A PowerBook faster than a Quad Core iMac,

[macnerd93]

Hello guys,

So last night I found my old mini DV Camcorder and about 25 mini DV tapes. I connected it via Firewire into my 1.5GHz 17'' PowerBook G4 with only 2GB RAM, and decided to capture and edit my 2009 Prom video and then proceeded to send the project to iDVD.

One thing I noticed at first was the instantaneous time it took iMovie to send the project to iDVD. I'm guessing its pre-rendered already in iMovie HD for the iDVD project? (I've been a user of iLife since version 2004), but its been many years since using these old versions and I am stunned at the speed of the PowerBook for standard Def projects.

By comparison using the latest version of iDVD available for intel and the newest version of iMovie from the Mac App Store on my Quad Core iMac with 32GB RAM and an SSD the project had only just finished rendering in iMovie by a couple of minutes when the DVD on the PowerBook ejected and the burn was complete.

I miss the iLife integration, slows down your work flow. Apple really shouldn't have been split up all the iApps

just thought i'd share my rather interesting PowerPC experience.

So the PowerBook is gonna become a great little machine for capturing mini DV and editing.

 

[Altemose]

Ironically, since I always have to save the files first out of iMovie before going to iDVD my Intel MBP is much faster. I used to try the "send to iDVD" option but never got it to work the way I wanted.

 

[Jessica Lares]

iLife got heavier and heavier every version and the program needed to handle newer technology. It is possible that the iMac could run the same version of iLife used on PowerPC if the newer OSes could support it.

 

[macnerd93]

Ironically, since I always have to save the files first out of iMovie before going to iDVD my Intel MBP is much faster. I used to try the "send to iDVD" option but never got it to work the way I wanted.

I used iMovie HD (send to iDVD) and iDVD loaded up right away with the project ready for burning once I had made my DVD menu. No compiling out to iDVD though, which I thought surprising.

 

[Altemose]

I used iMovie HD (send to iDVD) and iDVD loaded up right away with the project ready for burning once I had made my DVD menu. No compiling out to iDVD though, which I thought surprising.

For what I do, I must always save the file before bringing it into Toast or iDVD. It is just a requirement of my workflow. That being said, the last time I tried the "send to iDVD" option was in iLife '09.

 

[macnerd93]

For what I do, I must always save the file before bringing it into Toast or iDVD. It is just a requirement of my workflow. That being said, the last time I tried the "send to iDVD" option was in iLife '09.

ah, for my PowerPC Macs I tend to find iLife '06 the best in terms of speed.

 

[Altemose]

ah, for my PowerPC Macs I tend to find iLife '06 the best in terms of speed.

I agree! It really runs great on most any hardware.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

What precise versions of software are you using?

What method are you using to get the video from the camera to the computer?


miniDV records in a completely uncompressed format. iMovie 6 and earlier import that directly, editing the uncompressed video. This makes it fast on older systems (iMovie works on systems as slow as the original Power Mac G3! Older versions only require a 300 MHz G3 and a FireWire port.)

Older versions of iMovie don't even really "export" anything when you send it to iDVD - they just tell iDVD to use the same uncompressed files. It's iDVD that does the transcoding to MPEG-2.


Modern versions of iMovie make the assumption that you're using modern formats which are compressed in "not easily editable" formats. So modern versions of iMovie transcode all incoming video to an easy-to-edit format. This takes time. And when you do *ANYTHING* with the video, when you send it to ANY application, it exports it in to a more compressed, but less easy to edit format.