I'm retiring two older Windows PCs for one 21.5" iMac (for physical reasons I have to stay with the 21.5"). In the Windows world I did a lot of HD video editing using Power Director. Even with 4-year old machines the performance (other than final rendering time) was not a problem. I had no stuttering of video while editing and compiling my timelines, etc. I recently downloaded a trial version of FCP on my early 2011 MBP with 16GB ram and am having a few performance problems (hesitations in video preview, cutting, etc.) which I certainly didn't expect.
Now the question - will any of the new 21.5" iMacs work well for FCP? I've been following a lot of threads and most if not all the discussions are about the 27" (which isn't a possibility for me). In some threads GPU is critical, in others not so much because these editors don't leverage the GPU.
Please help me in deciding if the iMac will meet my needs and if so how would you build one.
Now the question - will any of the new 21.5" iMacs work well for FCP? I've been following a lot of threads and most if not all the discussions are about the 27" (which isn't a possibility for me). In some threads GPU is critical, in others not so much because these editors don't leverage the GPU.
Please help me in deciding if the iMac will meet my needs and if so how would you build one.