09-23-2009, 10:46 AM

Background:
About a year ago I decided to get into the Mac world, although I was a bit hesitant. I had only worked with PC's in the past. So I started small and got the basic Macbook. I was using it for office work (documents, e-mail, internet) and some light to moderate Photoshop work.

Current setup:
Macbook
2.4GHz
2GB RAM
160GB HD

I was happy with the setup and basically turned my back on the PC world. I know it isn't a very powerful Mac, but it got the job done.

Now...I am starting to get into video editing with Final Cut. The videos I am working with aren't too big, but as I get further into this, the project sizes are increasing. I am also doing some tutorials with Camtasia.

Here comes the question:
I am looking at upgrading to an iMac. Time is money, so I can justify the expense of the new machine to save time. But how much time should I expext to save when rendering?

Let's say the Macbook takes 10 minutes to render a video with some transitions and effects. What could I reasonably expect an iMac to do the same work in?

For reference, I was looking at the
24" screen
4GB Ram
2.93 GHZ
$1799

Next question, is this the machine you would recommend? For $400 more should I jump up to the 3.06 GHz machine with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 with 512MB memory? Same qestion, what performance boost would I expect?

Most of my projects will be 5-10 minutes movies (at this point), but I don't want to limit they projects I can handle in the future.

This is a hobby/part-time business, so if I had to render large jobs, I could just start it at night and go to bed, no problem. What my issue is that I have been working (for example) with text and keyframing and you make a small change and it may take 30 seconds to re-render the clip so that you can see if you like it. Those 30 second "waits" add up while you are doing your post work.

09-23-2009, 11:15 AM

I went from a 1st gen 2.0ghz 2gb RAM MacBook Pro to my 3.06 iMac 8gb and it's WAYYYYY faster using FC & iMovie for loading, rendering, photos etc.

You'll like it.

09-23-2009, 11:23 AM

How much was the upgrade from 4GB to 8GB? Did it "come that way", or did you upgrade it at the store?

09-23-2009, 08:28 PM

Bought it from otherworld computing online for $520 - less then half what apple charges. Decided not to wait til dec...used my friend's machine with final cut and PS and it's quite a difference.

09-24-2009, 09:04 AM

I made up my mind...

Purchased a 24" 2.93GHz last night from the Apple store.

The people at the store are great...again...would never go back to the PC world and purchases at a big box store. Even if Mac's are perceived to "cost more"...the customer service and product quality more than makes up for it!