Mac Pro vs Imac in Amature video editing

[warensn]

Forgive me. I know, It’s a newbie question. I really want to get the new Canon Vixia camcorder when it comes out. Can the iMac handle 1080i editing? I'll probably just use something like iMovie or Final cut express to do some home movies. Is it really worth it to get the Mac Pro? That's what I had my heart set on, but I would really appreciate some professional advice.

[AliensAreFuzzy]

Really, you'll be fine working with the iMac. The Mac Pro is only really needed if you are doing really really intensive stuff. But the iMac should handle 1080i fine.

[AviationFan]

I agree, the iMac has more than enough power to handle a single HDV stream. If you were going to work with multiple angles (multi clip editing) or uncompressed HD, that would call for a MacPro.

Just make sure you get a large, fast external firewire hard disc with your iMac, for capture and render files. You don't want those on your system drive.

- Martin

[warensn]

Thanks for the advice! I also would like to encode video in H.264 or DivX to watch on my PS3. Is there a big difference in encoding times?
Can the high end iMac encode HD in real time or faster?

[ChrisA]

Thanks for the advice! I also would like to encode video in H.264 or DivX to watch on my PS3. Is there a big difference in encoding times?
Can the high end iMac encode HD in real time or faster?

I wonder if even an 8-core MP can encode 1080i H.264 in faster than real time.

What matters is the amount of footage you shoot. Are we talking hours per day or hours per month? Also what kind of editing do you do. Most consummers are only cutting out the "bad parts" and are not cutting together a show from many reels and working on trimmers and color matching. If you are not on a tight schedule you can always let those long trans-code tasks run over night or start them before yuo go to work.

In any case if you have you will want a fast, scratch disk in addtion to your external Time Machine disk.

[McBob]

Hey, in regards to converting times, yes there will be quite a substantial difference between an imac and mac pro. Format conversion takes a lot of horse power and is usually the time I'll click convert and go do something else.

I've got an iMac and it handles HD great, for what you want the computer to do a mac pro will probably be over kill.

xRob

[BlakTornado]

iMac will do fine.

It will do all you need, in my opinion.

You've stated you're Amature, as am I, and I find that that the iMac is fine.

Converting times aren't really as big a problem as they are for Pros, so I would stick with the iMac until you absolutely MUST upgrade to a Mac Pro.

[yoak]

I have the first 24" iMac and it handles HDV 1080i without problems.
I have edited footage from my Canon XL-H1 and Sony EX1. The problem is render times, but for an amateur it dosen´t matter.

The one thing that takes really long time is conforming HDV to video (If you want to get yor edited HDV footage back out to HDV tape) That´s dowwn to the HDV codec though and that takes long even on my MP.

I got the MP last week because we have an upcoming job for national televison that only leaves us 4 days to edit before broadcast. (It´s a extreme ski program, so no flashy effects just an edit)

I felt the I couldn´t really trust only my iMac with that job, as we have multiple cameras and formats.

So as you can see, it takes a serious job before a MP is needed (but maybe not wanted;))

[ckurowic]

I use my 2.4GHz iMac with 4GB of RAM and it rips through Final Cut Express with some pretty good speed. Of course the Mac Pro will be faster with its 4 or 8 cores, but I would say the iMac does the job very well.

[warensn]

I know now that all I really need is an iMac.

[warensn]

An iMac is all really need. Iwonder when they will upgrade the iMac line. I'm not in a terrible hurry to buy, so I can wait if an upgrade is coming soon.

[hotshotharry]

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=461691

I was seriously thinking that a mac pro would be amazingly fast! But after looking at that thread it would appear that you would have to run simultaneous encodes to realize the full power of the 8 cores ! What a shame, Perhaps a nice imac will be all i need :-(

lol

[hotshotharry]

What kind of times are people looking at for rendering movies on the different hardware? if a guy was only going to do one render at a time then maybe and imac or the new mac mini revision would wo the trick?

How about listing hardware and render times for HD and SD vids, including cpu usage and vid output settings? as well as input vid source and vid length.

Id be interested to see how everything stacks up?

[bigbossbmb]

was seriously thinking that a mac pro would be amazingly fast! But after looking at that thread it would appear that you would have to run simultaneous encodes to realize the full power of the 8 cores !

Incorrect. You just have to set up a virtual cluster in Apple Qmaster and render with Compressor.

[mperkins37]

Virtual Cluster?
How do you accomplish this?
Can it be done on Final Cut Pro? Not Version 2?

[bigbossbmb]

Can't be done with FCP, it only helps with conversions made in Compressor. Yes, you should be able to do it with Final Cut Studio 1.0.

[hotshotharry]

So basically unless your using compressor, you will have limited gains! Therefore the mac pro would not be alot more effective than a good imac on say idvd and fce?

[bigbossbmb]

correct

[trademark13]

I'm currently looking at upgrading my mac and was wondering what the general feeling is concerning an iMac versus Mac Pro for video editing.

I'm using a Canon Vixia 30 HD, but do primarily family videos, so my editing needs are not great. I do the family videos, some conversion of my movie library to Apple TV format, and conversion of VHS to dvd, so my editing needs are not real great, but processing seems to be fairly intense. My experience has been mostly with iMovie, Final Cut Express and iDVD, though I am thinking of upgrading to Final Cut.

My biggest concern is the Ram limitation of the cureent iMacs plus I really would like to be able to use eSata. (I just purchased a CalDigit VR 1.8 TB RAID 0 that would really benefit from eSata versus Firewire 800).

Thoughts? Recommendations?

Many thanks.

[Chris7]

Virtual Cluster?
How do you accomplish this?
Can it be done on Final Cut Pro? Not Version 2?
Can't be done with FCP, it only helps with conversions made in Compressor. Yes, you should be able to do it with Final Cut Studio 1.0.So basically unless your using compressor, you will have limited gains! Therefore the mac pro would not be alot more effective than a good imac on say idvd and fce?
correct

I have FCP6 and a MBP (duel core). If I moved up to a Mac Pro 8-core (with similar clock speed per core), would I see improved RT performance? How about for rendering a sequence directly in FCP without using compressor?'

I always thought the answer was yes, but not so sure now.

Sorry to hijack the thread -- I may start a thread on just this topic later.:o

Thanks.

Edit:
...(I just purchased a CalDigit VR 1.8 TB RAID 0 that would really benefit from eSata versus Firewire 800).

Thoughts? Recommendations?

Many thanks.
I am getting read speeds of over 180 MB/sec on a CalDigit VR, using a Sonnet Tempo SATA Pro ExpressCard/34 card, according to a AJA test. Other tests online are showing similar results with this card. It will handle three streams of ProRes 1929x1080. But the speed should drop considerably once the hard drive approaches full. Of course, if you are buying new you would need a 17" MBP to use an ExpressCard/34. But it's hard to edit on a laptop screen. And for less than the price of a new 17" MBP, you could get one of the new 2008 2.8 Ghz 8-core Mac Pros still floating around...

[bigbossbmb]

I have FCP6 and a MBP (duel core). If I moved up to a Mac Pro 8-core (with similar clock speed per core), would I see improved RT performance? How about for rendering a sequence directly in FCP without using compressor?

the archetecture of the MP chips is better, but the performance increase shouldn't be too significant for RT editing in FCP.

[Chris7]

the archetecture of the MP chips is better, but the performance increase shouldn't be too significant for RT editing in FCP.
Thanks Bigboss,

So would we be talking about, say, less than a 25% increase in RT performance (with equal clock speeds)?

How about for rendering directly in FCP (not compressor)? Same deal?

-Chris

[DOTprod]

I know its been a while since this thread has been active but I came across it on google and figured this would probably be the best place to be able to answer my question, I'm getting into Action sports filming/editing and I was wondering how a iMac quad core with i7 processor, 8g of ram, with a ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB video card will do with 1080i video work? I'll have FCP and will use compressor on the advice Ive read so far in this thread.

[martinX]

I know its been a while since this thread has been active
The thread commenced three years ago. You should start a new thread.

FWIW, the iMac you've suggested would be up to the task.

[DOTprod]

I dont know how this forum is but I know most get mad with reposts or similar topics so I just bumped, figured I'd save up forum space a bit. Thanks for the help tho ;)

[ChrisA]

I know its been a while since this thread has been active but I came across it on google and figured this would probably be the best place to be able to answer my question, I'm getting into Action sports filming/editing and I was wondering how a iMac quad core with i7 processor, 8g of ram, with a ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB video card will do with 1080i video work? I'll have FCP and will use compressor on the advice Ive read so far in this thread.

Wow, I'm still subscribbed to this thread. See my post above. If you are shootinf a few hours of footage per month render times don't matter as you can just do something else but if shooting every day your work will back up. those people tend t own more than one Mac Pro