Video Editing

PDD

Hi Guys,

I was wondering how power a Mac I need for video editing? I just want to do some simple splice and dice with camcorder footage. I was thinking of getting an older G4 Powermac so I can use iDVD but Im not sure if its powerful enough. Any advice appreciated and any advice from peeps who use macs for video editing.

PDD

uncle_sam_ie

PDD wrote:

Hi Guys,

I was wondering how power a Mac I need for video editing? I just want to do some simple splice and dice with camcorder footage. I was thinking of getting an older G4 Powermac so I can use iDVD but Im not sure if its powerful enough. Any advice appreciated and any advice from peeps who use macs for video editing.

PDD

I've done video editing on my old G4 iMac. The G4 will work fine for what you want it to do. Adding effects and encoding just takes longer. That's why If you were doing video editing for a living you would need a faster machine.

ZENER

I ran FC PRO on a 733MHz Power Mac G4 with 1GB RAM and it was fine. So iMovie should be just as good I'd imagine. Big Fast Hard Disk and lot's of RAM and you'll be laughing !

ZEN

pa

PDD wrote:

Hi Guys,

I was wondering how power a Mac I need for video editing? I just want to do some simple splice and dice with camcorder footage. I was thinking of getting an older G4 Powermac so I can use iDVD but Im not sure if its powerful enough. Any advice appreciated and any advice from peeps who use macs for video editing.

PDD

The PowerMac should be alright for using iMovie on, although you might find rendering times a bit irritating. Would be a very good idea to try a realistic sample project on one before you buy.

You mentioned iDVD above as well - that will easily take as much processing power as you can afford, and then some. I've done DVD creation in iDVD on a 1.5GHz G4 many times, and it took several hours to complete each time.

You haven't indicated what sort of budget you're operating under, but if it allows it I'd seriously look at getting an Intel-based Mac instead of a G4. The G4 is a badly outdated, slow processor, I'm afraid:

http://www.barefeats.com/mincd.html

PDD

Hi Guys,

Cheers for the feedback. I mulling over splashing out and get a new iMac. Im a bit nervous about it coz I dont know whats coming in Jan and I dont want it to be devalued by the release of a quad core or something. Then there is a distinct possability of me moving abroad in Mar so that would basically only be 3months before I had to move it on and I dont want it to devalue that much. I was going to buy a 24" one to try to reduce the depreciation but so not used to how Macs work.

Dave