Is the rendering on Final Cut X faster than on Final Cut Express?

Have not done a side by side comparison, but it should be noticeably faster. FCP-X is 64 bit software optimized for Mavericks and modern video codecs, FCE is way old 32 bit software that was abandoned before many of the video codecs in use today were standardized. So the software portion of the process should be accelerated. Your disk drive throughput will remain unchanged, however - so if your drives are a bottleneck for FCE, they will be even more so for FCP-X.

Here are the minimum requirements for FCP-X:

http://www.apple.com/lae/finalcutpro/specs/

although you probably want to max the ram of your computer out, and work with very fast drives.

MtD

In your case, the limiting factor is the hardware in your Mac. Compared to today's Macs, your MBP is old. I know, I know, it's a perfectly good Mac - I am using an almost identical model right now.

But you asked about comparative rendering speed and would the software make a significant difference. The answer is no. Rendering speed is primarily dependent on the speed & capabilities of your CPU, RAM, i/o bus, hard drive (and in newer Macs also the GPU). You probably have the standard 5400rpm hard drive in your MBP, which is the main bottleneck with rendering ... and that won't change for FCP-X.

software that was abandoned before many of the video codecs in use today were standardized

That's a bit of an overstatement. FCE4 handles H.264 quite well and that's still the single most popular codec today in terms of numbers of people using it. (Understanding that FCE transcodes H.264 to AIC for editing; it doesn't edit H.264 natively.)

FCP-X can natively edit H.264 ... but you also need a significantly more powerful Mac than a Core2Duo model in order to handle H.264's system resource demands. The OP's MBP barely meets the minimum requirements for FCP-X, which isn't a good omen for FCP-X performance on his/her MBP.

Further, and to more directly answer your question "would the software make a difference?"

• Not on your MBP. Unlikely FCP-X would yield any siginificant improvement in rendering times.
• Yes if you are using a much more recent Mac, say with an i5/i7 dual or quadcore CPU, 8GB RAM and an SSD.

Just for grins, can you time out an equivalent render (if there is such a thing) in both FCE and FCP-X? It would be interesting to get some hard numbers.

Like 30 seconds of greenscreen compositing? Or 60 seconds of three layer PIP?

MtD

deadpool1551 wrote:

Or does the software make no difference

Macbook Pro

2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

I think the question is already covered.

My comments are relating to the actual hardware as I have an older MBPro similar to yours and also a newer i7 Quad core with 16 gig ram laced to Thunderbolt connected drives.

Playing identical timelines there is a marked difference; New Mac, smooth as glass; Old Mac, cough and splutters a bit with idenentical media requiring Proxy files to get similar perfomance.

That being said the oler MBPro does work OK with Mavericks and FCP X 10.1 (the latest version)

In short hardware upgrading will yield faster results all round.

Al

I have a 2009 2.66 Core2Duo MBP, which I believe is the same vintage as yours. Last year I upgraded the RAM from 4GB to 8GB and replaced the original hard drive (5400rpm) with a 7200 rpm WD Scorpio Black drive ... and it's like a new machine. I'm running FCE 4.0.1, Adobe CS6 (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), Aperture, etc. and it's a champ.

I am confident you will see an overall improvement in performance with similar upgrades to your MBP., but it is hard to tell if you will see a "big" improvement in FCE rendering times ... your mileage may vary.

Full disclosure

• I installed OS X and all my apps from scratch on the new hard drive, I did not clone the old drive to the new drive. Doing a completely fresh install can work wonders.
• Noticed in your profile that you are using Mavericks. FCE was discontinued back in June 2011, even before Lion was released. It is no longer supported. Mavericks is 2 more generations past Lion. Your rendering issues may be related to that. Users have had very mixed experience with FCE on Lion, Mt. Lion and Mavericks.

My MBPro 3,1 can handle a maximum of 6 gig. Not sure about your specific Mac.

Upgrading ram and a faster hard drive will make differnce in overall performance.

Al

certanly will, I did myself a RAM upgrade and a optical drive replacement for a SSD. it is great on the old mcb pro the possibility of to put an ssd on the place of the optcal drive, basically you put any ssd in this 7 dollar bay (http://amzn.to/1n4016a). If you go make all the work put 16gb ram http://amzn.to/1J5WY7i or the macmemory http://amzn.to/1n40Qff the old mcb pro 2012 suports 16gb and not only 8gb as is on apple tec spechs, I am not shure about other models but I guess a lot of 2011, 2010 models will happen the same.

if you only have 1 hd on you mac be sure to use a good external drive so you don't push read and write pressure at same time in the same hd, go for a thunderbolt hard drive, there are cheap options like the new sony http://amzn.to/1J5Xp1l and the high end options like the drobo http://amzn.to/1WcIggE where you put up to 4 hd and a smal m-sat ssd that will be like an external fusion drive.