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How can I afford a Mac Pro and CS6 Production Premium (premiere pro)?

M

monajessy21

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 23, 2014
1
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I am 15 and am starting cinematography and i have outstanding understanding of both photography and videography. i currently use a Canon 500D with magic lantern firmware and technicolour's cinestyle user defined picture style. the problem here is that the cinestyle profile is design to be perfect for editing because it produces a flat de-saturated image and without colour correction will look rubbish. being only 15 it is rather hard to make enough money for premiere pro. any help or ideas wil be much appreciated!
 
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monajessy21 said:
I am 15 and am starting cinematography and i have outstanding understanding of both photography and videography. i currently use a Canon 500D with magic lantern firmware and technicolour's cinestyle user defined picture style. the problem here is that the cinestyle profile is design to be perfect for editing because it produces a flat de-saturated image and without colour correction will look rubbish. being only 15 it is rather hard to make enough money for premiere pro. any help or ideas wil be much appreciated!
Click to expand...


I'm sure you'll find a way. Don't lock yourself with mac and osx. There are many other options with other brands.
 
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i don't mean to belittle you, but i'm not sure what you think we can do other than just sending you money. you should probably ask your parents.
 
Yeah,

I am not sure what you are looking for in terms of advice? Get education discount, start small? Do you need a mac pro? Like absolutely the mac pro is the only machine to do what you need?

If yes....get a summer job. Mac pro + Screen + CS premiere pro ~= $4000.

4000 / 7.25 = 551 hours, or about 70 days of work at minimum wage.

If you don't want to work at mcdonalds, ask your parents for the money.
 
First of all, you don't need a Mac Pro to start out video editing; it'll be overkill. A mid-range MacBook or PC will work just fine for that.

Secondly, you don't need Premiere to color grade footage, and it doesn't even have that extensive of color grading tools. DaVinci Resolve Lite is a free version of the full version, and is a dedicated color grading program. Scroll down in the left column of this page to download it: http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support

If you don't have the money, use iMovie, or spend a bit less on Premiere Elements than the full version to get started out editing. Alternatively, I'm sure you can procure a free version of FCP 7 somewhere from the Internet, given that Apple isn't selling it anymore.
 
12dylan34 said:
First of all, you don't need a Mac Pro to start out video editing; it'll be overkill. A mid-range MacBook or PC will work just fine for that.
Click to expand...

This. If you really just want a high end machine, you could get a high end refurb 27" iMac or 15" rMBP to save some dough and it would more than enough for just starting out.
 
monajessy21 said:
[...] magic lantern firmware and technicolour's cinestyle user defined picture style [...]
Click to expand...

Sounds like you've been drinking videophile kool-aid. Honestly the best advice at this point is to scale back your expectations. Getting a mid-range desktop PC will cost half of the price of a Macbook and have far more performance, if you want it for HD editing. You can license Adobe Premiere Pro from creative cloud for $20/month which is my personal favorite movie editing software.

If your heart is set on Apple, pretty much any iMac or even Macbook should do. Again, desktop always gets better price for performance if you're serious.

Bottom line, you're looking at $800ish for a desktop PC with a quad core i5, 16gb of ram and a video card. The mac equivalent of the Mac mini won't cut it at that price range. This build alone will take you very far. Then again, I'm assumming you've got a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and table to set it up in, otherwise laptop makes more sense.

Don't focus on getting the top-of-the-line everything right now. It's far more important for you to get started as soon as you can.
 
Mac Pro? That's quite a machine, are you sure you need such a powerful computer?

If that's what you want/need, then get a job (or jobs) and save every penny towards that goal. IT won't be easy but its achievable. Sorry there's no easy answers.
 
Edit with Windows Movie Maker or iMovie.. Use what you got now and get premiere elements for a $100.. You have a camera; what you now need is to collect your ideas and DO SOMETHING!! You DON'T NEED any Mac Pro or CS6 to do a thing, just an idea and a passion to fulfill it.
 
What you could do is buy a 2009 or 2010 MP. Get a cheap one which is bound to have limited specs. And than over time raise the specs of your MP buy installing faster disks, more memory, better CPUs etc. Thus you have a decent working machine and you will get a lot of hands-on experience while thinkering with the hardware etc.
And if you are really talented you will start making a profit which you can than use to buy a better machine.
Just my thoughts, his is how I would start.
 
This is what you do:

Solution 1: (cost <1k)
  • buy a mac mini with quadcore on a discount (~600,-)
  • buy an ssd and owc data doubler (~200,-)
  • put the ssd inside the mac mini
  • buy 16gb ram (~150,-)
  • download DaVinci Resolve Lite (for color grading)
  • use iMovie for editing

Solution 2: (costs nothing)
  1. sell your 500d and lenses (advertise it as dslr with RAW capabilities ;) )
  2. buy a Nikon D5200 with a VR kit lens

I recommend solution two. And here is why:

  • the D5200 gets it right in camera. The video quality is damn close to the 5dmark iii.
  • ML does not have real RAW. The footage is downsampled inside the sensor to 4:2:0
  • editing the "raw" footage requires a lot of time and computing power, which you probably do not have
  • the D5200 also takes great photos
  • the 500d has moire and aliasing problems, the D5200 doesn't
  • with the Nikon hack the D5200 records 64bps internaly and the footage is easy to handel
 
Lol, kids...
Any mac is capable of editing full HD if converted to Pro Res.
You don't need a MacPro.
The mac mini solution is pretty good. (I was editing 1080p footage in 2003 with a Dual G4 in final cut 5.0).
As software wise, Final Cut X is really good and fast and cheap.
 
dollystereo said:
Lol, kids...
Any mac is capable of editing full HD if converted to Pro Res.
You don't need a MacPro.
The mac mini solution is pretty good. (I was editing 1080p footage in 2003 with a Dual G4 in final cut 5.0).
As software wise, Final Cut X is really good and fast and cheap.
Click to expand...
The OP wants to edit 14bit raw from ML. A dual G4 is not even remotely able to handle that.
 
mrratburn said:
Sounds like you've been drinking videophile kool-aid. Honestly the best advice at this point is to scale back your expectations. Getting a mid-range desktop PC will cost half of the price of a Macbook and have far more performance, if you want it for HD editing. You can license Adobe Premiere Pro from creative cloud for $20/month which is my personal favorite movie editing software.

If your heart is set on Apple, pretty much any iMac or even Macbook should do. Again, desktop always gets better price for performance if you're serious.

Bottom line, you're looking at $800ish for a desktop PC with a quad core i5, 16gb of ram and a video card. The mac equivalent of the Mac mini won't cut it at that price range. This build alone will take you very far. Then again, I'm assumming you've got a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and table to set it up in, otherwise laptop makes more sense.
Don't focus on getting the top-of-the-line everything right now. It's far more important for you to get started as soon as you can.
Click to expand...

I agree with the avoiding the top of the line trap, but having a brother that works in the creative service industry(HBO) and friends who work in professional firms, they all say the same thing...adobe premier pro is absolute crap, and using a mac, whether it is a basic laptop with imovie, or moving into FCP(7 or X, find a cheap copy) is their preferred option when away from the higher end AVID setups that the firms employ, as a graphics designer myself, I love Adobe Creative Suite(with the sole exception of Premier, which IMO, actually sucks, though FCP X takes a bit of getting used to), but there are a lot of free editing software across the spectrum out there and easily available for both platforms...

if you really want to be adventurous build a hackintosh at a fraction of the cost...
 
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