any recommendation - I am planning on FCE4 and the 27" iMac

[jefferzzz]

I have a Sony HDR-SR11 and I am planning on getting the 27" iMac (w/ core 2 duo chip) with FCE4 in the next few weeks so I can make my own HD movies.

Any recommendations on external blu ray drives and support software? Any heads-ups on possible issues I can expect from the above combo? Thanks in advance.

 

[pcconvert]

You'd need to change your specs to i7 quad. Forget about BR etc. accessories and spend money on processor. Otherwise forget about working with HD on your new mac. Seriously.

 

[aimhigh]

I have the HDR SR12 (larger hard disk but otherwise the same). It is recognised by FCE4 when importing and everything works fine.

I edit using a unibody Macbook PRO (Late 2008) with 2.8GHZ Core 2 Duo and 4GB RAM. I have no problems editing at all, but be aware render times can be very long (hours).

This is because the files get very large. One hour of video on the camera (AVCHD) will expand through the FCE Apple Intermediate Codec to about 44GB on disk. A 1.5hour movie will export to a 60GB file (this will reduce to 4.5GB on DVD of course). The files are huge.

Accept this and your iMac will be fine. The 27" display will make editing a breeze.

Couple of extra points;

Do you know FCE4 ? If not take a look at the free video tutorials on Izzy Video.

The recommended set up is to have your scratch files (inc render files) on a separate disk to your OS disk. This generally means an external disk, and you should choose a firewire 800 interface. USB2.0 will give you errors with FCE4, and even if you dont get errors the render times will be protracted.
Additionally, choose a hard disk with 7200rpm spindles. Most pre-packaged disks only have 5400rpm spindles so I always buy an empty enclosure and specify my own hard disk.

Hope this helps. I can only speak from my own experience and yes it would be nice to have a quad cpu system but the cost is so very much higher and for me, not justified. I just render overnight.

Enjoy your iMac and FCE4

Russ

 

[Angelo95210]

You'd need to change your specs to i7 quad. Forget about BR etc. accessories and spend money on processor. Otherwise forget about working with HD on your new mac. Seriously.

I work on HD videos with the previous 24" Mac and it's totally fine. C2D is OK, but more is never enough for video. So i7 would be nice to have.

 

[senseless]

"The recommended set up is to have your scratch files (inc render files) on a separate disk to your OS disk. This generally means an external disk, and you should choose a firewire 800 interface. USB2.0 will give you errors with FCE4, and even if you dont get errors the render times will be protracted. "

I save FC files on the internal drive and offload to externals for archiving. Is this not recommended for some reason?

 

[Angelo95210]

Because it makes intensive reading on hard drives. If you use only one drive, the head has to jump between your video file, the OS and the FC program. Its a very demanding usage of your system. With two drives, the workload is far better dispatched.

So basically you can do it but it is very slow.

 

[xStep]

There are a few Blu-Ray software options, but to keep costs down, Toast with its Blu-Ray extension will be the answer for creating discs. The discs can be either Blu-Ray, or DVD, but of course DVD cannot hold as much content.

Players may be a hit or miss right now regarding homemade BD content, but that is apparently getting better.

Note that OS X has no way to play Blu-Ray discs. Apple currently considers it a 'bag of hurt' so isn't supporting that feature currently.

 

[senseless]

Thanks Angelo, that sounds logical. Best to have a dedicated drive that's not running the os at the same time.