Ableton Forum

Hi folks.

I'm aiming to make all my new tracks available as live video recordings on YouTube as well. Like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5vsvyeVxpY

But my old 2009 MBP 2.8ghz Core2Duo takes quite some time to render (even with the dedicated video card switched on in the Mac's Energy Saver system prefs). So, I think it is time for a new machine.

My workflow has been to overlay the video on top of the mixed audio track, and Live is great for that.

What type of specs should I specifically look for to speed up the video rendering process in live?
Do I want more CPU cores or just faster CPU cores? More video RAM or just more system RAM? or even faster RAM?

Which machine specs influence video render speeds the most?

Thanks!

you should get the fastest CPU you can get with the most cores. if you have to take a slight speed decrease but gain 2 more cores then i would recommend going that route.

you want as much RAM as possible. for what you're trying to do... i believe that somewhere in the ball park of 12 GB of RAM or more would be the starting point.

all of the above is moot though if you get a slow hard drive. that would be a bottleneck. so any drive that runs at 5400 rpm is insanity and should be avoided. ideally you want an SSD (they are bottled lightening). they have come a long way over the last few years and are even bordering on "affordable". you might have to take a hit in drive size... so where you might typically get a 1 TB drive on a new computer you might need to settle for a 256 GB instead. the trade off here is that traditional spinning hard drives are now dirt cheap. so you can always store files on one of those externally and move only the projects you are working on to the SSD drive... but the options exist for 512 GB and 1 TB SSD drives as well, although the wisdom behind the price is a little more questionable at those sizes and beyond.

So video card specs are inconsequential?

They help so don't skimp, but the other factors are more weighted when it comes to rendering and that's where you said you're dissatisfied

With mac you just don't have options for video cards, so just choose the best CPU you can get,.

For video rendering, you'll see a HUGE speed increase from c2d to an i5/i7.

hacktheplanet wrote:For video rendering, you'll see a HUGE speed increase from c2d to an i5/i7.

At least tenfold in my experience.

Thanks, folks!