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jeronimo · Apr 23, 2003, 08:18 AM

Who's using an iBook to work w/ FCP? How do you like it? Any comments?

Taloston Man · Apr 25, 2003, 01:00 AM

I've edited a series of projects with FCP 3 (although none of them longer than 25 minutes) on my iBook 500 with an 40 gig FireWire drive, and I must say that aside from rendering times (which I don't come across often, anyway), the iBook's fine.
Recently I've been getting a little bit of REALLY bothersome stuttering when outputting back to my camcorder, but I'm pretty sure it's just because my drives are rather in need of defragmentation.....now if only I could install Drive 10 on my FireWire HD and manage to have it repair the differently administrated setup on the iBook's internal drive....

But that's off-track!

In summary....yes, the iBooks are okay with FCP 3, as long as you stay away from too much title/effect rendering.
And in terms of GUI responsiveness and perceived speed, FCP is RATHER faster than iMovie 3, which I dread running on my machine, just for the record.

jeronimo · Apr 25, 2003, 08:03 AM

So I might be fine w/ a 900 iBook then...
My wife is thinking about getting one, so she could leave my G4 533 alone

and do her work at home instead of driving half and hour to get to my studio

Mastrap · Apr 25, 2003, 08:34 AM

Originally posted by jeronimo:
So I might be fine w/ a 900 iBook then...
My wife is thinking about getting one, so she could leave my G4 533 alone and do her work at home instead of driving half and hour to get to my studio

That depends entirely on the sort of work your wife does

I've used FCP on a 600/384 iBook before and I've got to agree with Taloston. It's fine for simple task but it does take its time rendering.
The one major drawback, for me, was the relatively small screen. There is a hack that enables screen spanning (the ability to power a secondary screen in addition to the iBook screen) so if you feel comfortable playing with your firmware settings then that is something to think about. Otherwise I'd recommend a 12" PB. Not much more expensive but eminently more usable IMO.

Taloston Man · Apr 28, 2003, 08:22 AM

Mastrap might be right....
If you're wife is coming into your STUDIO to work in FCP, I'm thinking she may not be doing the sort of work best suited to an iBook-grade machine. Perhaps the 12" PowerBook is the way to go?