Advice Needed PLease.

[SpProductions]

Hi, we are new to the mac world so please excuse us.

here is our story.me and my friend just got into short films.we are in the process of writing out first short film which will be about 20-30 minutes long. we are both PC owners and at the moment none of our Pc are good for video editing.we have shot some clips with our Canon T3I DSLR and tried to edit them on Sony Vegas but its a real lag to even preview the clips. we recently made the decision to buy a mac.The only bad thing is we only have a Budget of $500. we would like to buy a mac machine which would allow us to edit on lets say FCP.

we have been searching on ebay and we see some machines under 500
with specs like :

Apple Power Macintosh G5 DUAL 2Ghz
4GB RAM
80GB HARD DRIVE
RUNNING LEOPARD 10.5.8 WITH ILIFE '09!!!!! (DE001505)


OUR main questions are.

what would you recommend to us with the budget limitations that we have ?
what would be the ideal specs and machine you would recommend ?
and what are the main things to look for and look out for when buying an mac for our mail purpose which is short film editing.

 

[r0k]

Hi, we are new to the mac world so please excuse us.

here is our story.me and my friend just got into short films.we are in the process of writing out first short film which will be about 20-30 minutes long. we are both PC owners and at the moment none of our Pc are good for video editing.we have shot some clips with our Canon T3I DSLR and tried to edit them on Sony Vegas but its a real lag to even preview the clips. we recently made the decision to buy a mac.The only bad thing is we only have a Budget of $500. we would like to buy a mac machine which would allow us to edit on lets say FCP.

we have been searching on ebay and we see some machines under 500
with specs like :

Apple Power Macintosh G5 DUAL 2Ghz
4GB RAM
80GB HARD DRIVE
RUNNING LEOPARD 10.5.8 WITH ILIFE '09!!!!! (DE001505)


OUR main questions are.

what would you recommend to us with the budget limitations that we have ?
what would be the ideal specs and machine you would recommend ?
and what are the main things to look for and look out for when buying an mac for our mail purpose which is short film editing.

I would not get an old PPC Mac. Well let me rephrase. I would not spend more than $250 on one. I suggest you consider stretching your budget a bit and get a refurbished Intel Mac mini. One example here. You should also plan on getting a vga monitor adapter cable and Apple keyboard. You (probably) can use your PC mouse and vga monitor. You might get away for just over $600 with the cable and keyboard but you will be much better off in terms of performance, software availability and overall user experience.

 

[SpProductions]

thanx r0k for your input.

my only issue with a mini is the ability to do any upgrades like video cards and ram down the line if we ever need to.

that's the main reason we mainly looked at the G5s because its easy to upgrade, at least that's what we think like i said we are new to the mac world.

 

[Consultant]

Just get the $600 Mac Mini. Intel mac mini = much faster than G5 Mac.

You might want to add your own 7200rpm drive.

OS X is more efficient so you don't need to "upgrade". PC users need to upgrade due to sluggish system caused by Windows.

 

[r0k]

I agree with Consultant. Getting the G5 is like shopping for a new computer at a flea market. Granted, OS X will run on older hardware and run well, but the G5 is already 2 releases of OS X out of support (Snow Leopard and Lion). This is not the hardware you should be investing in going forward.

I upgraded my Macbook recently by going from 2GB to 4GB of RAM. I also went from a 160 GB HDD to a 500 GB Hybrid SSD drive. The mini is easily upgradeable in 2 of the most important areas: RAM and HDD. So while I agree that OS X doesn't demand the latest hardware just to get going, it's nice to have these fresh upgrades in my Macbook as it allows me to plan my next Apple purchase on my timing not somebody else's.

 

[blunti]

I would not buy that G5. No matter what the budget is, you will be struggling with that comp if you guys are really serious about editing.

For $500 your best option would possibly be to build a hackintosh altho I think you will have to extend your budget a bit.

My problem as a professional editor with the mini is that upgrades are limited and in my opinion they can't replace a well built desktop.

you might wanna give Avid Media Composer a try. Great software

GL!

 

[Young Spade]

Save up some more money and buy a Mac Mini.

You'd do better overall (with the budget) by just getting a good desktop on the Windows side and getting a good program at that; you have money set aside to buy the software correct?

But if you want to stay Mac, get a used/refurbished Mini with at least 4 gigs of RAM.

Just get the $600 Mac Mini. Intel mac mini = much faster than G5 Mac.

You might want to add your own 7200rpm drive.

OS X is more efficient so you don't need to "upgrade". PC users need to upgrade due to sluggish system caused by Windows.

Or because Apple wants people to spend more money and buy machines that still have par-sub par internals?

You can't upgrade graphics cards, you can't even upgrade the internals on a new iMac (HD anyway).

It isn't efficiency; my machine runs hot when playing most games (2011MBP) due to the crappy integrated graphics card, it's the fact that Apple loves making profit.