using fcpx with a laptop

I'm using a MacBook Pro 2.4GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo laptop and just tried FCPX on it with a Lacie FW800 external drive with my media on that. It works OK, but is slow and gets hot very quickly. Ideally, I would edit with a Thunderbolt drive, but they're expensive and I don't have a port for it on this computer in any case. Has anyone else edited X with a set-up like this and if so, would you recommend an optimum work flow? Thanks.

Be sure all of your Events and Projects are on that FW drive. Otherwise, you've got the right workflow.

As for the laptop heating up and the fan reving up, that's how those laptops are, mine is the same, nothing you can do about it, really.

I have the same laptop... FCP X is only functional when I edit using Proxy Media... Full HD tends to just bog down and stutter a lot.

I am also editing on a MacBook Pro, with a 3TB G-Drive connected via FW800. I generally edit XDCAM 50mbs 1080p footage (which can be a bit heavy). When I first started using the program I found I would have to restart it every now and then when it started to slow down (this would clear the memory I guess?) - otherwise I could get the spinning beach ball and have to force quit. I started doing the following things and found the program became a lot faster (and I don't need to restart it):

• I import as optimized media.
• I turned off video skimming (though a quick tap of the S key brings it back when needed - very handy tool).
• I turned off audio skimming because it drove me nuts - there might be a few times when I want to turn it back on, but not often.
• I turn off the audio waveforms until I need them (generally at the end after the basic cut has been established and when I start tweaking the audio).
• I turned off background rendering because I found that the program would start rendering titles and effects before I had fully locked them down - if I made a slight change of position or timing, or any small change it would have to render all over again (not that it slowed things down, but it began to sound like there was a jet turbine in my laptop when I was doing title sequences). I think it is possible to change the delay period on the background rendering, but I found it easier to just turn it off and 'Render All' every few minutes when effects and titles were locked.
• I close all other apps when I am editing; sometimes I will check something online, but I will always close Safari afterwards.

Perhaps some of the above are redundant, but this is the routine I have settled into for the time being and everything seems to be running smoothly.

Question: I am using a 3TB G-Drive with a FW-800 connection, but I see that the G-Drive also has an eSata port. Will performance be noticeably improved if i use a eSata connection with the Express Card 34 slot?

Thanks. That's really helpful. I'll try all of those.

How would you guys compare the performance of FCPX on the MacBook Pro to FCP7?

Better, because it can use more RAM, multi-cores, and the GPU.

I'm on the same setup, a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo with 6GB of ram and a 7200rpm internal 500GB. My media is all stored on a pair of RAID1 7200rpm 500GB USB2 drives. For speed-sake I have done what simonpwood has done, the key points it seems for me being editing with proxy media and optimized media. These systems just aren't up to the task of playing back 1080p H264 without dropping lots of frames (go see my rather lengthy thread from last week for lots of people's experiences).

If I had some spare coin, enough to do some upgrades but not enough to fully replace my system, I would change my external drives to an eSATA Caldigit mini VR (two internal RAID1 notebook drives with a ton of connection options) and throw an Express35 eSATA card in for good measure.

Working off a FW800 is still less throughput than your internal drive, so when possible I try to temporarily move my work files over to the internal drive since I don't have the eSATA option right now. Plus if the notebook isn't powering my external drives I can get that much more battery life out of plane-ride edit sessions. I keep copious backups and I'd suggest doing the same obviously.

Anyhow, lots of little things you can do. If you can afford it SSD storage is a great option internally and makes even a couple year old systems feel considerably zippier. Though at roughly $2 per gigabyte it's a quite expensive setup if you want to have a drive big enough for editing with optimized media (proxy would be okay though).

Hard drive is by far the slowest bottleneck of any computer system.

USB drives will give you a major performance hit, FW800 drives are just enough for serious HD editing and compositing of longer projects. eSATA will give you the same performance as your internal SATA drive.

I don't consider SSD to be cost efficient or even large enough yet for using. Plus, it's limited life span. But it does give a great speed increase.

I've edited with a newer MBP and a T'bolt drive, and the performance was better than my Mac Pro with twice as much RAM and faster CPUs.

Have any of you tried setting Playback to Better Performance in the preferences? How does that help?

Sadly no. Setting "better performance" as my priority doesn't have any beneficial impact on my H264 playback issues. Which is why I'm using ProRes Proxy material when editing on my notebook.

Then we use proxies! That's what they are there for.

Yeah I should point out that using the Proxy media works like a friggin' charm. The whole proxy process is a lot more streamlined in X than in 7 and definitely one of the big reasons why I like working with X.

I have same set up. New to fcpx. Almost get working w Proxy, but please answer my beginner questions...

When I switch all my optimized to proxy to work quicker, do I keep them on the same external drive?

One edits in proxy and does the final export in optimized, correct?
Assuming editing in proxy will automatically mirror the final optimized product, yes?

Working w external FW400. I imported optimized. Getting too slow to edit fluidly.

I don't need to be laptop only. Will always work w external.