Will FCS2 run on a MacBook Pro ok? I really dont want to shell out 2799 for a MacPro 8 core.

i am selling my mac...i like final cut enough but love premiere and vegas...

I just like the way FCS2 looks and works. From all of the demos I have seen, it even looks easier in some aspects and having a ton of templates for quick use is definitely attractive.

"Will FCS2 run on a MacBook Pro ok? I really dont want to shell out 2799 for a MacPro 8 core."

I don't run it personally but have plenty of friends who do and have no complaints. I almost paid the same amount for my MacBook Pro 8 months prior to my MacPro so weigh the options. Vegas runs very well on my MacBook Pro as well.

From all of the demos I have seen, it even looks easier in some aspects
Not to say that FCS2 is a bad product (I like it), but a lot of the marketing makes the product look a lot better than it really is.

For example, it appears that the workflow between Final Cut Pro and Color is very simple and fast. This is far from the truth. You need to know the landmines to avoid. This is just an example.

2- I own a Macbook Pro and am pretty happy with it.

Make sure you get the Pro, not the non-Pro Macbook. (You probably already know this.)

3- What are your needs exactly though?

I think if you get After Effects (Pro) on PC, you can pretty much do anything that FCS2 can do. (*I don't use Motion but it doesn't seem like it has a huge edge over AE.)

I just hate to part with $2k when I could upgrade cams from HV20 to something more professional. Then again, my Gateway 6825 has Vista and I want to blow it off but cant find the audio drivers for XP. Thats why I have this dilemma.

so whats the major difference between the Mac Book and MacBook Pro other than the MB comes with 1GB RAM and the MBP comes with 2GB RAM?

Or do the Mac Minis work with FCS2?

http://forums.skateperception.com/index.php?s=ba9a128e06ae0a24d263390e45a185db&showtopic=149302&st=0&p=2026324entry2026324

Runs on Mac Minis but Motion and Color struggle cuz of the graphics card.

Ok, Cheno, make your suggestion on what I should get. I can always up the RAM from crucial but are MBP hdd upgradeable?

I'd suggest hitting a FCP forum for hardware requirements - I own a G4 mini but don't run FCP on it - at the time, it wasn't recommended. I'd look at the proc / speed requirements you need and then try to find a mac that will work - as far as FCP performance on the Mini or MacBook, dunno if you'll get that here - if it get's away from Vegas, I'd suggest asking in a FCP forum.

I just need to figure out if I need to be mobile with it or use it at home. Ill probably go with the MBP

Nice review, Cheno.

For example, it appears that the workflow between Final Cut Pro and Color is very simple and fast. This is far from the truth. You need to know the landmines to avoid.

I agree. This might sound silly, but the simple overlapping of clips to create a transition is just too efficient to leave Vegas for FCP. If Apple decided to implement it, then I might give it a closer look. Sometimes, editing speed and simplicity is more important than bells and whistles.

I think better camera is going to win out on this one. I can always get by for now until I get another project and then Ill go with MBP. I do appreciate the information though. Maybe when I am ready to buy, there will be faster and newer MBP.

FWIW, I'm running Vegas 8 and the CS3 Master Collection Suite on a MBP via BootCamp. For video, AE + Vegas is exactly what I need. I'm loving every minute of it. and it runs very well... I upgraded the RAM (not via Apple) and the HDD can be swapped (haven't done it yet though). I have not upgraded to Leopard.

I thought I'd run on the Mac side more often, but honestly I'm spending 95% of the time on the Vista side.

Rick

>>>Is FCS2 really all that? <<<

No. It's much less than all that.

Was it George who asked: "Maybe there's more to Newman than meets the eye"

And Jerry answered: "No, there's less"

Exactly the same can be said about FCP.

What's the matter, deusx, someone steal your blankey?

u gotta be kidding me...

aaaaaaaaa......yawn.....

Here's one feature I really like on my HP laptop that I wouldn't have on the Macbook Pro: an eSATA port. External eSATA drives are quite reasonable and every bit as fast as an internal drive. Those poor Macbook Pro users have to lumber along with really expensive and nowhere near as fast Firewire 800 drives.

Another thing I don't like on the Macbook is it's lack of a numeric keypad. I do a lot of music recording and all my electronic parts are done with the new excellent Reason 4 software. Reason uses numeric keypad shortcuts extensively and I would be carrying around one of those silly external USB keypads if I used a Mac.

I'm running FCS2 on a MacBook Pro, with an external FirmTek eSATA hot-swappable Terabyte RAID for performance ($175 at OWC for a top-rated 2-drive factory refurb!) and a FW800/400 hot-swappable ICYdock (I paid about $80 at Newegg for the best model) for project drives, and an AJA IO for D5 (uncompressed 10-bit video) I/O and monitoring.

The eSATA RAID plugs into the Cardbus slot with two full ports, i.e. no port multiplier which sinks performance by about 10%.

On Macs, FW800 and eSATA are about identical in measured performance.

On Windows machines, the situation is quite different. Microsoft has screwed up firewire performance royally, and more than once (remember the SP2 debacle?).
I think Vista SP1 has full performance on FW800, but that may be the only version.
XP SP3? I don't know.

I upgraded to a larger system drive and thought it was fairly easy. SuperDuper is the Mac equivalent of Acronis TrueImage, but it's free (or you can pay $25 to get advanced features not necessary for this). Put the new drive in an external enclosure (FW/USB), clone, reboot and hold down the option key to choose which drive to boot from, use this to test that you boot safely from the clone, shut down and swap the drives.

I also have an Adobe CS3 Master Collection on my MacBook Pro, and agree with the earlier comment that Premiere Pro CS3 just is not quite ready for prime time on the Mac side yet. All the other parts work great though, including After Effects that now finally works properly with Leopard.

Motion is not "a low cost clone of After Effects." It is somewhat broadcast oriented imho, and it can do a number of things at high quality in a fraction of the time they would take in After Effects, and with one fifth of the effort and time required to learn AE.

It is good to have both, because AE can do things Motion can't, but Motion can also do a lot in minutes that you could struggle with in After Effects for quite a while.

FCS2 isn't perfect by a long stretch, but when you pull down the list of supported codecs you know you're not in Vegas... It has strong APIs that has enabled amazing 3rd party tools that can significantly speed up work, and make up for time lost to the less efficient editing interface.

Color is a formerly $25,000 professional application that has some irritating limitations. Work with clips under 20 minutes at a time, and you'll likely be OK.
For anyone who is not a pro colorist, just use something much easier to handle like Colorista inside FCP instead, especially now that it can handle superwhites and superblacks (or work in AE using say the DV Rebel method).

Soundtrack Pro is very basic. I expect that this part of FCS will be replaced before the year is over, but then again it's not the only way to work with audio here either.

FCS won't run on a non-Pro MacBook or a Mac Mini. It needs the GPU horsepower in the Pro model's graphics system, which is used extensively.

It's not clear to me if you're running Reason why you couldn't use the built-in Numeric Keyboard on the MBP, just like what you find on every notebook I can recall. I'm talking about hitting the Fn button that changes the UOIJKLM keys to form a 10-key pad with the 789 keys above them.

Amazon.com sells a new 15.4" MacBook Pro, 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM for $1,762.99 AR with free shipping, and there may be factory refurbs available from Apple at even better prices from time to time, with a new warranty of course.

There is so much misinformation when it comes to Mac vs. Windows computers.

It really is important to get your information about each from actual experienced users, as opposed to "fans," or those who always badmouth any products they're not familiar with.

Sounds like a level headed assessment, Bjorn. Thanks!

>>>I'm talking about hitting the Fn button that changes the UOIJKLM keys to form a 10-key pad with the 789 keys above them.<<

Maybe like me he prefers a real, full keyboard, instead of a toy one that ,mac book pro comes with.

>>>There is so much misinformation when it comes to Mac vs. Windows computers. <<<

Definitely, and it all comes from the Mac side.


>>>>.It really is important to get your information about each from actual experienced users<<<

Agreed, just ask/look around, all those people with RME, Pro-sonus, Echo audio interfaces, that stopped working with newer Mac book Pros, and their cheap firewire chipsets.

How is that as a firewire screwup, and it took Apple 6 months to admit the problem.

Motion < AE < Fusion

And I appologize to people at eyeon for mentioning Motion on the same page with Fusion.