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Thunderbolt Adapters and MacBook Pro performance
Rank: Newbie
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Joined: 10/22/2019(UTC) Posts: 4  Location: Córdoba
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Hello. I'm about to buy a MacBook pro. My budget is only about 800 dollars. For that money in Argentina the only thing that can be found are 2012/13/14 models. In the best case, 15.4 ', Quad Core, i7, 8GB RAM. Two Thunderbolt 2 ports on one side and a USB 2.0 port on both sides. In addition, I plan to get an ATEM Mini from BMD and I already own an Elgato Camlink HD. I have 4 cameras. The idea would be to use 3 previously switched cameras on the ATEM Mini and one on the Camlink HD for instant replays. Both the ATEM Mini and the Camlink require USB 3.0, so my question is whether they will work with adapters to the Thunderbolt 2 ports? In addition, both ports are on the same USB bus. Will data traffic be enough? Or it will be better alternative to look for a notebook with native Windows? The change to Mac is on the recommendation of two colleagues who insist that in lower hardware the editing performance (I also do that kind of work in Full HD from my Sony NX100) is superior in Mac. However, for streaming I don't have details. I would apreciate your experiences in Mac with Boot Camp and Windows.
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 12/7/2017(UTC)
Posts: 45
Location: New Zealand
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Personally it would be preferable to stay native with a windows laptop especially since vMix does not run on Mac so there is no advantage at all only disadvantage. As for performance when editing in my personal experience over many many years mac is slow as an edit platform in general unless you want to throw good money away on their most expensive offerings which generally date really fast. Grass Valley have an excellent NLE software called Edius and if you are serious about your editing but only have a low budget then I recommend staying windows based and using the Edius software. It is fast stable and high quality and also scales well to low powered machines, in other words you will do more with less. Having said that if you are heavily invested in a particular NLE then it might be hard to change, but for us mac is just not worth the hassle or the expense if you need to produce hi quality content for a living.
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Rank: Newbie
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Joined: 9/26/2019(UTC)
Posts: 2
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Originally Posted by: icm1812  Hello. I'm about to buy a MacBook pro. My budget is only about 800 dollars. For that money in Argentina the only thing that can be found are 2012/13/14 models. In the best case, 15.4 ', Quad Core, i7, 8GB RAM. Two Thunderbolt 2 ports on one side and a USB 2.0 port on both sides. In addition, I plan to get an ATEM Mini from BMD and I already own an Elgato Camlink HD. I have 4 cameras. The idea would be to use 3 previously switched cameras on the ATEM Mini and one on the Camlink HD for instant replays. Both the ATEM Mini and the Camlink require USB 3.0, so my question is whether they will work with adapters to the Thunderbolt 2 ports? In addition, both ports are on the same USB bus. Will data traffic be enough? Or it will be better alternative to look for a notebook with native Windows? The change to Mac is on the recommendation of two colleagues who insist that in lower hardware the editing performance (I also do that kind of work in Full HD from my Sony NX100) is superior in Mac. However, for streaming I don't have details. I would apreciate your experiences in Mac with Boot Camp and Windows. To answer your main questions, if you really want to go with a MacBook Pro: Thunderbolt 2 is essentially an exposed external PCIe Express x4 lane so you should be fine using adapters. One adapter per port would work if you want to keep them on separate channels (separate buses) and separate to the USB ports. @nakedeye is right though, for $800 I think you can get a better PC, even one with GeForce graphics which would be way better than the Intel or AMD solutions that MacBooks have. vMix does seem to prefer NVIDIA cards for it's hardware acceleration. A large problem with MacBook Pros on boot camp that is not well known is the driver support. Apple does not update their Windows drivers very often so they are left out of date. I believe the older MacBook Pro boot camp drivers have difficulty with Windows 10 as well (they are written for Windows 7), so you may have random issues such as the hotkeys not working (volume and brightness controls). It's possible to work through but a more recent PC laptop will probably be less effort to get running, especially with vMix.
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Rank: Newbie
Groups: Registered
Joined: 10/22/2019(UTC) Posts: 4 Location: Córdoba
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Thanks for your advices. I already own a Windows 10 native PC. HP Omen 17, i7 7700 HQ, 16 GB RAM, Geforce GTX 1050 Ti. My business is not working fine with my actual equipment (AVerMedia LGP Lite GL310 x2 and Elgato Camlink HD capture cards) so I was thinking in a downgrade to an used Mac or PC and move to BMD ATEM Mini. Also, with the extra Budget, find some equipment for my cameras. (HDMI cables, lights, tripods, etc). However, here in Argentina and also in Chile (the only place for me to get the ATEM Mini, even at the cost of 1000 km car trip) the social situaton is really messed up, there is no money around and barely job to survive. I probably will stay like this for now, at least for a couple of extra months. By the way, there is also a month to go until the ATEM Mini arrives to Chile
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