Question: Macbook Air video editing

[CaptainCaveMann]

Everyone knows the 1.6 80gb 4200rpm HDD is a bit of a bottleneck. My question is could I use iMovie and edit a movie from an external HD such as Time Capsule? This seems logical to me as I'm hoping it would increase the performance in editing large movie files, since I'd be running the file from a faster HDD. Any help?

 

[spyz88]

Everyone knows the 1.6 80gb 4200rpm HDD is a bit of a bottleneck. My question is could I use iMovie and edit a movie from an external HD such as Time Capsule? This seems logical to me as I'm hoping it would increase the performance in editing large movie files, since I'd be running the file from a faster HDD. Any help?

I'm almost sure the bottleneck would then be the network depending on how you are transferring the files...

 

[Adokimus]

The external drive will be a bigger bottleneck than the slow internal one. All about transfer speeds. USB is your fastest external option. Not FW400, not FW800, not eSata. And USB will bottleneck you good n plenty. Give it a try though, see if it's acceptable to you.

 

[iToaster]

Yes, you can do it, but the MBA wasn't intended to really do video editing. I mean, with one USB port it isn't exactally something you can connect to larger disk and expect to edit video spectacularly, but it should be able to hold its own with some light stuff from a digital camera, iSight, or video sent to it via airport.

 

[jameskohn]

I do some editing on the MBA with iMovie 08. I do everything on the MBA, then when I get back to my desk I off load to some other storage, usually just to my MacPro. It's not exactly "zippy" working with AVCHD video, but it's definitely passable. I don't know if it's better with my SSD than it would be with the HDD, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be a real big difference in any event. Using an external via the usb port; that might really bog down.