Can you recommend some buying ideas, what would you do?

I have a

13" Macbook Pro 2015 - 8gb - 512 and 2.9 Intel Core 5

I do mainly proxy work and offline and for that I DO NOT need a new machine

However, if I want to stay current and improve my skills and learn more about templates and maybe a bit of motion or run some plug ins for better projects and quality... what should I buy.

Money is not the concern - SENSIBILE-NESS IS.

The new 16 I specced up was £2789 which was 512GB 32GB Ram and teheir 6 core.

Many 18/19 year Mac Book Pros are around but of similar price and I don't really trust eBay for that size of transaction.

If you were me? Would you wait until its ABSOLUTELY Neccessary or upgrade now but to what?

A friend said spend the high funds now against business....and it will last 5 years. However with the climate I wonder if there will be some deals around in the coming months even from Apple themselves?

No matter when you purchase, something new will be out in 9 months. That's just a fact of life. Upgrade when you need to, not because you want to. Also, I've always gotten 1TB system drives and have never regretted it, plus more cores are better because the clock speed difference between the GPUs you get to choose from is nominal these days. But purchase because you have a need. Let that money earn some interest for you somewhere in the meantime.

I have been thinking about upgrading my 2013 MacBook Pro as well. My issue is some legacy software that will not run on the Catalina OS. FCP X is running fine although I do get from video stuttering when I get ahead of the read speed on the external hard drive. As I have always done in the past, my plan is to wait until I am forced to upgrade either because of a machine failure, a major update to FCP X that requires a newer machine, or I win the lottery. Would rather spend money on creating new content.

Hmmm.
I like that advice alot Guru is my new mate.
However, for example right now, heres the dilemma.

I am about to pay some guy a fortune for editing my latest demo reel. The reason is whenever I try and put templates for Motion in FCPX and work with them, my machine literally freezes up.

So buy the time I have paid him some 600 US for a 2 minute trailer edit or something, I would be 600 US towards a new machine, which I could have purchased and did the work myself - albiet very slowly either by learning motion if that helps templates work better, or putting AE on the machine and learning that.

The sheer number of tempting templates there are for motion / ae does make me think.

Granted time is money and all that and as an example I cancelled a London editor who was going to bill me £1300 for the same edit! - I have mentioned I have my own YT channel and can edit pretty well myself but these TV peolpe think everyone is daft.

There is something empowering maybe about:

1. Selling this mac for say £350 / £300
2. Saving 600 US + on a single project
3. Changing up into something that might enable me to produce more interesting results.

We are not allowed to post jobs on here but if we were I think a 2m video I can get done for £350 in this climate. Nobody has any work!

$600 USD for a 2-minute trailer seems steep to me. My TV station produces 30-minute shows for only $500. That is using our studio, on a Tricaster (which I hate), so once we have a good take, no editing. Even my freelance work on the side isn't that expensive. I'd do a 2-minute trailer cheaper than $600, way cheaper.

If you're having freeze problems and slow-downs, that is costing you time, which is costing you money. I'd say you're at the point to upgrade, for sure.

As for legacy apps that won't run on Cataline, which ones? May be time to move to more modern (faster, more features) apps to do that work. But I'm curious, what apps are those?

You can work a tricaster thats good.

It is the detail maybe inside the 2m, and the beat sync'd cleverness, my last one is here and this one needs to be better in someway.

My machine is fine for this I did

But as soon as I drag a single - plug in, fcpx template or anything I purchase - the machine hangs. But as you can see I think I have the "eye" for what I need. Its also a massive pain explaining every time code and every picture to a guy who makes hollywood promos for a living and still wants me to do most of it

Time wise most of my work is gone - so its not time vs what would I be earning, because I am kind of earning minimal at this time. Its kind of a case of not wasting money but also making sure my mental health does not suffer getting wound up trying to learn things and what they do.

I have been astonished... literally how un creative some people are with ideas per dollar when they do this for big clients all the time... one guy from Soho worked for Saachi didnt come up with a single idea when I pitched it out. How anyone survives is beyond me. I used to work in remixing so part musician / dj and boy are some providers and freelancers clueless. All the skills but no ideas.

Finally if you are not asleep yet, many people who work in uk tv say AE and premier is what its about for this sort of stuff. Similarly most of the templates are for AE and less for motion.

I bought this one for a play around... and boy dragging that into FCPX was a complete hang up. Your welcome to it for your advice no issues I can we tran you. The dev, didnt even reply when I said, is this your template or my machine. videohive.net/item/urban-opener/25118996

Maybe finally finally if I download Motion perhaps you are supposed to do some arranging in Motion and then bounce it out for FC but thats a pain in the butt.

Re reading Camerons original post I saw that his 2015 Mac only has 8GB of RAM. That is probably causing the freezing problem. Sounds like it is time for a new machine or stop using templates. A new machine it should have a minimum 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB hard drive.

The legacy software packages I run are Microsoft Word and Excel, Adobe Lightroom, Acrobat, and CS4 as well as a few others. You are probably wondering why. The reason is they work for what I do with them. Yes the current versions do more things. It is just that the additional features are of no use to me in my work. I realize that I will have to upgrade them at some point in the future.

Larrie if you are using cracks then that might be issue, if not then the machine is broke a 2013 prob won't run v well on normal stuff I don't think. Even mine hangs a bit on a few bits - as they get older they slow a bit.

As for Ram yeh 16 MAY be enough but its about GPU i am told as the GPU is what makes the pictures move along with the other thing like the cores and the ghz - it all works as a team its not as simple as ram anymore - not for video anyway. So 16 and 1TB.. why 1TB edit off line always... Guru taught me that bad boy.

Memory still plays big role. You can check your memory usage by opening up the Applications/Utilities folder and then start the Activity Monitor application. Click on the Memory tab. With just the Activity Monitor open my system uses 4.66 GB of the available 16 GB. Start FCP X and then start the playing back the timeline and memory usage jumps to 6.33 GB. I started a render process and memory usage jumped to 7.2 GB. As you are experiencing an 8 GB machine would struggle as the more complex the video file is. The more memory you have the less swapping in and out of memory that needs to happen and the faster your machine runs.

If you mouse over the headings at the bottom of the Activity Viewer memory screen you will get a description of what the numbers mean. Reviewing the memory usage may also give you a clue as to why your system is crashing. I would be interested in seeing your memory results.

Your machine is F***

Here are my ram and cpu numbers... due to the auto render on this "template" which is only 29 odd secs. CPU goes from 117% to about 55% and Ram not much

What are the numbers at the of the memory screen? They were cut off in the screen grab.

Memory 1.64 mate when open. And doing nothing.

Let me rephrase, what is the total amount of memory being used for all applications and processes on the machine? The number is at the bottom of the Memory tab.

Did you just hijack my thread? ))


This is just with fcpx open nothing on timeline etc

You are definitely pushing the limits of your 8 GB of memory.

I am about to order the new 16 I think. So process of not being able to find people good enough or as good as me at least and thinking longer term as time moves on - we will all be expected maybe to produce a little more.

This mac is a beaut.... shame to sell it for only £400 max just wish I could have a nice dinky 13 again but its about graphics card. And if we are and it is likely we are, going to be stuck then without much work myself I am going to want to find things to do. Most of my video editor work has cancelled for 3 months and may never recover.

Video work will recover, no reason for it not to. As you become more proficient at your craft, you'll come to really appreciate the larger screen, I promise you that. It's a good business investment.

i need to upgrade my mac hardware and am after some advice...

my current fcpx system can handle HD projects without a problem. i am about to cut a broadcast doc which is shooting in 4K (400 mbps files) and the producer wants to cut in 4k. my current system has reached its upgradeable limit.  ideally i'd like a MBP laptop rather than an imac. am finding it hard to get a handle on what spec to get and whether to go M1 or not. i want to avoid embarassing steppy playback when cutting with producer/director; am after stability; and don't want to break the bank. and want to avoid working with proxies. will work from external thunderbolt hardrives. my projects are mixed/finished at a facility so i need to able to cut what we used to call 'offline' or 'hybrid' without lag etc.  options are new machine from apple or second hand etc.  what spec would you recommend? how much is minimum RAM?  all input much appreciated.