Question from a beginner, please Help!

i have just one simple questions to which i couldn't find an answer nowhere.

im new in the video editing world, and i want to know if any of the thunderbolt capture and playback blackmagic cards actually playbacks video inside the Final cut X or inside Premiere CS6 preview windows (the monitor window inside the aplication), or they only affects the playback in the external monitor? i just have the basic 13inch 2011 macbook pro, and i want to enhance the preview performance in generally.

Hi Santiagoposadatamayo

No. The primary purpose of the I/O boxes and cards from BMD (and AJA, Matrox etc) are to capture and playback from and to external video devices. The (internal) image display on your MacBookPro is handled only by the application, operating system and the host hardware ... not these I/O cards. Indeed, adding I/O hardware would actually marginally increase processing load on your system/application and so you could see a very slight drop in (internal) preview performance. Basically, if you don't actually want or need to view externally then adding I/O hardware would probably not be a wise use of your money.

I'd suggest the best way to enhance the performance of your MacBook Pro itself would be to swap out the built-in system hard disk for an SSD, max out the RAM (it will go up to 16GB I think) and add a big fast (Thunderbolt) external media storage array.

Hope it helps
Andy