Mbp mid2010 7.1 upgrade?

Hi everybody,
I can not speak English very well but I need some help, please.

I have got a mid 2010 macbook pro 13" model 7,1 with 2.4GHz processor and 4GB of RAM.

I need to edit some videos imported from a Panasonic professional camera with a resolution of 1440x1080 25fps (mxf).

I finished to edit one of them (about 1h.) with "create optimized media" enabled. With great surprise I did it, but the system became laggy. After I exported in ProRes422 (about 1,5hrs) for 45GB and then I imported that file in Encore CS5 for authoring (transcoding in DVD PAL 16:9 25 FPS CBR 8000 ~4hrs for transcoding).

I edit videos for fun, I'm a newbie. Actually I don't need a professional solution for video editing, I would like to upgrade my mac a bit to manage better those clips.

I know that I can put 16GB of RAM (saw in macsales site), and change the hdd with a faster one (or use SSD+traditional hdd) with less than 300€. Can I have better performance with an upgrade or this Macbook pro is too old for this kind of projects?

Thanks in advance

Trider,

One thing about FCP-X is that it thrives on having modern, fast system resources available. And with the coming MacPros - you can bet that the code in X will be optimized to take even greater advantage of the best hardware you can toss at it.

That said, your laptop is Open CL friendly so it should do fine running X. Since RAM is so cheap, you might up that to 8gigs - FCP-X loves having ample ram available.

Finally, remember that in addition to using Optimized media, if you also enable Proxy media creation, you can get much faster editing performance - and then switch back to Optimized for your final output. The switch is typically extremely quick and so you get the best of both worlds - rapid editing and high-quality output.

The real monster speed increase for FCP-X is expected to happen when the new MacPros start shipping with dual GPUs. All reports appear to be that that's going to be a real performance game changer.

Hope that helps.

Thanks a lot for your answer, I'm going to try the Proxy Media option

This Macbook Pro can be upgraded up to 16GB (OWC sells a 16GB kit for it, and many
users reviews confirm that it works). I would like to buy this kit if I can have some performance improvements.


I need also more internal disk space. I saw the Seagate Momentus XT 750 hybrid disk, is it a good upgrade or a Samsung 840 SSD+stock 5400 hdd (using optibay) is much better for this purpose? I know it is a technical hardware question not related to FCPX but if someone can help me I really appreciate that.

Thank you again

You are not using your internal drive for editing, do you?

I have the same model with 15", 2.66 GHz and 8GB RAM. It fares very well with FCP X. I edit mostly from external LaCie drives. Rarely get a hiccup.

The transcoding speed in Encore is pretty normal. I'm not sure if more RAM will help you there, but the more you have in your box, the better the system runs - especially FCP X.

Actually I copy original media file (folders with .mxf files inside) to the internal hdd; I use it for editing. I export si ProRes422 using an external wd elements 1TB hdd. I use the external hdd for encore transcoding and to create the .ISO file too.

I select "create optimized media" in the import tab and background rendering (sometime I wait until rendering finish to have better performance), the clips are quite big (up to 1GB).

I select "better performance" from the preview tab when editing and I switch it to "high quality" before exporting in Master File ProRes422.

Sometime I put a transition between two clips and I can't understand the result because the preview is laggy and some frames are dropped

Your 15" mbp has a better video card, and 8GB of RAM and also a 2.66 GHz CPU, but yours can handle only 8GB of RAM. Mine is slower but I can use 16GB of RAM. I know that more RAM is important to manage huge files and for multitasking but a powerful processor can reduce transcoding time. But the only upgrades I can do are RAM and HDD.

I don't want to waste my money for an useless upgrade for this reason I'm asking to you

Don't use the internal drive for media. It should be restricted to OS and app. Is your WD drive FireWire 800? Does it have 7200rpm?
These should be the minimum specs for an external drive used with video.

You're right but I have yet two external usb hdd (but my mbp unfortunately has only USB 2.0); anyway I bought a 16GB RAM kit (OWC) and a seagate momentus 1TB sshd (this is only 5400rpm but has more cache memory than momentus XT 750 (but this is a 7400rpm)...

I don't know if the hybrid hdd I choose is too slow for those clips compared to xt 750 or a wd traditional hdd :S but is faster than the stock one for sure

I don't choose a SSD+optibay because I need the internal optical drive.

Do you think the momentus sshd was not a good choice?

I'd rather had spent the money for an external FW drive, maybe even a simple RAID system. That would have brought you more speed that a faster internal drive.

However, if you can use the SSD part for your system and apps, the spinning part for media, you should do fine.

Thank you, I will let you know.

I will buy an external fw800 drive as next upgrade.

Good luck!

All done! Now my mbp has 16 GB of RAM and a Seagate 1TB SSHD (3rd gen).
Now I can open FCPX and a lot of other programs at the same time. The boot time now is 24 sec.. No more lag with those clips. I'm very happy about that.

I cloned my original Toshiba hdd with Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC):
1. I put new hdd in an external USB box (I used an old Lacie 3,5 one, sata connectors are the same)
2. I formatted it using mac os journaled fs from Disk Utility
3. From CCC i backed up Recovery Partition
4. I cloned the drive with CCC using default settings
5. I exchanged the two hdds using a little Philips screwdriver and a n.6 torx one
6. At reboot I pressed CMD+ALT+P+R to reset PRAM
7. Everything works fine

Sorry again I can't speak English well, I hope you understand me anyway