Best Mac for video editing until $2000

[Bibikov]

Hey guys! Please help me. Our team need mac for editing hd video from AG-HPX170. In the highest quality this is 1 hour - 60Gb. Every week we have about 1Tb video files what need editing. We use FCX.

What do you advice for our task? I think about MacPro 2010 year or new iMac.
What specific model you recommend? I plan to buy on ebay but is open to other options.

Thx!

 

[chfilm]

I'd get a new iMac. Problem is you need a thunderbolt external drive in order to do proper editing! That will blow your budget.

 

[gibkibonzo]

I'd get a new iMac. Problem is you need a thunderbolt external drive in order to do proper editing! That will blow your budget.

Or you could dump some extra HDDs in the Mac Pro, RAID 0 them and you don't need thunderbolt at all - which you most likely don't anyway. Heck, 95% of people still use offline/online type of workflows and work on proxies that don't require anything faster than a FW drive if even that... Thunderbolt RAID (a single thunderbolt HDD is a waste of money as the drive's speed is a bottleneck) would prove 'really' valuable only if you deal with native media with high datarates in high resolutions...

But yeah, just saw someone's footnote stating he's using a RAID 0 array for his iTunes library...

Enough said, I'd probably still go with the iMac. Simply because I prefer to stay close to new tech. The core count on old MPs won't make them younger. They still rely on SATA2 and slow RAM. Of course, you can upgrade that *****, but I couldn't care less to myself... Get the best GPU possible there.

What in your mind does "proper editing" mean by the way??

 

[chfilm]

Well with proper editing I was referring to edit multiple streams of 1080p Prores HQ 422 simultaneously without any stuttering at least.

Plus it's common to keep you footage on an external drive/array in a professional workflow many times, just because the Footage has to be portable at some point.

And just for that Thunderbolt and USB 3 are killing an old mac pro, because at some point after your offline editing you will most likely have to carry the data to someone else who's doing the online/color correction and then you will have to wait for hours and hours to transfer your stuff via firewire 800..