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Wanting to switch-need advise
- Thread starter guyute
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Get a Gig of RAM - more if you can afford it. Get whatever apple pre-stocks, and then get the remainder from CRUCIAL memory - it's a lot cheaper and guaranteed for life - free shipping too!
An superdrive emac or imac would probably do then. The emac is the best value for money but the imac is more sexy. Also the imac screens got up to 20". As carletonmusic said put more RAM in it whichever you decide.
Technically, any machine Apple makes is more than adequate for editing home movies (and authoring DVD's).
I use my 600MHz iMac (G3) for video editing all the time, with no complaints. The only problem I've been having lately is exporting some of the more crunchy codecs seems to take *forever*, but I have a feeling I might need a fresh install of OS X (going on 3 years and have never formatted the thing).
Good luck, and enjoy your new Mac, whichever that may be!
I use my 600MHz iMac (G3) for video editing all the time, with no complaints. The only problem I've been having lately is exporting some of the more crunchy codecs seems to take *forever*, but I have a feeling I might need a fresh install of OS X (going on 3 years and have never formatted the thing).
Good luck, and enjoy your new Mac, whichever that may be!
I would strongly recommend an iMac over an eMac. They are better machines and will last you a lot longer. The 17" or the 20" are great.
If you have the money, and want to get a top quality machine that will last for a long time, get one of the 1.6 or 1.8 Powermacs that are currently being clearanced out.
Either way, get the min RAM, then upgrade through Crucial.
If you have the money, and want to get a top quality machine that will last for a long time, get one of the 1.6 or 1.8 Powermacs that are currently being clearanced out.
Either way, get the min RAM, then upgrade through Crucial.
There is also another alternative: buying an used powermac dual processor. Something like a 800Mhz dual would do the trick and be faster than the emac/imac, would be able to carry more ram and have CPU upgrade.
If this all seem too complex, the eMac - iMac are excellent choices as everyone said. As long as all you are doing is casual work, any mac with a superdrive can handle the job so it all depends of how much you want to invest in your editing station...
And try to switch from iMovie to Final cut express as soon as you can, its awesome!
Good luck
If this all seem too complex, the eMac - iMac are excellent choices as everyone said. As long as all you are doing is casual work, any mac with a superdrive can handle the job so it all depends of how much you want to invest in your editing station...
And try to switch from iMovie to Final cut express as soon as you can, its awesome!
Good luck
I'd strongly reccommend getting a Superdrive because then you can use iDVD. The new version (part of iLife '04 - included with all new Macs from Friday) is really good and the best thing out there (apart from Apple's pro DVD Studio Pro). The 17 or 20" iMacs come with Superdrives, you can also get an eMac with Superdrive. All G5s come with them also (I use a 12" PowerBook).
Don't worry about what Mac you get because they are all capable. Get RAM from crucial.com and you'll be sorted. I highly reccommend Final Cut Express, but the free and included iMovie is still better than anything on Windows.
Just make sure you get a Mini DV camcorder with FireWire (that's most of them) - NOT A SONY MICRO MV (doesn't work with a Mac) and it's really great and simple and you can get professional results on DVD. Any current Mac is up to the job (but old G3s are still fine too).
Don't worry about what Mac you get because they are all capable. Get RAM from crucial.com and you'll be sorted. I highly reccommend Final Cut Express, but the free and included iMovie is still better than anything on Windows.
Just make sure you get a Mini DV camcorder with FireWire (that's most of them) - NOT A SONY MICRO MV (doesn't work with a Mac) and it's really great and simple and you can get professional results on DVD. Any current Mac is up to the job (but old G3s are still fine too).
The superdrive PB would do the job well. While I am sure that the 12" Powerbook would be fine, I would recommend the 15" as the extra screen real estate would come in useful, especially if you get into it and upgrade to Final Cut Express. The 15" comes with additional memory and a larger hard disk. Video capture and editing require lots of disk space. DV quality footage requires 1GB of hard disk space per 5 minutes of captured footage.
If you intend to do serious DV editing, get an external FW800 HD. No powerbook HD can rival it. Problem is, FW800 is only availlable on the G5, powermac (new ones) and 15"+ powerbook.
This setting is just for serious work, you would do fine with any mac. As a matter of fact, I am using a PB 12" with superdrive and use dual monitor. My only complain is the limited ram. But its well compensated by the fact that I can carry it around...
See? its all about what you need. There is no 'optimal' solution...
This setting is just for serious work, you would do fine with any mac. As a matter of fact, I am using a PB 12" with superdrive and use dual monitor. My only complain is the limited ram. But its well compensated by the fact that I can carry it around...
See? its all about what you need. There is no 'optimal' solution...
since you said cut and splice i say go with the emac, but if u think you are gonna be the next jackson or lucas, go get urself a nice dual
If you get a PowerBook, upgrade to 80GB hard drive. I've had no problems with the speed (4200rpm) of my internal hard drive but video is big (13GB/hour). You could always use the internal hard drive as the capture scratch and then transfer to a FW400 drive using one of the cheaper Macs.
I don't think you need FW800. That wasn't even available to the pros prior to last year and they still got on fine, so I think us ameteaurs can get away without it!
I don't think you need FW800. That wasn't even available to the pros prior to last year and they still got on fine, so I think us ameteaurs can get away without it!