Blackmagic Forum

I'm a one-man production team of reasonably high quality short art films using a portable setup, without a traditional larger 'home base' editing system. Right now that consists of a 7D and MacBook Air (plus obvious other things like mics, etc). I do my post-production in hotel rooms, trains, planes, you name it.

My plan was to make a significant upgrade to a BMCC and a max'd out Macbook Pro Retina, but I'm starting to worry that this system is less than realistic, and that editing of RAW, or post-graded ProRes footage will be a constant bottleneck on a portable. I'm not talking about ridiculously complex multiple camera editing - I work in a fairly archaic manner - but I would VERY much appreciate hearing from those who have tried a similar setup (RAW, Resolve, MBP Retina) and what the true limitations are, and whether this combo is more of a dream than reality. Product specifications can give an indication, but they're not the only measuring tool - for instance, my Macbook Air is not supposed to be used with FCPX, but in actual use it works like an absolute charm.

Thanks for your help...I'm at a crossroads right now and would appreciate the input.

Cheers,
Jamie

The Retina has been proven to handle Resolve in the professional level.
Just Google it (not allowed to post links on this forum sorry).
All you need is a Thunderbolt option to get from the SSD to the Retina.
You can capture using Thunderbolt but that defeats the 2.5k part.
We bought a Retina for DIT work.
It will be paired up with a Sonnet Echo Express Pro, Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro loaded with two Crucial M4 512GB SSDs and a RED ROCKET.
The expansion box has been tested on a friends Retina.
Still waiting for ours to drop
But Id rather see my camera arrive first

Thanks Eric,

My concern was seeing other people talk about the MBPr being sufficient for on-location previewing, or dailies, but that Resolve was limited in a few (unclear) ways with that small of a system.

After I invest in this upgrade (camera, lenses, MBPr, SSDs, etc) it will be a looooooong while before I can do any further upgrading, so you can appreciate my cautiousness

Cheers,
Jamie

Hi,
i'm currently using MBP 17' i7 2.2Ghz + 16 GB ram and ati card 1gb. Latest 17' MBP version. It work fine for most of the jobs with editing stuff or even AE effects (composing, matte painting etc.) Resolve is quite powerfull stuff but it works better on graphic station with 2 graphic cards and some cuda acceleration. Best solution is simply convert RAW from DNG to 2.5k proress 4444 after basic correction (recovering highlights etc.) and the edit it with premiere CS6 or FCP. I don't use FCPX so i cannot help you. But even on Premeire CS5 it works fine with fluid preview on half size and half resolution ( even on MBP retina - you need some space to timeline etc. so half res will be good).

And one more thing. 16GB of ram is must have to work with pleasure. In my opinion 8GB is not enough

Cheers.

Thanks Piotr,

Luckily, I ordered my MBP Retina with 16GB RAM!

I guess, worst case, is that I will need to look at SSD Thunderbolt external editing drives down the road. It's curious that most of the current external 'thunderbolt' drives use 5200rpm guts, which seems to undermine the use of thunderbolt, making USB 3.0 still a suitable and comparible speed option.

Cheers,
Jamie

To get the most out of thunderbolt, you need a RAID, say Pegasus R4 or R6, but that's not for road work.

I just ordered up a Lacie Little Big Disc 1TB Thunderbolt with dual 7200RPM drives...should do the trick for now!

Keep in mind that SSD wear down over read/write.
It would be best to use them as a record and transport drive.
Then use very low cost SATA drives to do your grunt work.

jasonxinzhou wrote:To get the most out of thunderbolt, you need a RAID, say Pegasus R4 or R6, but that's not for road work.

we fixed that by getting a Sonnet Excho and Tempo SSD Pro card.
gives us a 1TB SSD for road use.

Also check out these.

http://www.caldigit.com/Thunderbolt/T1T2.html#T1