) that offloads the encoding/decoding onto a custom processor. This will help a lot.
Rachel
A render farm! If you have a PC lying around you could probably use that to offload some of the processing. Or what Rachel said
The reason you're struggling, is the one thing you can't upgrade... The processor!
You've bought a machine that's nearly 6 years old, and despite maxing out the RAM and fitting a super fast HD, you still can't get over the relatively slow processor.
Answer is "buy a new Mac" I'm afraid... Or at least anything newer with a Core i3/i5/i7 processor. Your best bet would be to find a 2nd hand iMac with probably an i3 processor, early ones can probably be had for under £500 now and the processor will be probably twice as quick as your C2D. Thing is though, you won't be able to put your SSD in an iMac without quite a bit of hassle sadly. I'd look at an early i5 13" MacBookPro, which if you look around you'll find a good one for under £600, and you can put your SSD in it, then up the RAM to 8GB, and the machine will fly...
EDIT: Though as Rachel points out, video encoding is VERY VERY processor intensive, and to be fair even if you got a 12 core Mac Pro, it still won't go anything like as quickly as you might like it to.
The Macbook doesn't have it's own dedicated video card does it? I think you are always going to struggle with video editing a bit TBH. It's probably worth getting a fast Firewire hard drive (assuming that Macbook has Firewire, I think they do) to use as a scratch disk, and upgrading the RAM as far as it will go, if you haven't already.
Thanks guys - I realise that I've gone as far as I can go with my Mac and it is a processor limitation. I also understand that my software unloads some processing to the graphics cards of the latest macs. Rachel - the device you suggest seems to speed up conversion but will it work on rendering within Premier Pro or After Effects?
The iMac looks lovely but does not have the flexibility of the Mac Pro. They do come up regularly on Gumtree etc but which one?
I would suggest the best one you can afford. You also want to check out the difference between the ATi and NVidia graphics cards, as Adobe Premiere (for example) can use CUDA acceleration on NVidia cards but as yet I haven't come across an ATi equivalent.
frankz - actually, I'm not sure. I think the software has to implement the slightly different code but I think a coupe of them do...
Rachel
The reason you're struggling, is the one thing you can't upgrade... The processor!
the real bottleneck is the 5200rpm spinning drive and the lack of scratch or media disk. even if you fit an ssd you are still running the program and read/writing the encoded file on the same disk. to maximise the system and processor you need to add another disk (SSD) in the media bay with a drive kit. or if you have an old 15in MBP then an esata card in the expansion slot. then use it as a media/scratch disk.
at the end of the day its a 5 year old laptop though, a current mac would have a lot more oomph even the base mini/imac/MBP
Answer is "buy a new Mac" I'm afraid... Or at least anything newer with a Core i3/i5/i7 processor. Your best bet would be to find a 2nd hand iMac with probably an i3 processor, early ones can probably be had for under £500 now and the processor will be probably twice as quick as your C2D. Thing is though, you won't be able to put your SSD in an iMac without quite a bit of hassle sadly. I'd look at an early i5 13" MacBookPro, which if you look around you'll find a good one for under £600, and you can put your SSD in it, then up the RAM to 8GB, and the machine will fly...
you can put 16gb in current/recent generations of MBP's for less than £100
i would get the 4-core mac mini or a refurb 15in MBP and fit your ssd. no extra video card in the mini but room inside for the extra drive, the 15in will have an extra video card and also be 4core for the programs that make use of them. plus thunderbolt for future proof drive/video card expansion.
Get another SSD and whack it in a firewire800 case, that will be as fast an external drive as you can get reasonably cheaply.
It's also possible to get eSata Express cards and use an e-Sata external case for added whoosh.
Get another SSD and whack it in a firewire800 case, that will be as fast an external drive as you can get reasonably cheaply.
It's also possible to get eSata Express cards and use an e-Sata external case for added whoosh.
an internal drive (in the media bay) is faster than FW800 even if it's only sata-I not II or III. the kit is the same or cheaper than a FW800 case.
no express slot on the 13in MBP
Build a nice Hackintosh? I just adore mine, it wasn't that tricky to do.
People going on about hard drives - the OP is using a SSD.
You want a sandy bridge or newer (2nd gen) i7 macbook pro/air, considerably more powerful CPU. Anything early 2010 MBP release or later.
IA, yes the OP has an SSD but that doesn't negate the need for a fast scratch disk separate to the system drive.
the real bottleneck is the 5200rpm spinning drive and the lack of scratch or media disk.
It's nice to see people wade into a thread, opinions blazing, without even having read the OP's initial post thoroughly! What [s]5200rpm[/s] [b]5400rpm[/b] drive does he have fitted to his machine that is slowing it down so much then? I'll agree, on a brand new Mac with an i7 processor, the 5400rpm 2.5" drive is the weak link by some way, but the OP already has an SSD.
Besides, for most reasonably intensive software, a 2GHz C2D doesn't cut the mustard these days, let alone for video encoding...
Build a nice Hackintosh? I just adore mine, it wasn't that tricky to do.
Whilst I'm with you (and I like mine too) for those less technically adept (both with hardware and software) than us, it isn't the easiest route to go down. When you build a Hackintosh, you're 100% on your own, with no backup, and nobody to turn to if anything goes wrong. That said, mine was, after a few initial cockups (user error, not the machine) all plain sailing and is as reliable as if it had an Apple stamped on the box.
IA, yes the OP has an SSD but that doesn't negate the need for a fast scratch disk separate to the system drive
Nah, the SSD will be decently fast enough for this I imagine (unless it's a totally crap one - possible). Rendering video to disk etc is CPU bound mostly.
To the op - run system monitor whilst doing things you find slow, and you'll see if the CPU is getting much use etc. You can also monitor disk IO in a tab there, and see if that's a bottleneck or not.
Keep them coming lads - I'm 50% confused/50% enlightened!
Oh and is it certain that the latest MBP graphics card will allow Premier Pro etc to utilise CUDA?
Nah, the SSD will be decently fast enough for this I imagine (unless it's a totally crap one - possible). Rendering video to disk etc is CPU bound mostly.
I guess - I dunno about you though but on a 128gb HD with all my software installed I wouldn't have a lot of room left for HD video.
That old C2D MacBook will have an slow SATA-2 or even SATA-1 interface in it, so an SSD in there won't be running at native speed. Transfer speed won't be much different to magnetic media, though access time will.
Oh and is it certain that the latest MBP graphics card will allow Premier Pro etc to utilise CUDA?
Latest MBP's are NVidia, so CUDA is a possibility. If the OP buys a refurb, the MBP from last year have ATI. (The one i have here has 6970 in it). You'd need OpenCL support for that, not CUDA
It's not something i'm familiar with, does Premier Pro allow offloading the render to cloud - eg EC2 ?. If it does, it'd probably be cheaper than buying a new laptop. You can buy an hours compute time on there for pennies.
Hi
I keep my files on a external dive and just load the project I'm working on to the SSD. It is not so much the final render to file that is the problem but the stuff involved when using special effects or filters as you go. I wonder if a relatively recent Mac Pro with a CUDA compliant graphics card would fit the bill. I could then fit the separate drives for storage, scratch etc as the money becomes available.
Seems like Premier Pro CS6 [url= http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2012/05/opencl-and-premiere-pro-cs6.html ]supports[/url] OpenCL on a 6570M & 6770M MBP.
It's nice to see people wade into a thread, opinions blazing, without even having read the OP's initial post thoroughly! What 5200rpm 5400rpm drive does he have fitted to his machine that is slowing it down so much then?
If you hadn't waded into my post and read the following sentence about 'even if you fit an SSD' then you would have realised I had read the post and was pointing out the performance limitations of no scratch/seperate media disk therefore suggesting that the processor wasn't the limiting factor. I'm sorry this wasn't immediately clear. Please accept my apology.
I also should have mentioned that some applications use ram instead of scratch and you may be able to fit 8gb instead of 4 (depending on age of MBP) as apple do not tell you the true limit so when they say 4 it's 8 and 8 it's 16gb
Thanks to all who contributed - now aiding the piggy bank!
grahamb - Member
That old C2D MacBook will have an slow SATA-2 or even SATA-1 interface in it, so an SSD in there won't be running at native speed. Transfer speed won't be much different to magnetic media, though access time will.
It's 1.5 gigabit* in that machine , SSDs will saturate it consistently at around 150-170 MB/sec (forget the exact figure).
Apparently the ICH8-M chip [i]will[/i] do 3 gbps but shitty apple ballbag faces haven't bothered to activate it in their driver.