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Jeferson · Sep 17, 2005, 01:22 AM

Hello all.

A quick question for you. I'm considering a new ibook with superdrive, and would max out the RAM right away. One of the things I'd like to do is put my 90 minute home videos from my miniDV camcorder into imovie, do some minor editing, and then burn them onto DVDs.

I've only done short imovies (usually five minuteslong ) with my emac at work, and something tells me that doing longer movies is too much to ask of an ibook. Is it doable? Or am I better off with an imac? A powerbook is likely out of my price range.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Jeferson

simon10661066 · Sep 17, 2005, 05:22 AM

Hi,

I have the exact same question, Im watching answers with interest.

Plus I want to make home DVD's on my iBook inc Superdrive. Can it handle 60 mins OK? Should i use an external firewire drive or is the HDD in the iBook ok?

Thanks,

Simon

ApplCmptrDood · Sep 17, 2005, 10:49 AM

iMovies take up a lot of space. get an external HDD for the movies.

Steve · Sep 17, 2005, 11:34 AM

Definitely get an external Firewire drive. Besides taking up a lot of space, the editing will be *much* faster if you get a 7200+ drive in the external enclosure. The 4200rpm drive in the iBook is hell to try and edit with.

cmeisenzahl · Sep 18, 2005, 06:50 AM

Originally Posted by Steve

Definitely get an external Firewire drive. Besides taking up a lot of space, the editing will be *much* faster if you get a 7200+ drive in the external enclosure. The 4200rpm drive in the iBook is hell to try and edit with.

I'm with Steve, you'll want a faster spinning disk with at leat 8mb of cache, also make sure you have plenty of RAM, and time. ;-)

Chris

cmeisenzahl · Sep 18, 2005, 07:10 AM

Originally Posted by Steve

Definitely get an external Firewire drive. Besides taking up a lot of space, the editing will be *much* faster if you get a 7200+ drive in the external enclosure. The 4200rpm drive in the iBook is hell to try and edit with.

I'm with Steve, you'll want a faster spinning disk with at leat 8mb of cache, also make sure you have plenty of RAM, and time. ;-)

Chris

Randman · Sep 18, 2005, 07:16 AM

Why in earth would anyone subject a person to a 90-minute home movie?

Goldfinger · Sep 18, 2005, 09:51 AM

Originally Posted by Randman

Why in earth would anyone subject a person to a 90-minute home movie?

Not all home movies are awefully lighted, shakey movies with bad sound, composition and colour.

Jeferson · Sep 18, 2005, 10:26 AM

Originally Posted by Randman

Why in earth would anyone subject a person to a 90-minute home movie?

It ain't for you. It's a backup for me.

scottiB · Sep 20, 2005, 12:46 PM

1 hour of DV footage is roughly 13GB, so 90 min is more or less 20GB.

tooki · Sep 23, 2005, 02:00 PM

I don't see any reason why a stock iBook couldn't do this with aplomb. An external hard disk will help only for some operations -- plain old DV is FAR under what the iBook's hard drive is capable of, so real-time playback will not be limited in any way. Encoding to DVD will similarly not be disk-bound, but rather limited by CPU. Either way, I wouldn't worry about it.

tooki