Sorry for the cross-post, could get a reply in the FCP section...

My main FCP suite is a 2.66 quad core, but I want a laptop to do little bits of editing with clients and use when I am away with work.

A friend has offered me a Powerbook 1.5 GHz G4 for a decent price, but I was wondering if this was enough or should I go for a higher spec machine? I edit mainly DV and HDV. My main desktop would still do the bulk of my mpeg encoding etc. My main camera is a JVC HD101, so I mainly use 720p HDV, so would the 1.5GHz be enough?

Is anyone using a 1.5GHz G4 with FCP 5.1.2? If so, how does it perform?

Thanks!

I use a Powerbook G4 1 GHZ with FCP to edit HDV/DV material from my Canon XL-H1 camera when I'm lazy and wanna work from my couch... I does the job, off course not as speedy as my Intel Mac Pro quad 3 ghz @ the office, but for me good enough to "offline".

I use a Powerbook G4 1 GHZ with FCP to edit HDV/DV material from my Canon XL-H1 camera when I'm lazy and wanna work from my couch... I does the job, off course not as speedy as my Intel Mac Pro quad 3 ghz @ the office, but for me good enough to "offline".

Thanks Vincent!

When you say "offline" do you mean that it doesn't cope with HDV unless you edit using a less power hungry codec?

Thanks...

Hi Mike,

Although I'm a big time Vegas user, I'm using a Powerbook 17" G4 1.67ghz with 1GB RAM to cut my film mainly out of necessity and convenience. It does a great job of editing the Apple HDV 720p 24p files. Not fast, but not frustrating either and definitely doable. RT performance is not too bad, I've seen my friends Macbook render maybe twice as fast. Overall, I'm very happy with this "old" powerbook.

I have the same set up as George but I have 1.5g of Ram. I do get frustrated when some of my renders are 18hrs. I guess thats what you pay with HD, overall the HD100u and the PB set up is pretty portable, and at the end of the day thats what I wanted in the beginning; portability.