[Thorts]

Hi all. I am helping a friend (prior boss) and his wife decide on which portable to purchase (new switchers). She will be doing some video (interviews, something along the lines of the Shoa project). After a visit to our local Apple store, they are more inclined to get a tricked-out iBook with SD. My question is about the video ram...is the 32 Megs enough for what she'll be doing? Does anyone have experience using iMovie extensively on a new (1.2 Gig) iBook? She really doesn't need cutting edge speed in iMovie, but will the halved video ram (compared to the Powerbook) make any really difference?

Thanks in advance...

Thorts in Seattle

[wataru]

Video editing is not really VRAM dependent. More important are probably hard disk capacities and speeds, and CPU, bus, and memory speeds. I'd look more at those than at the video card or VRAM.

[ccsccs7]

I've used iMovie on an iBook with 8MB of video memory without Quartz Extreme acceleration. Speed was okay, but I believe having more processor speed and memory would be more influencial here (as well as a faster drive (with more space!) up to a point, but that's a limit in portables).

I felt that the speed was acceptable (although transitions did take a bit of time).

[Thorts]

Thanks for the help! I think that helps them decide in favor of the 14" iBook. They will be getting the extra RAM and an external fast hard drive, so they should be set.

Thorts