video editing: iMac vs PowerMac?

hpeezy said:

anyone here use Final Cut Pro 4 on an iMac? how does it compare to a PowerMac?

a friend of mine is about to purchase, and he wants to go with the iMac for the option of "portablility" but i can't help but think that the PowerMac would be so much better and more powerful for video editing..

Click to expand...

A dual processor G5 PM will eat an iMac alive when it comes to dealing with video matters, the single processor PM will be slightly better, but not by a great deal.

The difference will be in intensive processing like rendering and exporting, actual editing won't be that different on either machine.

The fact you can stick a second HD in a PM is also a plus, as video is better captured/edited on a drive other than the System drive.

Plenty of RAM helps too, but the iMac can carry plenty.

i don't do anything fancy but I use iMovie / iDVD to create my home made videos and i've done some VHS--> Digital conversions to create movies as well - and I have the iMac G5 1.6 version w/1.5GB RAM but it doesn't even use that much.

The encoding takes a long time but i'm unsure if its quicker with the PM, i would assume so. If he is seriously into movie editing on a semi-pro level then he should be looking at the PM G5 2.0 version. If not and its just kinda a hobby and he doesn't do much then definitly the iMac.

I'm happy doing professional editing on my lil' 1.25 powerbook. The only thing that holds me back at all is my 512mb of ram.

As long as your friend isn't editing anything longer than a couple hours, an iMac would serve him fine.