Excited for my 1st 2017 MBA Video editing

[michial]

i just pulled the trigger and bought my first MBA. 2017 1.8 256ssd. Upgrading from a 2012 mbp with 5400 hdd that gave a beach ball on everything.

After looking at iMacs, Mbp’s and MacBooks I found this to be the best value. We don’t do a lot of intense work. The most we do is my 15 yr old son who likes to edit and upload videos on YouTube. Nothing intense.

Can this handle using Final cut for small 10-20 minute 1080p editing?

 

[kohlson]

Use proxy media on import. It will take some time/space, but will enable editing responsive.

 

[Pugly]

I don't do Final Cut, but I use Logic Pro X extensively and it's handled everything I've thrown at it. Lots of plugins, instruments, tracks, effects and audio edits. I'm working on a project with 60 tracks or so, and I'm still only at 50% CPU. The fan doesn't even kick in full blast. And because of the small screen I'm constantly moving around and changing the screen size and zooming in, and it still never feels slow.

Apple's marketing is very good, because it convinces people to get a MBA only for light emails and web browsing, but that's wrong. The MBA is perfectly capable.

Think of it as a powerful workstation from 7 years ago shrunk down.

 

[scottrngr]

I'd also get an external hard drive, put all your video files and projects on that, and FCPX on the air. If not, you'll fill the hard drive on the air up fast, especially if you are doing 20 minute videos.

 

[Boyd01]

I used the legacy version of Final Cut Pro extensively on both a 2011 and 2013 MBA and it worked just fine. I don't think you will have any problem with Final Cut Pro X, it will just render more slowly than it would on a faster machine. I have run FCPX on a base model 2012 Mini with no trouble, and that is slower than the current MBA. Currently using FCPX on a 2012 quad core Mini Server and that is quite nice, but it's almost twice as fast as the MBA.

If you pay attention to the amount of disk space then there's no reason not to use the internal SSD, it will help speed things up (although the 512gb version would have been better). But you're going to want an external drive anyway (probably more than one, since you'll need to do backups). You will probably want a big USB 3.0 drive that plugs into an external power supply, these typically clock at around 150 to 200 MB/sec as opposed to 100MB/sec or even less for the small portable drives that are powered by the USB cable.

I use a 1tb Samsung T3 external USB SSD for my current video projects, it's tiny and really fast, more than 400MB/sec. If you can afford one of these, it's the way to go.

If you have any concerns, you can install the free trial version, it is fully functional with no limitations for 30 days. https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/trial/

 

[michial]

Will this be on par or slower than my 2012 mbp 2.2 i5?

 

[Boyd01]

You can compare systems at everymac.com, the geekbench ratings give a fair idea of what render times will be, but other aspects of editing are affected by things like the graphics chip, disk speed, etc. They don't have geekbench ratings for the new MBA yet, but it is only slightly faster than the 2015 1.6ghz model (BTW, your new MBA is actually considered a 2015 model, since nothing changed in the design but 0.2 mhz cpu upgrade).

You 2012 MBP and the original 2015 1.6ghz MBA have the same geekbench rating - about 5700, so your 1.8ghz MBA is going to be slightly faster, probably not enough to be noticeable.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...re-i5-2.5-13-mid-2012-unibody-usb3-specs.html
http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...book-air-core-i5-1.6-13-early-2015-specs.html

But the MBA has a graphics card 2 generations newer than your MBP. Probably the most significant difference there is that your MBP only supports 768MB of video RAM which is very limited while the MBA supports twice as much (1.5gb) but still not a lot by today's standards. Some high end software will not run on either machine for example.

The main limitation of the MBA for video editing IMO is the lack of ports for peripherals. I use thunderbolt for a blackmagic ultrastudio interface that drives a Sony production monitor. FCP sees this as an "external video device" and it sends full quality video to it so you can see what the finished video will look like. Without this, you are limited to a lower quality display while you edit. Some Macs support external video via HDMI, but the MBA doesn't so you need some kind of box like the ultrastudio to do the "heavy lifting".

Anyway, since this uses the thunderbolt port, you need to have the FCP timeline, browsers, etc on the little MBA screen which is rather limiting. I'm working with a lot of legacy video and need a firewire port to connect a pro video deck and again the MBA doesn't offer that. One solution is to get a thunderbolt dock. Tried that and it wouldn't work properly so I ended up getting the mini and use it as a dedicated video editing machine.

Anyway, for the light usage you describe, I think the MBA will be fine. If your son gets more serious about video then you can look for a more powerful machine at that time. Having been there myself, I don't think it makes sense spend much money to "upgrade" the MBA for video since it will always have some limits like the graphics chip and 8gb max RAM.

 

[AFEPPL]

Both the new MacBook and the MBP have better benchmark scores than the equivalent MBA as well as a better graphics card. MBA is just cheaper with a non retina screen.

 

[Audit13]

The beachball on the 2012 non-retina Macbook could be due to a defective sata hard disk cable.

 

[racoop]

Agree with others here about the MBA being underrated in terms of power. I have two MBA 11'' models - a 2015 i7 2.2 GHz and the 2013 i5 1.3 GHz. Even the 2013 still handles everything I do with ease. Mostly basic MS Office and some scientific/mathematical software. In fact I can barely tell any difference in speed between the two.