Hi folks,
I’m considering replacing my Windows laptop with a Macbook Air for doing video editing, so my question is whether the 8GB model is sufficient for Final Cut? Unsure whether to believe YouTube when it says 8GB is sufficient in the real world.
For clarification I am only looking at short film so, like 5 or 10 minutes maximum
My assumption is that it will work, but it might not be as fast as you’d like. Id look at LumaFusion if you have an Apple Silicon Mac. It was designed for the iPad and will probably work well with 8gb of ram.
The 8GB is the minimum required. I would get at least 16GB.
What sort of videos are you editing? If they were on a Windows laptop, I’d guess we aren’t talking 4K60 or 8K60? Short? Long? 1080p?
The longer the videos and the higher the resolution, the more memory you will need.
Also, have you looked at ClipChamp? Paul Thurrott looked at it for editing his new series, when the tools he had previously used started playing up and was actually impressed.
If you need to replace the laptop anyway and are looking of moving to macOS in the process, fine. If it is just processing power, ClipChamp might be an option.
I have an 8GB MacBook Air at work and it does a pretty decent job, but my Mac mini 16GB at home is even better. I do push the MBA at work - RDP, Teams, Firefox, Safari, Windows 11 on ARM, TeamViewer Manager and TeamViewer, plus Outlook. It is just about at the limit with that lot running, but it does a fine job - my old Windows laptop would start to stutter, when I was in a Teams conference and I’d have to quit all other applications to make it run fluidly, the Mac doesn’t even bat an eyelid.
I guess mainly five or ten-minute shorts. Not really bothered about 4K so 1080.