OS X :: Use Mac Mini Or PC For Home Video Editing?
Nov 29, 2009
I have a Dell quad core PC with adobe elements but was considering a mac mini with maybe final cut express. Is it worth the spend? I fancy a mac but my dell is a decent machine. Do you think I would appreciate the mac/final cut for home movies?
I want to get a new MBP but my budget puts me at the base 13" (2.4gHz C2D and nVidia 320M); my question is if it will be sufficient to do home video editing (iMovie 09 and FCE4).Many of the clips I will be editing are 2 hr VHS tapes converted to video and the output will, be for 1hr DVDs; I just don't want the system to get bogged down by multiple clips, etc.
After a frustrating 2 years of video editing on a PC (crash/freeze/loss of work etc), I'm looking to switch to Mac and Final Cut. Even editing high quality SD video (720p/720i), would it be insane to buy a Mac Mini? Would it not be powerful enough? My other option is waiting for the next iMac refresh.
I was wondering if anyone uses their Mac mini to do some basic video editing and mess with photos? My friend is notorious for shooting video and making DVDs of her video. I'm looking for her since she will be new to a Mac. She will basically be doing cutting and pasting of video, adding photos and music in the video, and such things like that. She will not be doing real intense graphics, maybe just having some effects that the video software provides. Question I have asked whether the Mac mini would be powerful enough for her needs. Would final cut be able to run on it in case she decides to get more into it?
I'm not too technically savvy when it comes to computers. I do amateur video editing with Final Cut Pro. I purchased a Mac Mini (2.0ghz, 1GB RAM, base model) and it's taking forever to render my 1.8gb clip. I think total render time with some music is about 1.5 hours as opposed to my old computer (a 2.4ghz penryn mbp, 2gb ram) which would do it in maybe 10 minutes I'd assume. My question to you all is, is my unit defective? Will upping the ram increase the clock speed or am I way in over my head purchasing this unit?
opinions wanted: First, I'm not a gamer. This pc would be strictly for photo editing and video conversion. I'm using photoshop cs4/ lightroom for pictures. For video, I have two objectives. The first is to convert 8mm to dvd. This would involve iMovie to keep it simple. The second would be for new HD video. Since Apple doesn't support blue ray just yet, I just need a way to offload to avchd on a regular dvd. I think Toast would accommodate this.
IMac (27") and mini would both have 4gb RAm. Hard drive space isn't all that important since I'll have an external as well. 2.5ghz vs. 3ghz. nVidea 9400 vs. ATI radeon. So would the less processing power of the mini be offset by the better monitor (Eizo or NEC ~24")? Or is the iMac display good enough?
Well I got rid of the quicksilvers since they died. Power supplys gave out and took the motherboards, So I sold what was left on EBAY.
My G4 Ethernet was sold to a co-worked and he is quite happy.
And I got this off ebay today:
Dual 1.8GHz PowerPC G5Procs 2GB RAM (2 x 1GB PC3200U DDR SDRAM) Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-117D Samsung HD160JJ/P 160GB SATA HDD (not apple labeled, not original to this system) (1) Power Cord pci106b,9 PCI Ethernet Controller
Well I didnt' read the fine print and BAZINGA! I noticed that it comes without a video card.
So For video editing, watching hulu and youtube and netflix What do you guys recommend.
I do have a PCI GEforce at home with 512 megs for PC and I was wondering if I could flash it and if so, does anyone know of a good walkthrough?
I just bought a Mac Mini and was excited to start saving my home movies from 8mm cassettes to my hard drive and go nuts with editing and so on and so on. I have a new intel mini 1.83, what do I need to handle video editing without waiting 5 hours for a dv to become a .mov and or waiting 300 hours ti import a mpg into imovie. I have about a grand to work with, will a g4 tower be enough OR g5? Will be looking on craigslist and have found several however I have no clue what equals a mac mini towerwise for a starting point, someone told me they have an old g4 and have no problems with video editing, however looking at the specs it is underpowered versus what I have.
I've had home movie video cassettes transferred onto DVD professionally and want to move them into iMovie so I can do edits and create new movies. The DVDs play fine but I can't figure out how to get them into iMovie so I can manipulate
I recently bought a Canon HD camcorder bc I want my movies to look like the ones at the apple store. I edited my first movie in imovie 09, but it come out like they were recorded on miniDV tapes. I have a Macbook Pro and Im not a MAC genius. What do i need to do?
I have just read a ton of forum posts and want to make sure I am going to buy the right accessories to make my new Mac Mini all it needs to be to run my home theater.1. For 5.1 audio, do I need to buy this product and then just use a standard Optical audio cable to plug into my receiver?2. The new Mac Mini comes with a mini DVI to DVI connector correct? So all I will have to buy is a DVI to HDMI cable?3. Is OWC (other world computing) the best place to buy upgrades for the mac mini? I have looked at the videos on youtube and it seems like something I should be able to do no problem.
Ive got a friend that has a mac pro 2.66 quad core and it came stock with only 2gb of ram. He wants to order some today but is not sure how much to get. If getting it from OWC what would be the best bang for the buck? is there a point where more ram wont make that much difference?
oh and his has 4x512mb sticks, what are your opinions on not matching the sticks? (such as 1gb with 512mb)
I would love some suggestions for some video editing programs that might work on my G3 imac. 500Mhz, 640MB ram, 16MB graphics. I would prefer freeware, and no imovie. Im not looking for anything too extreme, just some basic or above average editing.
I just installed CS5 and was able to play with Premiere Pro and After Effects. Before I was debating on getting an iMac 27 i7 or a Mac Pro. Well for the money, the iMac i7 does everything I ask it to. Computers can still get faster as this thing is fast, but it's not instant meaning, it still takes time to render. But to give you an idea...on my 13.3 Macbook, a 1 hour render takes about 10 minutes on the i7. The interesting thing is playing Starcraft 2...I don't hear the iMac fans at all...however, rendering HD video puts the CPU to work. I only have 8GB of RAM now and it seems responsive, but I can guarantee for these kinds of video editing programs, the more RAM the merrier. I order 8GB more RAM today and I will have a total of 12GB (I stole 4GB out of my Macbook temporarily). I can certainly say for anyone thinking about iMac for video editing it definitely can get the job done. If money however is not an issue go with the Mac Pro...the extra hard drives make a difference. For those on a budget. like me. this is the top of the line product for a prosumer. It's hard to beat the price for the big monitor and i7 chip. BTW...even 27 isn't enough. I got an external 24 next to it and in fact... running both After Effects and Premiere Pro it would not be out of the question to have a 3rd monitor for web browsing or have a document to look at or something. Let's all hope Adobe supports our video cards in the future.
I have a VHS tape of an educational program that I did and plan to transfer it to a DVD and then do some editing on it with a video editing app... Like breaking it up into shorter clips and adding some text to it, etc) I'm looking for a video editing program that I can do this with. Can I use Motion 5 to accomplish this or is there another app in the App Store that would be better... and not cost a fortune
I currently have a Mac Mini, ssd drive, 2.6ghz quad core i7 with 16gb of ram. Graphics is intel hd4000. Despite it's not having dedicated graphics, would I be able to do some fairly heavy video editing, in Final Cut Pro, with it? I'm still learning, but the computer was an investment and I hope it grows with me. Right now I'm learning with iMovie, but I plan on purchasing FcP in the near future. I am hoping I don't have to worry about purchasing another Mac for at least a couple of years, just because I don't have discrete graphics or iris in this one.
Basically I'm not looking to edit a feature-length presentation, but I'd like to do some music videos, with some cool effects, maybe get into short films or documentaries of 10 to 15 min in length. Nothing too intense, but I'd like to play around with some effects.
So I purchased a stereo output to composite red/white cables. I then plugged the HDMI and composites cables into the receiver, but the it reads only the HDMI (which should include audio and video), or composite (yellow, red, white). If you have HDMI plugged it, it doesn't read from the composite, and vise-versa. So how exactly can I fix this? Why doesn't Apple have the HDMI contain audio and video (like most things, PS3, 360, consoles)? This is really odd and I cannot really use it as a home theatre system at the moment. I was hoping that it wasn't my receivers fault (2008 fancy Denon receiver, cost a few grand), but if it was to find some kind of converter that takes HDMI and stereo out, and outputs it as HDMI with audio/video.
I was just wondering how good the video/picture editing is on the MBP??What would it be rated out of ten?? (If 1 was a normal computer editing program and 10 was photoshop)
i am going to buy the new macbook pro with the i5 card and I was wondering what would be the best option for me because i will use the laptop more often for graphic design then for video editing.
1. to get the macbook with 5400rpm hd, this way my laptop wont over-heat and will be sufficient for graphic softwares such as photoshop. when i will want to use the laptop for video editing i will hook it to a portable hd through firewire cable for maximum data transference speed.
2. other option is to get the 7200rpm hd, but i'm afraid for the well being of my laptop because it will already get quite hot with the fast i5 processor. and the great graphic card.
I currently have an old PPC G4 iMac that has finally shown its age for me now that I want to start doing some basic HD video editing in iMovie to start. I wouldn't totally rule out using Final Cut, but most likely I will be using iMovie for a while. I use consoles for gaming mostly, but would be open to using the iMac for it. So I am basically wondering if I can get away with using the following refurb for at least the next 3 years or so:
Refurbished iMac 27-inch 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 27-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display 4GB memory 1TB hard drive 8x SuperDrive (DVD�R DL/DVD�RW/CD-RW) ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics with 256MB memory Built-in iSight camera
Or seeing as how I do not replace stuff very fast, am I just better off taking the bigger plunge now on this iMac:
Refurbished iMac 27-inch 2.93GHz Intel Quad-Core i7 processor 27-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display 4GB memory 1TB hard drive 8x SuperDrive (DVD�R DL/DVD�RW/CD-RW) ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics with 1GB memory Built-in iSight camera
I am not looking to start a which one is better conversation, that is obvious. I just do not know enough about the performance of these to determine if I am purchasing a machine that is built for something that I will never use.
Has anyone tried this with the 4gb version on the 13". What will slow these things down, or what can you not do? Streaming HD video? Does anyone seeing the memory being an issue in the future?
I have G5 which takes 15 hours to write a DVD home movie.
I am planning to buy a new imac.
My choice is 27" 2.93 i7 8 ram or 21" 3.60 i5 8 ram Does anyone know if there would be a SIGNIFICANT difference in processing a DVD between these two. It has been suggested i7 could do it in 3 hours.
I'm debating whether to go with the Imac of the Mac pro to do some amateur photo and video editing with my new Canon HF 11 HD camcorder. I have NEVER worked with video before and I'm a little nervous pulling the trigger after visiting several Apple stores. I've heard some nightmares about editing high definition video in the AVCHD format. I guess I'm asking this is editing with AVCHD possible with an IMAC? Are the new 24inch IMACs going to be power enough? Would you recommend a powerful Mac Pro instead? Do you see any issues with the AVCHD format?
I've noticed from some other threads that the 17" MBP is the way to go for video editing but I'm getting a good deal on a 15" MBP. I'm going to use mainly for editing video using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.
I want to start a cg animation studio and we will work only on in house projects.The software will be: Maya and Final Cut StudioI will want to buy a Mac Pro in January or February at the most and it will be either 2x2.26 or 2x2.66 Nehalem if Apple will make an update to the Mac Pro and the new price is around what the 2x2.26 is now.
I will also get 6x2GB RAM and 4 1TB hdd's.My problem is that I can't figure out a viable solution for performance and redundancy. I want to have fast speed for importing sequence of files rendered in Maya and converting and editing them in Final Cut Studio with ProRes 4444.But also security so that my data will always be safe.
Any ideas how I can achieve this? I thought maybe setting up one hdd for boot and 3 in Raid 5 mode. Is this a viable option for the workflow i described?
I am in the learning curve with the mac pro and that was expected, I wanted the mac for photography and video edit. The software relation to pc is killing me, I used acronis a lot on pc's is there something powerful and reliable to get for the mac, also used a jasc paint shop pro (simple but good) is there an equivalent in the mac besides photoshop.Can i migrate *.txt addresses to the mac and favorites from a pc to the mac.