MacBook Pro - new purchase, specs and extras?

[pmolsonmus]

Hi,

Currently our school's black box is using my personal, 4yr old MacBook Pro to run Qlab for audio/video. We've only begun to venture into this realm, but have the green light to make a purchase for next fall.

I love the convenience and stability that I've had with this system but am trying to make a purchase that will last several years and allow us to incorporate more visual aspects into our productions. House is about 40 x 60' and seats 160+ in its largest configuration.

I can foresee several projectors and additional audio maxing out the space. My plan is a quad core MacBook Pro with highest level of graphics card that comes standard. Should I be looking at more? What about external equipment to accomplish these goals. I'm primarily audio but am continually learning with this space.

Thanks in advance,

Phil

[avkid]

Why a laptop?
Is it going to stay in the room?

[chausman]

Why a laptop?
Is it going to stay in the room?

What he said.

A Mac Mini is a much cheaper, and probably less likely to walk off when someone wants a new computer.

[Footer]

***I"m not going to bash apple***

A mac mini will do just about anything you want to do. Now that it has thunderbolt it is a pretty powerful machine. After that I would go iMac.

Do you have any audio interfaces now? With the addition of thunderbolt, having a killer graphics card in the machine is not really as important. You can run external PCIE cards that have the same throughput as an internal card.

[pmolsonmus]

Thanks for the replies,

Actually I want it to walk off so that all the other knuckleheads who have access to the room won't mess with it - hence the laptop. It also allows me to do work outside of school as needed.

I do professional recording so currently have Pro Tools hardware and an RME FF800 via firewire at my disposal for audio output.

Would external graphics likely be needed, if so, what route would you recommend?

[chausman]

Thanks for the replies,

Actually I want it to walk off so that all the other knuckleheads who have access to the room won't mess with it - hence the laptop. It also allows me to do work outside of school as needed.

I do professional recording so currently have Pro Tools hardware and an RME FF800 via firewire at my disposal for audio output.

Would external graphics likely be needed, if so, what route would you recommend?

Well, a Mac Mini would be able to be portable. It's smaller then a MacBook Pro, and it won't look like something that is tempting to take. Unless you need a laptop to use it elsewhere. The mini would be cheaper too. $800 USD, compared to a minimum of $1800.

Part of deciding what would be appropriate, involves deciding what you actually want to do. How many screens? What resolution? Will they be mirrored, or each separate? What kind of connections do you need for your projectors?

[pmolsonmus]

For the sake of argument, I can't see using more than 2 screens, but 3 or 4 projectors could be a possibility for some special effects down the road.
The mini would travel BUT need to either have monitor, keyboard, etc in multiple locations or pack it as well. I don't see that being easier than a laptop for travel.

[Footer]

For the sake of argument, I can't see using more than 2 screens, but 3 or 4 projectors could be a possibility for some special effects down the road.
The mini would travel BUT need to either have monitor, keyboard, etc in multiple locations or pack it as well. I don't see that being easier than a laptop for travel.

Get the laptop then...

What kind of content are you looking to do? With straight video, just about and dedicated card will do. I would go with the low end 15" and call it a day. Down the line you can get a thunderbolt external video card if you really need the horsepower.

[cpf]

Another factor is the resolution of the screens: do you envision 4 full HD screens with HD content, or 4 SD/nqsd ones?

[museav]

***I"m not going to bash apple***

A mac mini will do just about anything you want to do. Now that it has thunderbolt it is a pretty powerful machine. After that I would go iMac.

Do you have any audio interfaces now? With the addition of thunderbolt, having a killer graphics card in the machine is not really as important. You can run external PCIE cards that have the same throughput as an internal card.

Okay, I will bash them. Thunderbolt seems a great example of Apple seeing to do things differently for the sake of doing it differently. HDMI, DVI-A/D/I, SD/HD-SDI, S/PDIF, TOSLINK, etc., there are a number of widely used and accepted video and media connection formats, but Apple has chosen to avoid any of those and use connections that don't solve some of the problems, such as being a locking connector, but that do make integrating their devices with devices other then their own difficult. From the perspective of integrating Apple hardware with anything else, Apple can take Thunderbolt and mini-DisplayPort and stick them up their core.

Another example of this approach applies specifically to the Mac mini as Apple apparently decided to have it enable HDCP not just by when the content flagged it but also simply by its output being connected to an HDCP compliant device. So if you go from the Mac mini to a HDCP compliant switcher or router and take that output to a non-compliant display or converter, you won't get a signal even if the content is not protected. This makes Mac minis a real pain to integrate into many systems such as systems that convert the signal to HD-SDI at some point as those destinations simply cannot pass any content, even unencrypted content, from the Mac mini and that is becasue of Apple, not the content creator.

I won't argue the potential advantages of Apple products, but their continuing decisions like these that make it difficult to consider Apple products as being viable in many professional mutlimedia presentation and production applications.

[jxgriffi]

Okay, I will bash them. Thunderbolt seems a great example of Apple seeing to do things differently for the sake of doing it differently. HDMI, DVI-A/D/I, SD/HD-SDI, S/PDIF, TOSLINK, etc., there are a number of widely used and accepted video and media connection formats, but Apple has chosen to avoid any of those and use connections that don't solve some of the problems, such as being a locking connector, but that do make integrating their devices with devices other then their own difficult. From the perspective of integrating Apple hardware with anything else, Apple can take Thunderbolt and mini-DisplayPort and stick them up their core.

As I saw at NAB this year, the major manufacturers are embracing Thunderbolt. Dell, HP, and Apple are all using it. The 10gbps speed is amazing and allows you to do things with a basic laptop that use to kill them. I witnessed this during some Adobe and Dell sessions at the Intel booth.

Now...yes, the connector I don't like and the mini-display port is annoying, but I actually think Thunderbolt is moving in the right direction.

[techieman33]

As I saw at NAB this year, the major manufacturers are embracing Thunderbolt. Dell, HP, and Apple are all using it. The 10gbps speed is amazing and allows you to do things with a basic laptop that use to kill them. I witnessed this during some Adobe and Dell sessions at the Intel booth.

Now...yes, the connector I don't like and the mini-display port is annoying, but I actually think Thunderbolt is moving in the right direction.

Yeah thunderbolt is Intel's baby and they are the ones pushing it, apple was just the first to roll it out.

[pmolsonmus]

Hi,

Here's MY justification for the mac (I can accept everything you've said, I've been using ProTools for a lot of years - I think Avid/Digidesign has many of the same type of issues) However, I had been doing a number of remote recordings and rather than hauling my Mac tower around, to save money I decided to build a PC that met all of the ProTools specs.
I have several friends that are professional computer techs, (several left teaching for greener pastures - I'm a public school teacher) who took on the task.

Using a server case we created a first rate, rackmountable PC in a rolling rack with all the bells and whistles that could be had at the time. (Slick padded drawers for peripherals, etc...) Everything done to meet or exceed the Digi requirements and put together, not by me, but by people who do it professionally and designed to be road worthy.

It worked great, but I always ran a direct to CD as a back up and never had to use it. The one time I didn't have the back up, I was recording a graduating senior's violin recital. He was a fine player and the son of a good friend who was a professional violinist. I was coming in from out of town so only had time to grab the rack and a few mics and I was good to go. As luck would have it, the system froze up on several occasions and we missed a chunk of several pieces during reboots. To make matters worse, the professional violinist friend who hired me and trusted me passed away unexpectedly several months later.

I'm not a shill for Apple, but I bought the Macbook Pro 2 months later (4 years ago) and have not had a glitch since.

As always YMMV.

[museav]

As I saw at NAB this year, the major manufacturers are embracing Thunderbolt. Dell, HP, and Apple are all using it. The 10gbps speed is amazing and allows you to do things with a basic laptop that use to kill them. I witnessed this during some Adobe and Dell sessions at the Intel booth.

Now...yes, the connector I don't like and the mini-display port is annoying, but I actually think Thunderbolt is moving in the right direction.

It seems to be a 'chicken and the egg' situation where pro AV products and manufacturers can't justify the related licensing and product development costs until there is sufficient indication that the use will be common in pro AV market. And even if they do embrace it, there will still be a significant number of legacy products and systems that do not support, or directly support, new signal formats or connectivity. On the other side, the computer manufacturers get push back when users can't connect their computers to other systems or devices or have to purchase new display hardware or adapters at an additional cost. I believe that may be why Dell previously started to support DisplayPort but then seemed to revert back to HDMI.

How a computer supports software written for it or integrates with hardware designed to work with it is a different thing than how it integrates with other presentation system hardware and systems. I'll be interested to see if there is much related to Thunderbolt at InfoComm in June, but I have seen very few pro AV manufacturers that seem to be considering directly supporting it for any current or near term products, they seem pretty heavily invested in AVB and/or HDBaseT technoligies for signal and content transport and distribution.

[ruinexplorer]

Sounds like some good investigatory work to be done at InfoComm. Brad, are you coming?

[museav]

Sounds like some good investigatory work to be done at InfoComm. Brad, are you coming?

Trying to work it in amongst project schedules and everything else, I was planning to make airfare and hotel plans in the next few days.