Buying a Mac Pro

Hey fellow Mac peers,

I don't know so much about computer so I was wondering if any one could help me with what kind of specs I should look at in a new Pro Tower. I don't have a lot of money at the moment so I want to know how much I need to save up to have a decent film editing system that I shouldn't have to upgrade for a while. I want the computer for editing films, I mainly edit short films but I want to work up to doing feature length films. I also do assisting for other editors which means lots of transcoding of footage.

I am using a mac book pro at the moment with 2gb Ram and 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, which is not really efficient enough any more for doing paid work. I just did some work that was Shot on RED and it killed me the time it took to transcode the footage.

Thanks.

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Depends how much you are able to spend. Best buys are refurbished machines from Apple with the latest OS and twelve months warranty. These are offered by Apple Australia, however if you are in the States think you can much better so Google Apple Mac Pro refurbished.

Refurbished Mac Pro - Apple Store (Australia)

After that you look at the second hand market and takes your chances as it were. A 2009-2010 Mac Pro should set you back say $1,500-2000.00.

Thanks so much. I'll check that out.

blackboxbutcher said:

Hey fellow Mac peers,

I mainly edit short films but I want to work up to doing feature length films. I also do assisting for other editors which means lots of transcoding of footage.

I am using a mac book pro at the moment with 2gb Ram and 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, which is not really efficient enough any more for doing paid work. I just did some work that was Shot on RED and it killed me the time it took to transcode the footage.

Thanks.

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I would get at least a 2009 Quqd Nehalem Mac Pro or later for what you're doing. However my son does what you do on a new iMac 27" core i5 with a F/W 800 8TB striped RAID.

Ah okay, I had thought about maybe buying an iMac as stepping stone towards getting a pro tower.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.