Travelling - Viewing, Editing, Backup (4K, FCPX, 100's GBs etc)

• SD to USB3 HDD Transfer (fast-ish)
• Playback of 4K Material
• Simple Organising / Editing (Binning / Flagging etc)

1. Kingston MobileLite Wifi Thing
   I purchased one for like €40 last week to have a play, and it works well with my iPhone for transferring from an SD Card to a 2TB USB Drive (supports exFAT) - but alas its only USB2 and the transfer speeds I get are 10.5MB/s - so working with 100Mbps 4K files - working out HOURS! to transfer stuff - and I have no real way of viewing the footage (Wifi payback stop/starts on the iPhone)
   
2. Android Device with USB3.0 and a OTG Cable
   Only one I can find is the Galaxy Note 3 - But I haven't found any real world use of doing SD <> HDD transfer with one? And its an expensive thing to go and buy to find out it doesn't work
   
3. Apple Mac Air 11"
   Much smaller than my Retina machine, similar size to a 10" tablet, light, but a low screen res (1366x768) - and I'm not sure if the i5 1.4GHz processor will play back 4K h.264 files?
   
4. SurfacePro2
   I know, I know Windows 8. But nice screen, USB3.0, Slim keyboard. No FCPX.
   I'm not Hackintoshing anymore - too many issues (Wifi, iCloud etc etc)

Hi,

you seem to have thought of some of the best options already. When I was faced with a similar problem, I went for the Toshiba Portege z10t 11.6", which is just over a 1000 quid on Amazon UK at the moment. Not cheap, but the i5 CPU was good enough to edit and painlessly render some footage from a hacked GH2 (50 Mbps), which I had excessively graded for test purposes. I had the raw footage on a 1 TB external drive, and I rendered to the 128 GB SSD. I find the 1920x1080 screen excellent. There's a 256 GB model too, but it's really expensive. It weighs just under 1.4 kg, and Windows 8.1 is so much better than Windows 8, that it's almost as good as Windows 7!

I edit with Vegas so I really needed Windows. The advantage is that all my work stuff just "works" normally (outlook, word etc.)

Since you can detach the screen and also use it as a tablet, my kids like playing with it too. I wish it had been cheaper, but it's a brilliant bit of kit.

Cheers,

Matt

Hmm... £750-£800 was my upper limit - to be honest.

But that is one sweet machine!!

More i'm reading the more I'm leaning towards just sucking it up and taking my 15" Retina machine..

The Air would be a better bet, but once home, it wouldn't get used and thats a few quid, just sat there....

Cheers

I was having the same dilemma. I ended up buying the 13" retina macbookpro. Is was only half a pound more than the air....and I liked that I could get 1tb ssd, and the higher Rez screen... The battery life of the air is appealing.

I am a windows guy, so this Mac thing should be interesting. Although most of my editing will still be done at home on a windows PC. The MacBook is just for travel.

It drove me crazy that there don't seem to be good options for 1tb drives in ssd for ultrabooks. Only asus had a 512gb. And everything has windows 8. Which I won't do.

Dustin.

I'd take your retina and then spend the money on a backup drive that has decent write speeds.

Seagate have just released a small portable USB 3.0 based drive that allegedly can push at up to 220 MBytes per second (it has two drives inside, uses drive mirroring to get the speed)

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/external-hard-drives/portable-hard-drives/performance/backup-plus-fast-hdd/

Alternatively, get a USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt eSATA docking bay, and then buy a couple of SSDS.

I'm liking that drive Stuart. Thanks for the tip.

Dustin, are you just running Apple's OS on that Macbook Pro, or running Windows on it via Bootcamp(?)?

Yeah, that is pretty nice that drive! - and provides some hardware failure resilience - like it.

Will have a look into that.

This next trip I have coming up, is on BA, so luckily hand luggage I won't have an issue with (1x Hand Luggage + 1x Personal Item). So the expensive has been save for now

Cheers

There's no hardware resilience, in fact you've doubled risk of failure as the data is striped over two disks... If either disk fails you'll lose the lot.

Oh so, its not a Mirrored disk set? Well thats no good

I'm liking that drive Stuart. Thanks for the tip.

 

Dustin, are you just running Apple's OS on that Macbook Pro, or running Windows on it via Bootcamp(?)?

Nick,

I haven't even received it yet! LOL. I got a refurb from the apple site. At the moment, I don't plan to load W7 on it. I think the only reason I would would be to use my existing licenses for CS6 and Lightroom. Not sure if they will allow the windows license to be installed on a Mac...But if I find a need for it, I would do it. we can get the license for free through my wife's company so it isn't an issue, but if it's not needed, I won't do it.

Most of the purchase was for weight considerations, as the laptop we have been using is ridiculously heavy. From a video standpoint, I don't plan on doing much editting on it. More or less a way to backup my video, and then when I get it home, edit it on my windows pc. I also thought it would be a good test to see what the mac world has too offer us. Both myself and my wife are pretty entrenched into PC because of our jobs, so there really isn't a way to completely away from it.

For photography, we both plan on using it with Lightroom pretty heavily. And since that is so cheap and not part of CC, which I won't sign up for out of principle, I would buy it again to work on the MBP if I needed to.

Dustin