Advice on video editing Mac Pro setup

[benlee]

My brother is going to start school in June for Film. He is all set to buy a Mac and knows the software side of things but not so much the Hardware side. I'm trying to help him figure out what setup to buy and hoping you all can help me.
I have a few questions:

1. Should extra hard drives be bought third party?
2. Should he do a raid setup for backups?
3. How much memory should he buy for Final Cut operations? (third party)
4. Should he look into getting a Dell monitor instead of Apple? What is a comparable Dell monitor?
5. 4-Core or 8-Core?
6. Any other knowledgeable Mac Pro buying advice

Thanks ALL!

 

[mperkins37]

There was already the exact same thread 2 days ago, check that one...

 

[GotPro]

My brother is going to start school in June for Film. He is all set to buy a Mac and knows the software side of things but not so much the Hardware side. I'm trying to help him figure out what setup to buy and hoping you all can help me.
I have a few questions:

1. Should extra hard drives be bought third party?

*YES YES YES YES*

2. Should he do a raid setup for backups?

*Can't be answered without understanding what his needs are much more in depth*

3. How much memory should he buy for Final Cut operations? (third party)

*Either a total of 4 GB or 8GB should be sufficient and very inexpensive*

4. Should he look into getting a Dell monitor instead of Apple? What is a comparable Dell monitor?

*Of all the things Apple does well... and has great value on... Monitors are not one of those. They are still 14ms for God's sake @ 5x the price.*

5. 4-Core or 8-Core?

*Most apps won't natively use more than 4 cores. This is, however, a personal future upgrade debate. If he has the cash, and won't miss it, go for the 8. I didn't, and have run everything on 4 at incredible speeds.*

 

[ChemiosMurphy]

Hey... I just got a Mac pro like 2 months ago and here's what i got...

-Order the Stock Mac Pro, aka the 8 core one

-Order a 750 gig hard drive from newegg your video projects

-Order 2 Acer 22" monitors from newegg. NOT THE GLOSSY ONES. **
For video editing, the monitors really don't matter because you should have an NTSC reference monitor to color correct off of. A true editor will have one. I know i'm going to get yelled at by all the wannabe editors, but this is how it is done in the real world.

-Order 4 gigs of ram for <$200 from OWC. I still need to pony up the cash for the ram....

Anyways, that should be good. All the reviews said the WD750GB hard drive i ordered is fast, so skip the raid. It isn't worth it in the long run and you lose your projects. ALWAYS save your FCP file in 2 locations, so one in the scratch disk folder with your projects and the backup on your OS hard drive.

That said, it should work.

 

[dollystereo]

Hey... I just got a Mac pro like 2 months ago and here's what i got...

-Order the Stock Mac Pro, aka the 8 core one

-Order a 750 gig hard drive from newegg your video projects

-Order 2 Acer 22" monitors from newegg. NOT THE GLOSSY ONCES. **
For video editing, the monitors really don't matter because you should have an NTSC reference monitor to color correct off of. A true editor will have one. I know i'm going to get yelled at by all the wannabe editors, but this is how it is done in the real world.

-Order 4 gigs of ram for <$200 from OWC. I still need to pony up the cash for the ram....

Anyways, that should be good. All the reviews said the WD750GB hard drive i ordered is fast, so skip the raid. It isn't worth it in the long run and you lose your projects. ALWAYS save your FCP file in 2 locations, so one in the scratch disk folder with your projects and the backup on your OS hard drive.

That said, it should work.

Super good advice (I do the same).
raid is not necesary (maybe raid 1). unless you work with real HD, wich is not the case.
good luck.