Proof of Concept

Though DW was laid off from her job in July, she has yet to return her office laptop to her former company. It's a MacBook Pro that she loves and would like to keep.

They're negotiating.

Meanwhile, I've been using an Asus computer for the past couple of years, writing my blog posts, processing my photos, and creating my videos for my YouTube channel (I'm just shy of 200 subscribers, so if you could do me a solid, please subscribe).

My laptop is fine for editing photos but when it comes to editing video, it's slow, to say the least. Sometimes, when it's rendering video clips that I've imported into a project, the program chokes or worse, it crashes.

When I pull a video file into the channel that I'm creating, it can take 15 to 20 minutes to load, depending on the length of the clip. I'll often spend time watching other videos while I wait for the clip to load, when it'll finally allow me to work on it.

I need a faster computer.

I explained my woes to DW, who has told me that her office MacBook Pro has a faster video card than our home computer, and that it would be able to process my videos much more quickly.

I told her that as long as that computer belongs to her old company, I'm not going to use it. I don't use my work computer to do my photo or video editing, so why would I use her work computer? (Sometimes, after I finish a day of work, I may write a blog post on my work computer, since I'm sitting at my home-office desk, but I never plug any external drives into it, so photos or videos are a no-go.)

Also, I've been using Windows computers for decades and I'd have to get used to using an Apple interface.

The other day, DW and I went shopping at our local Costco and came across a Windows OS laptop that had lots of RAM and a powerful video card. It also had a decent price, at about $1,600. I even found a gaming desktop computer, and I started thinking that for what I was doing, I didn't need portability.

DW and I started rethinking computers.

DW steered me toward some Mac Mini units, which had loads of power for video creation. She suggested that if she can't keep her MacBook Pro, the Mini could be an option.

But then she started pricing out a new MacBook Pro with an M3 Pro video card (meant nothing to me). She really likes the portability of her Apple computer and said that if she has to return the work laptop, she will buy herself one of these high-end MacBooks.

All $3,500 of it.

"If you're set on doing that," I said, "that settles our next computer. We won't be able to afford anything else."

"You'd be able to process your videos much more quickly," she said. "And I would install Final Cut Pro. It's supposed to be a great video-editing tool."

Hmph.

DW couldn't wait. She downloaded a trial version onto her work computer this weekend. She also downloaded Insta360 Studio, the computer version of my app that I use on my smartphone to edit my 360-degree videos.

I shared three clips from a source folder, where I keep my Insta360 files. I have about a half-dozen folders of raw footage from kayaking, cycling, and other events that I haven't processed. When she had everything on her MacBook, she talked me into sitting in the driver's seat.

"Walk me through your workflow, from editing the video clips to putting them into a single file for YouTube."

I didn't know the software but I did my best.

There is no voiceover, though not all of my videos use it. It's basic, with an intro title, music, fades in and out. Three clips from my Insta360 X3, edited in the dedicated software that I haven't used in years. The soundtrack, which doesn't really go with the visuals, was taken from Final Cut Pro.

Usually, for a two-minute video, it would take me about three hours to go through my entire workflow of editing the video files, exporting them to an MP4 format, creating a video project, putting everything together, and rendering the final results.

This time, it took less than an hour.

I'm intrigued.

DW says that her office MacBook has an M1 video card. With a new MacBook Pro with an M3 Pro card, processing the videos would be even faster.

Here's the test video, which I made as a proof of concept for working in this new environment of new tools on a new operating system.

What also impresses me is that I didn't know the software and was able to figure things out fairly easily. If I become proficient in Insta360 Studio and Final Cut Pro, I can only imagine my videos would be much easier and faster to make.

I'm almost finished a video that I'm making on my old system. Perhaps, after that one is done, I'll switch to a new way of producing my content.

Stay tuned.