Macbook Air SSD or Macbook 2.0 to convert video

[Mike10128]

Somebody bought me a Macbook Air for the holidays, the SSD 128GB version, I use it mainly for Itunes and to convert video using handbrake, it seems sluggish compared to an Imac, I am curious I saw the new Macbooks the 2.0 version, do you think I will have better results using handbrake on the Macbook Aluminum 2.0 to convert video than with the Macbook Air, I really don't want to go for the 2.4 Macbook unless its really going to make that much of a difference, if the memory is the reason I would upgrade the 2.0 to 4GB of memory

Thanks


Iphone 3G 16GB, IPOD touch 32GB 2nd Gen, Macbook Air SSD 128GB, Ipod Classic 160, nano 4th 8GB, Beatles Classic Ipod 120GB, Ipod Shuffle 1GB, Ipod Mini 6GB,

 

[kastenbrust]

You wont notice much difference between the Macbook Air and the Macbook when it comes to using handbrake because of the processor speed and the fact neither of them has a graphics card. To see a big difference you need a Macbook Pro.

I wouldnt spend any money buying a Macbook just to use handbrake to convert videos.

You can look at the Handbrake forum here:

http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewforum.php?f=9

to see the benchmarks people are posting for speed of video convertion (frame rate) on their different computers. (All Macs + Windows)

 

[ascender]

I would have thought you'd see a significant speed increase in HB encoding with a new Macbook over the MBA, but its one of those tasks where the increase in speed might not really benefit you much. Just queue up a load of encodes and leave them running overnight.

 

[justit]

You wont notice much difference between the Macbook Air and the Macbook when it comes to using handbrake because of the processor speed and the fact neither of them has a graphics card.

Actually there is a speed difference between an MBA and a Macbook: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/610234/

This is another example of people relying on benchmarks that don't equate to real world scenarios.

But is the OP expecting to just run handbrake on the MBA like any other app? If you have no options but to use the MBA, just run it overnight.

 

[uicandrew]

depending on how much encoding you do, it might be worthwhile to get an external dongle to help with the speeds. It is made by elgato (very solid mac company, and i think they have a macworld special pricing on it)

http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Accessories/Turbo264/product1.en.html

and the other people are right, despite what seems intuitive, converting is all CPU, not GPU (at least until snow leopard with OpenCL comes out)