Greetings!
I have a confession to make - my girlfriend and I have been PC users since childhood, and are completely new to the Macintosh (she did use one for a time when she was a kid, but has forgotten how). She has a love for video editing and has done so on the PC for quite a while. However, after much frustration in trying to get her PC to edit the Quicktime format (She even has Adobe Premier Pro 1.5, and just can't get things to work right/easily) I am trying to help her by picking up an inexpensive (hopefully) Mac. My goal is to ease her problems and to make her life easier.
What she is trying to do - take video capture from a Kodak Easyshare camera (stored in either 720p HD or 640x480 Quicktime MPEG-4 format), edit it, add effects, possibly record sound separately and dub it in. The clips are up to about 5 minutes long, she won't be creating full-length motion pictures or anything.
What should the minimum specifications be for this? She'll be creating at least one video per week, though not a full-time job for her. I would like to find a used Mac in working condition at a low cost, since we don't really have a ton of money to spend - is it possible to do this for under $100? What are the minimum specifications for such work on a Mac? Will iMovie do the job, or do we need another software package, and what will its cost be?
I see an "iMac SNOW" going for $50 on eBay - will this, or something like it, do the trick?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...item=360033293376&_trksid=p3984.cWAT.m240.lVI
If she likes it enough and it will be used heavily, we can upgrade to a nice, shiny new MacBook in the future, but for now I would like to try and do this as inexpensively as possible.
Thank you very much in advance for all your assistance!
-Brian
I have a confession to make - my girlfriend and I have been PC users since childhood, and are completely new to the Macintosh (she did use one for a time when she was a kid, but has forgotten how). She has a love for video editing and has done so on the PC for quite a while. However, after much frustration in trying to get her PC to edit the Quicktime format (She even has Adobe Premier Pro 1.5, and just can't get things to work right/easily) I am trying to help her by picking up an inexpensive (hopefully) Mac. My goal is to ease her problems and to make her life easier.
What she is trying to do - take video capture from a Kodak Easyshare camera (stored in either 720p HD or 640x480 Quicktime MPEG-4 format), edit it, add effects, possibly record sound separately and dub it in. The clips are up to about 5 minutes long, she won't be creating full-length motion pictures or anything.
What should the minimum specifications be for this? She'll be creating at least one video per week, though not a full-time job for her. I would like to find a used Mac in working condition at a low cost, since we don't really have a ton of money to spend - is it possible to do this for under $100? What are the minimum specifications for such work on a Mac? Will iMovie do the job, or do we need another software package, and what will its cost be?
I see an "iMac SNOW" going for $50 on eBay - will this, or something like it, do the trick?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...item=360033293376&_trksid=p3984.cWAT.m240.lVI
If she likes it enough and it will be used heavily, we can upgrade to a nice, shiny new MacBook in the future, but for now I would like to try and do this as inexpensively as possible.
Thank you very much in advance for all your assistance!
-Brian