THE NEW MACBOOK PRO'S ARE HERE!! THE NEW MACBOOK PRO'S ARE HERE!!

The MBP's wicked fast. I can't wait to upgrade the RAM. I heard you can go up to 12GBs, although Apple doesn't officially support it. It could be due to heat issues. Applecare is pricey though. I wish I can get it off B&H or Amazon as it is cheaper.



www.strypesinpost.com

You can go all the way up to 16 GB, however it only has two memory slots so you'd need to buy 8 GB modules which are really pricey. OWC sells them for $800 each.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

Nobody is going to shell out $1600 for RAM. You really don't even need it. 8 Gigs is plenty...I run 8 apps at once...compositing / FTPing / rendering / modeling / surfing / skyping at the same time.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Andrew,

Yeah man...it's all true and then some. It is a portable workstation...I hesitate to even call it a laptop. I have no need for a desktop anymore - which lightens my load considerably. I can always pick up a 12 core for straight rendering if I am swamped...but this baby handles everything I throw at it right now.

For my 2.3 GHz MBP with all the adapters (except Dual Link) & upgrades (except RAM), Applecare and the external monitor (and tax - free shipping) it was around $5500 from the Apple website (the 512 GB SSD was $1100 on it's own). Every time I use this machine I find myself giggling like an 8 year old kid coming down the stairs on Christmas morning. Makes me think back in absolute PAIN to 1996 when I maxed out all my credit cards and paid $14,000 for my very first rig - a PowerMac 9500 with 96 MB RAM ($5000) / a Targa 2000 Pro ($4500) / and a Sledgehammer 8 GB external RAID Array ($4500) / AE 3 / Premiere 4.2 / etc...and I look at what I have sitting in front of me right now for less than half that...and I just shake my head. It's is a great time to be Post Production geek

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Quote
Makes me think back in absolute PAIN to 1996 when I "maxed out all my credit cards and paid $14,000 for my very first rig"

Been there, done that! I had a PowerMac 8500, then bought a used 9500. Soon I'll be putting both of them on craiglist for $50.

@DM

[You mean "Sham-Wow", just like the towel commercial. ]

No, I had a specific reference in mind, and it's the logo on his tunic:

[en.wikipedia.org])

It does go back before we were born but I remember the comic in a modern incarnation.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Temporarily mix down audio tracks with Command-Option - R !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

On the idea of treating the new MacBook Pro as a desktop replacement... Is there any category of post production that you would NOT feel comfortable taking on without a MacPro?

It's not an "idea". I have done it. I have been using a MBP as my main operations machine for over 3 years and now that I have the new Quad Core i7 / 512 GB SSD, I can do much MORE - much FASTER than any desktop I ever owned.

Nothing scares me with this rig. I do a lot of Cinema 4D modeling / rendering, After Effects Compositing / color grading / VFX / etc, Nuke compositing, FCP / Premiere Editing (including all the goodie render-intensive plug-ins) / sound design, 5000x5000 px layered Photoshop docs, you name it. I have been trying to break this thing for 6 weeks...and it flat out rocks. I am amazed.

That said, I have not done any 2k or 4k (yet).

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I've got an 8500 sitting in a closet that I put about $7500 worth of memory in at the time in order to meet some stupid deadlines I had in, I believe, the summer of 94. 64 meg sticks I recall at $1500 a pop. I refuse to get rid of it. It's the only machine I will hang on to over time. I retired it around 98 so there is a lot of early internet history on it. Booting it up every couple of years gives me a kick. Anyway...

It will be interesting to hear Joey's reaction to FCP X since it will be doing a lot of spare cycle rendering with Grand Dispatch. It is going to take the more efficient workflow to a new level.

You got it Andrew BTW...Premiere already uses Grand Dispatch. Apple is a little behind. I am also going in for formal training / Certification on FCPX (Train The Trainer stuff) so I can start teaching / consulting on it and my MBP is gonna get a serious workout. You know I will be posting regular performance notes in the forum

...to be continued

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Really looking forward to your reports on FCP X. I know there is a lot of hate around here for FCP X but the rendering advantages alone are enough for me to seriously look at this app. The amount of money we FCP users flush down the toilet with our machines hogtied with rendering is just silly in 2011 especially on a system that is sitting on 2 layers of UNIX with multithreading built right down to the lowest level protocols of the OS and has been so for 10 years.

The one thing that most people here will immediately appreciate with their older machines is the lease on life that FCP X is going to give them. Productivity should increase dramatically, assuming the app has the necessary parts from the old FCP baked into it.
We'll see within the next few weeks.

Me too Andrew. Can't wait. I am in agreement with you...the rendering alone will be worth the price of admission. FCP (current) has the worst renderer...I always end up going outside of the app for any mild to moderate compositing. I am hoping this will be a winner...and I intend on putting it through it's paces. I would have volunteered to be on the FCPX BETA Test team, but I am not considered a "Pro Editor" by the powers that be as that list is very exclusive.

You will be one of the first to know. Stand by...

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Just joined the 8 Gig RAM club. Did a read/write test on the SSD drive. It's still not fast enough to stream Uncompressed 10 bit HD, although it may just work for 8 bit... Wow.



www.strypesinpost.com

No single drive will stream Uncompressed 10-Bit HD.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Convergent Design, of nanoFlash fame, have had to create a dual SSD RAID array in their soon to be released uncompressed 444 10 bit "Gemini" recorder. SSDs, like HDDs and flash memory in general, suffer from throughput degradation that we have experienced with HDDs. I hope Apple has built in an automated SSD optimization routine, so this doesn't rear it's ugly head on laptops that regularly see a lot of data being pushed through them.

I know Convergent Design has spent a lot of time dealing with this matter on their nanoFlash recorders using Compact Flash cards and their R&D is paying off in the Gemini recorder development. Are there any developers here that know if Apple has built in routines in the OS to deal with SSD optimization?

Yes Andrew...that's called TRIM Support. My machine shipped with it in OS 10.6.7.:

[www.appleinsider.com]

OS X Lion will have it as well.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

It's only for Apple-branded SSDs though. There are some hacks out there to enable it to work with other drives but you should use them at your peril. It's not known whether the final release of Lion will support TRIM for all SSD brands.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

Excellent Joey. One more obstacle removed preventing me from ordering one of these badboys.

Yes as Jon mentioned TRIM Support built into the Apple OS is for the BTO Apple SSD Drives only...which is fine with me...and which is why I pulled the trigger on the purchase (have been doing research on this for months). The Apple 512 GB SSD is the largest out there and the most affordable @ $1100 (the largest I have seen previously is a OWC 480 GB @ $1500). I am sure TRIM Support will open up for all SSD Drives soon.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.