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Pro Video Editor Says MacBook Pro Beats Out Superior Spec'd Windows Machines In Real-World (9to5mac.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the optimization-is-key dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: Reviews for Apple's new MacBook Pro have yet to officially go live, despite a couple false starts earlier this week. Those should arrive any day now ahead of a retail release for the machine, but one pro video editor today published his early hands-on review after using the new 15-inch model in a real-world setting. The review also aims to address some of the early criticisms of the new MacBook Pro from pros, showing how the machine held up in a real-world, professional environment. The author Thomas Grove Carter works at Trim Editing, a studio in London where he edits "high end commercials, music videos and films" using Final Cut Pro. The review specifically focuses on the experience using the machine in a professional video editor's daily workflow. Carter's conclusion is that the new 15-inch model he was using (he doesn't detail specs), is more than capable of handling daily editing in FCP X with 5K ProRes footage. He also notes that machine "tears strips off 'superior spec'd' Windows counterparts in the real world." Thomas Grove Carter writes: "First off, It's really fast. I've been using the MacBook Pro with the new version of FCP X and cutting 5k ProRes material all week, it's buttery smooth. No matter what you think the specs say, the fact is the software and hardware are so well integrated it tears strips off 'superior spec'd' Windows counterparts in the real world. This has always been true of Macs. If you're running software with old code which doesn't utilize the hardware well, you're not going to get great performance (as pointed out here)."

9 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah well by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I still want my MagSafe

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  2. Apple lover promotes Apple product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    News at 11

    1. Re: Apple lover promotes Apple product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh, it's worse than that - it's purely speculative as he hasn't even used a Windows machine to make the comparison.

  3. What Codec? What Bitrate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ProRes was designed to be a very easy on the CPU.

    Is he using plain ProRes which is really designed just for HD, or ProRes 4444 or 4444XQ which will be much more demanding.

    How does it perform with 5k RED or other RAW codecs?

  4. FX Pro on apple.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    FX Pro is only available using a apple PC - so how can you compare it to windows???

    1. Re:FX Pro on apple.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem is that means his "full process" includes the fact that he already knows what he is doing on a mac, and he likes the workflow on a mac.

      If you got me to test even something simple like image editing software on a mac vs a PC, I'd blow the shit out of anything using my PC, because I know the software and the workflow, I know the filesystem, I know the window system, I just know what I am doing.

      On a mac; I'd get there; I wouldn't do it wrong, I just wouldn't know what I was doing half the time for stuff that is second nature to me on a windows machine. Hell I know all the windows keyboard shortcuts in the OS I just know what I am doing.

      Does that mean Windows "tears strips off Mac" for whatever bullshit test I am running?

      No, it means my workflow, my inputs, my required outputs have been tuned for whatever test I am running on one OS; and aren't on another.

      His test is meaningless if its "My mac specific workflow tears strips off a potential windows specific workflow which I don't really like". Because they aren't comparable things.

    2. Re:FX Pro on apple.... by Gussington · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You don't. If you watch the video (click on the "here" link at the end of the summary) he makes it clear that he's comparing time to get to an end result

      TFA is about an unspecified spec MBP running better than an unspecified spec Win Laptop. TFA is a pure opinion piece which has no place in this forum. I'd be interested if it had hard numbers, and also did a comparison on performance vs cost, which is ultimately what counts most.

  5. um specs? by n3r0.m4dski11z · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I actually went to read the article and expected a proper comparison with actual benchmarks. Instead, find a one liner as quoted in the summary. Come here and everyone says the obvious thing i missed with all the abbreviations: Final Cut Pro is a mac application.

    Fuck this apple fanboi and his trolling!

    shame on you slashdot for bothering to link it in the first place! *newsflash!* know-nothing nobody SAYS SOMETHING! stop the presses!

    --
    -
  6. A lot of his argument is valid to be honest... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...try to buy a Windows PC that has sufficient PCI-Express lanes to run some NVMe SSD storage on top of a high-end video card and some a few USB 3 and ThunderBolt ports.

    Hell, try to BUILD it. The motherboard manufacturers play jenga with individual models and what ports are where, so even though there's a PC Standard it takes hours of research to build a system that doesn't have random bottlenecks if you're going to be doing massive-media manipulation like video editing.

    So does the new MacBook tromp most Windows PCs you can buy or build? You betcha it can, that's no surprise at all. Even those with significantly higher spec 'parts' when the underlying motherboard cripples everything so it can't live up to those specs.

    - WolfWings