The Beach
My day job is IT; a necessary part of that role is waiting. Wait for a process to finish, wait for somebody to complete a task, wait for equipment to boot up.
I dread to think how much of the last 15 years have been spent waiting.
So while implementing a major production change this week (and encountering some frustrations) I put my “waiting” time to good use by testing out Adobe After Effects CS5.5 and Premiere Pro CS5.5 on my Macbook Air to put together this little video. Shot on an iPhone 4, Warp Stabilizer in After Effects (more on that in another post), and finished up in Premiere Pro. I don’t think it turned out too bad, and the “Air” behaved very well, especially considering it is the lowest, 2Gb RAM, 64Gb HD model.
What’s really great about it is it’s “there when you need it” availability. Small and light is good, but some of the other things really make a difference. Like it’s ability to wake instantly from sleep, whether it’s 5 minutes or 2 weeks since you used it; or it’s long battery life. Sure, I had to go for lunch when rendering out the stabilized footage from AE, and the final footage from Premiere, but the video mostly played back in real-time on Premiere, and if I rendered the time line, I could scrub forwards and backwards without pause.
Premiere Pro CS5.5 on Macbook Air
This was my first time using After Effects, and similar to Premiere Pro, there is a fairly steep learning curve. That said the Warp Stabilizer is simple to use, and very, very effective. It practically looks like I am floating out there! I know that it is one of the key features that Adobe is using to sell the CS5.5 upgrade, and it nearly looks like it might be worth it. Premiere Pro and After Effects are getting a lot of interest of late since the release of Final Cut Pro X from Apple.
Apple Final Cut Pro X
A lot of the pro video and film editors are dissatisfied / distraught over the missing interoperability features in FCPX, and videos comparing features, performance, and migration methods abound. I like this one comparing the Stabilizing function in FCPX and the Warp Stabilizer in After Effects:
Comparison of AE Warp Stabilizer and FCPX
When all is said and done though, FCPX looks like a very polished offering for the casual / prosumer video editor on the Mac, such as I am. One app (essentially), with all the output options I would typically need, and interesting media management capabilities; I only wish there was a trail version available. I would love to compare the performance of both when editing Canon 7D footage on my Macbook Pro. FCPX seems to offer GPU rendering on all Macs, whereas the magnificent Mercury engine of Premiere Pro is only at it’s best when paired with one of a select group of Nvidia GPUs, none of which are typically offered by Apple. Or are they…?
How come I didn’t find this link sooner? More on this too, later.
Old “non-linear” editing systems are old, exactly that. Apple had their reasons and they found out what is wrong with todays editing systems. And they provided their solution and I am glad they did. Try to do anything with FCPX, see if you are slower. In my opinion you will be able to complete your stuff much faster which means less waiting since using unefficcent apps one will waste time. Non-linear editings work well if you have storyboard, planned shots and takes. Today’s pros are not anymore those who do most of the videos in world. I love that FCPX allows to edit by intuition like I do photos since overview of the material it provides is far superior compared to any program currently on planet. Other apps will integrate smilar tools, it is just matter of time. Load hundred of pics to Premiere and try to figure out a way to get good overview of you material. Only way to browse your material is to watch post stamp size icons or click them all through. It feels so 80’s.
Oh and FCPX has tracks, but like in future
I am just happy what Apple did and surprised how few get it. Most of them act like old FCP vanished form existing.
Hi Tauno,
Thanks for the feedback. I definitely see a lot of advantages with the new FCPX. I love well designed and integrated software. My only dilemma currently…
I am not a “Pro”, and my workplace has a Home Use program with Adobe, so I can get the entire CS Master Collection at very very very reasonable price.
That said, using a Mac, and iMovie, and the fact that I would have to spend some big money to get a Mac Pro + Nvidia CUDA card for officially supported GPU rendering in Premiere Pro, are making FCPX look very interesting as I delve deeper into editing the movie files from my Canon 7D. FCPX seems to do a good enough job in certain areas which would require additional plugins for Premiere Pro, such as Slow Motion and Stabilisation.
BTW: Love your photo’s on your blog (and the videos on Vimeo). I should focus a little more on getting my stuff online than reading about new shiny toys
Hey there!
I’d like to buy a Macbook Air. I don’t know if I should get a 11″ or the 13″. There are rumours Apple is going to release their polished Airs maybe next week with sandy bridge processors and 4 gb ram minimum. Would you tell me please, which Macbook Air you used to edit this beautiful video above?
Thanks!
Manuel
Thanks for your kind comments on the video. I have the absolute entry level 11″ Macbook Air, 2Gb of RAM, 64GB HD, and it is honestly the best laptop I have ever had (that’s compared to a range of Dell, Compaq, and Sony models, and even my i7 8GB 17″ Macbook Pro). I have never had any issues with memory consumption or system responsiveness. Obviously with 64GB you need to manage your disk space carefully.
I too have heard the rumours of the new model as well, and while I don’t need to upgrade, you can never have too much power! I would be going for the 11″ again (so handy on the bus or airplane).
Jonathan
I am planning on getting the new 11 inch Air, which came out a few days ago. Are you experiencing any compatibility issues with After Effects CS5 and Premeire CS5? According to the minimum display requirements from Adobe’s website it says 1280 x 900. The MacBook air 11 inch is 1366 by 768. Does the small difference in height pixels let you still run those Adobe programs, including exporting and saving the encoded files? Are you doing anything to get around this issue if it does prevent you from installing CS5 on it?
Also how is the overall speed of the program interface, when you’re doing stuff in the timeline? I am planning to work with h.264 clips from either a FLIP camera or iPhone at 720p, along with adding some transitions and text effects.
Brian
Brian,
I never knew or experienced any issue with the Air’s resolution. Editing video was fine; the one shot above is from an iPhone 4 in HD, so no issues there.
Funnily enough, I am just after upgrading to the new Air as well (11″ again). From a CPU perspective it is approximately twice as fast; you will have zero issues with CS5 for iPhone 4 and Flip footage in my humble opinion.
Jonathan
Seriously. That video was REALLY good. I mean REALLY REALLY good. The hand/stabilization from cs5 were incredible. I have to get back to shooting with my iPhone 4. I need to put down my T3i and push myself. Kudos. Why is the image stabilization so horrible for FCPX? The Jelly kills me every time. However it still beats CS5 due to speed and ease of use. In your opinion, In what was should I integrate CS5 image stabilization into my FCPX work flow?
Thanks for the kind words
It ain’t that good! That said the stabilisation in After Effects CS 5.5 (The Warp Stabilizer) is pretty fantastic, especially I was handholding an iPhone 4, walking backwards on sand. I don’t have FCPX, nor am currently inclined to buy it, solely because I get PP CS5 for next to nothing through my work.
Don’t get me wrong; I would love to give it a go though. As for integrating it into your workflow, I would suggest applying the effect prior to importing into FCPX.
Stabilization seems to be a very hot topic right now, so watch for another post comparing some of the technologies that I have access too.
Jonathan
Hey Jonathan. Great site. I am thinking of getting a macbook air torn about which one, 11″ or 13″. I travel alot and i like to shoot video and stills and then edit them. I already have an ipad 2 and an ipod touch when i want to travel really light and edit in imovie for the ipad. But i also own a canon t3i for more detailed stills and hd video. But i can’t transfer and edit footage from it to my ipad while on the road. So hence…thinking about the macbook air.
My question is basically that the 13″ has an SD card slot while the 11″ does not. Does this make it harder to transfer hd video from your dslr to the macbook air? I mean when youre not using your iphone to shoot video, how do you transfer your footage? And would you find it easier if you had the 13″ macbook air with the sd slot? Just curious.
Thanks!
–Regan
Hi Regan,
My choice is the 11″. As I already had a 17″ MBP, my budget was for either an iPad or the very entry level Air. I don’t think I am alone in waiting for “Lightroom for iPad”! Since that hasn’t appeared, I went with the 11″ and have been delighted with it.
I have never had any trouble with imports; my main camera is a 7D which uses a compact flash card, so I have to use the usb cable anyway. Same with the iPhone.
One thing to consider: For me the 11″ opens nicely when in an Airline Economy Seat or on a Bus. I am not sure if the 13″ would be the same.
Another thing: You think that you will find the smaller screen a major hassle with apps like Lightroom or iMovie or iPhoto, but going fullscreen really helps, especially with the new modes and gestures in OS X Lion.
So it boils down to this… if you have another “Master” machine or travel on a bus or fly economy regularly, go for the entry level 11″ without fear.
i’m thinking buy the new Macbook air 13″ 1,7Ghz i5 128Gb or a MBP 13″ 2,3Ghz i5, i would like to editing video (After effects, premiere) and web desing (photoshop, idesign, ilustrator) semi-professional works with Adobe CS5, so i need a portable laptop but don’t want lost too much power processor, which do u recomment me? Is the new MBA faster than previously MBP 13″? do u know the mandatory of After effects (resolution, ram, hard disk space, cpu, etc)? thanks!
Hi Albert,
I have the 11″ MacBook Air i5 with 4Gb of RAM. Premiere Pro, Photoshop all seem more responsive on this than on my Macbook Pro i7 17″. The SSD makes a massive difference. That said disk space is a little tight, so if you have access to a desktop for mass storage, or can budget for some reasonable external storage, the MBA is the way to go!
I see that your are adamant on the 11″ MBA. And this is what I’m wondering, yeah it will be great for my 9 1/2 hour flight to Tokyo but once I’m in Tokyo I’ll be there for 6 months, editing videos in Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro seems like it would be cramped and I have the 27″ i7 iMac but I obviously can’t travel with that (place I’ll be at doesn’t have enough room). Reading this post has changed my mind from getting the entry level 13″ MBP to maybe a MBA. Should I get the entry level 13″ MBA or stick out the smaller screen and get 11″ with the i7 chip? Thanks for your help!
@eems, I chose the 11″ for a number of reasons:
Ideally, the 11″ would be the mobile complement for a 27″ iMac as in this post from Elliot Jay Stocks.
That said if you are planning on a substantial amount of video editing over 6 months, you might indeed benefit from the larger screen; unless you could purchase / rent a cheap one while you are there?
As for performance, my entry level i5/4Gb 11″ compares very well with my i7/8Gb 17″ in general usage. Rendering might take longer, but those are the times when you expect it to take a while, and you go for a coffee / glass of wine / name your poison.
Jonathan
oops, I met 6 weeks, and yeah, I’m not planning on spending all my time editing videos, just here and there. So I thought it through and am going to stick with the 11″ i7. =D thanks for your help in making this decision!
I’m in the market for a new laptop and was looking at the MBA and MBP.…I’m looking at the 13 inch models. I’ve asked a few people, done research, but am still torn. I’m not going to be editing an entire 2 hour long feature length movie on the laptop, but I plan on editing a lot of video podcasts, doing some audio/music, writing, preparing presentations, dumping photos into the cloud and social media, etc.
The thing is I travel a lot. As in a couple times a week most weeks. Whether it’s on a plane, bus, train/trolley or riding a bike into cities or the middle of nowhereville, I need something more durable and light, but it doesn’t have to be too light. If I carry my laptop in my laptop backpack, I don’t want it to break or get bothered by some bumps here and there while I’m riding a bike off the beaten path.
I will be shooting a feature length film and maybe tinkering around on the laptop, but hardcore editing wouldn’t actually be done on it. I don’t want to buy a MBA and feel like I could have gotten a better MBP for a few more dollars.
Harddrive space is a nonfactor. I use the cloud. I have external harddrives for my desktop. So If I get a 128 or 256 or 500MB really doesn’t matter as long as it’s enough space for the software and apps. Audio/Video, etc all will be stored on external drives anyway. A CD/DVD player isn’t an issue either.
What is your opinion when comparing the MBA with 1.8GHZ 4GB with the
MBP with 2.8GHZ, 8GB ?
This is a fairly easy one to answer considering that hard drive space is a non issue! Go the Macbook Air. I have never seen any issues with 4Gb on the Air, and the 128Gb disk is sufficiently big for OSX Lion, iLife, Office 2011, and most of Master Collection CS5:
UPDATE: Just realised that nobody can read the numbers on the img… basically I have approx. 25Gb free with with 10+Gb of my own data on top of all the apps.
I am planning on doing some community video projects while on bicycle tour in Central and South America. I am also torn between a MacAir (either 11″ or 13″) or the 13″ MacBook Pro SSD for working on these projects. I won’t have any other computer to fall back on but I have to haul the thing over mountains (the Andes, no less) so size and weight is definitely an issue. I want the smallest lightest computer that I can reasonably put a video together with.
Thanks for any advice.
I would say Macbook Air again
Becoming like a broken record! I should get some sort of commission from Apple. Two other guys at work have bought Air’s after trying mine. One is even using his to run financial analysis software in a windows VM on his!
The thing about the Air which most puts me off is the lack of a firewire port — doesn’t that mean I’ll be waiting forever to capture footage? But then again maybe time is the one thing that I have lots of…
Yep, that would indeed be an issue (pending the arrival of Thunderbolt to Firewire adapters). And there was me thinking that we all use DSLR’s or other digital video devices!
So I have another question now… do you think I can run Lightroom and Photoshop on an 11″ Mac Air? (I’m thinking that broken record is going to play again here, with a yes but I thought I’d just run it by you
And while we’re on software, what did you edit your video with on the Air?
And (forgive me, I am somewhat of a tech moron) how did you get your video image into the Air? Surely even digitally it still has to get from one device to the other… but it is true that I was considering using a video camera with mini-tapes…
Im also considering the new13“air. Ive read that its fast enough for a graphics designer and for light video editing.
Also, im in love with the looks and portability;)
Your post helped me closer to get the 13“air
Cool. Even better… I was using the Core2Duo Air when I wrote this post. I now have the i5 11″ which is twice as fast. No problems with Premiere Pro or After Effects!
My wife is considering to get a Mac Book Air 13″ 128GB. Can it run Maxon Cinema 4D R13?
Appreeciate for the helpful article Jonathan. The article mentioned editing video out of the iPhone. Have you edited video out of the 7D with Premiere Pro CS5 on it? Any feedback on the performance of that? I need to do occasional video editing and photo processing (lightroom), but deciding between the 13″ air and the 15″ macbook pro. I only travel occasionally and I have PC desktops as my primary computers. This would mainly be used at night on the couch while watching TV.
Thanks.
hi jonathan. hv been agonizing past days over the mac air 11 vs 13 as i hv never used a mac. I blog and love digital photography (still new, though) and am looking for a lightweight like my asus netbook but that can run cs5, lightroom3, ms office, canon dpp & acrobat. I read some reviews that say mac air 13in i5 is almost as fast as macbk pro 13in i5. i like to learn how to use cs5 & lightroom fully but am worried if the mac air 11in is the way to go or should I opt for the 13in? Am attactive to the 11in bec ur right, its like an iPad but way more capable but then the 13in is as fast as an mbp. headache.
how reliable are mac airs? in manila, apple has resellers but no service center. any hardware related problems means the mac,iphone, ipad are shipped to singapore. Repairs takes abt 3 — 4 weeks and assuming no repeat jobs. should i stick to pc? (i like to have a mac as their displays are good (i use glasses) and they have a solid feel to it
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for your blog. Pretty helpful for deciding on whether MBA would be suitable for me.
Planning on buying i7 powered 11″ Air but am worried that 4 GB RAM would be extremely time consuming (take 5 mins for rendering 1 min of HD video in mp4 format) for rendering HD videos which could be atleast 30 minutes in duration.
Do you think, I could hit a roadblock with MBA? The videos I mentioned above would be home videos. I may need to render 4–6 videos of 30 minutes duration in a given year.
Would appreciate your inputs on the above query.
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