Which MBP for movie editing?

I'm an Australian student, currently studying film at Uni and I'm looking to get one of the new MacBook Pros. My question is; out of the available options, which 15inch MBP do you guys think I would be better off getting?

The $2699 AUD model with:
* 2.4GHz Penryn CPU with 3MB Cache
* 200GB 5400RPM SATA HDD
* 2GB DDR2-667 RAM
* GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB video memory

Or the $3399 AUD model with:
* 2.5GHz Penryn CPU with 6MB Cache
* 250GB 5400RPM SATA HDD
* 2GB DDR2-667 RAM
* GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB video memory

So basically, does 0.1GHz CPU speed, 50GB of HDD space and 256MB of video memory really justify the extra $700 AUD? Keeping in mind I will mainly be using applications like Final Cut Pro, Motion, Photoshop, and DVD Studio Pro.

 

Personally, I think the cheaper model would be fine.

FCP, DVDSP, and PShop are not hard on the video card. Motion uses the video card, but, the difference between the 256MB and 512MB version is not worth the price premium. The 256MB video card will run Motion fine. My 128MB X1600 runs Motion fine.

The extra 3MB CPU cache (the 2.5GHz version has 6MB cache compared to the 2.4GHz with 3MB cache) is definitely nice, but again, the price difference is too large.

Hard drives are a commodity, if you are editing video you are going to need eSATA or external Firewire drives to store video anyhow. Consider an upgrade to the 7200rpm drive, but the extra 50GB won't much matter at the end of the day.

Basically, the extra cache is nice, but not worth the price premium.

 

Any Macbook Pro on the current line-up will be fine for video editing. The difference in price is too large to justify a bit of a performance increase.

 

Yeah the MBPRO is fine...I edit on my XPS and it runs great. MBPRO is perfect.

 

you will most likely like to work with some pretty high data rate codecs, so it is definitely worthy it to go for the 200gb 7200rpm drive over all other options, atleast until Hitachi releases a larger 7200rpm drive, or SSD's become the norm.

I also have to recommend the 17" model and High Res display if at all possible, as 1080p video even from basic camcorders is becoming the norm very quickly.

 

Yeah I agree. If this is gonna be your PRIMARY computer, I say go the 17" and load it up...if its not, then go the 15 inch. I MAY have a 7200 RPM drive installed...but that as far as I'll do. This is a secondary machine. Buy what suits your purpose.

 

I've been doing quite a bit of video editing on the MBP (see sig) and it's fine. I even have another three apps open at the same time and don't notice a slow down at all. So any MBP will do IMO.

 

Ive never video edited on MBPRO yet, but the XPS using Pinnacle takes forever to render to DVD.