Mininium hardware requirements for video editing

Hi mac dudes,

I am looking to switch over from the pc side. From reading the switcher forum, sounds like mac have there own set of problems.

I have 16 x 9 format Cannon optura 60. and would like to make short home movies, for holidays, family stuff, and out door sports stuff. Looking at using the "canned" software" the comes with a mac, I life. Right now I have about 4 hours of footage that need to be edited, and burned on a dvd. Have not been able to edit the footage on current pc.

how good is ilife (imove i dvd), what is the minium hardware requirements doing video editing???

The apple store guy did not recommend the mac mini for this, but the imac.

How much ram do I need? 1 gighz 2gighz, and would buying the imac 20" with 256 vram be worth the extra expense, or would the imac 17" be fine. I know I need a lot of ram, but I am on a budget. For the cost of the upgraded imac 20" I can purchase a baseline powerpc G5. do not know a lot about the G5, but it seems more like a power pc.

Is now a good time to buy a mac? what about all the hipe with the new os coming out, would this/ should this effect a current buying decesions?

What about used off ebay??????

Need help?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I don't know anything about the mac mni, but all of the current systems should run the iLife products with no problems. Below it thehardware requirements post by Apple.

Apple said:

* Macintosh computer with a PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, or Intel Core processor; 733MHz or faster for iDVD
* 256MB of RAM, 512MB recommended
* Mac OS X v10.3.9 or v10.4.3 or later; v10.4.4 recommended
* iTunes 6.0.2 and QuickTime 7.0.4 (included)
* DVD drive for installation
* 10GB of available disk space
* High-definition video requires 1GHz G4 or faster and 512MB of RAM.
* Burning DVDs requires an Apple SuperDrive or compatible third-party DVD burner.
* iPhoto print services are available in the U.S., Canada, Japan, and select European countries; requires Internet access; fees and terms apply.
* .Mac account required for iPhoto Photocast publishing and recommended for iWeb. The .Mac service is available to persons age 13 and older. Annual membership fee and Internet access required. Terms and conditions apply.
* iWeb requires Internet and webserver access (.Mac recommended). The .Mac service is available to persons age 13 and older. Annual membership fee and Internet access required. Terms and conditions apply.
* Mac OS X v10.4.4 required for iMovie HD themes, iMovie HD Audio FX, iPhoto Photocast publishing, and iChat recording in GarageBand. iChat video conferencing requires broadband Internet connection; fees may apply.

Click to expand...

you can get great deals on ebay, or the apple online refurbished store.

As for the mac mini, if you get the core duo version, you should be fine. The imac will have more power, thats for sure, but if your on a tight budget, you should be ok. I use my old 733mhz g4 tower for iMovieHD, and it works ok. If you do decide to get an imac, I think the 20" would be best, but the 17" will still have plenty of speed.

As for Operating Systems, apple is currently developing a new one called Lepard, and no one is sure when it will come out. OS upgrades will cost you an additional $129... so keep that in mind..

I (amateur) edited on an upgraded 8 year old 466Mhz Wallstreet laptop. It was slow but doable. I'd say any current Mac should be fine. The issue with the mini is that the graphics card shares ram with the system, so likely for that and other reasons, you'll have a performance hit compared to an iMac. The realtime effect will take advantage of the dedicated video card in the iMac. If you can, try it out in a store.

A gig of ram should be fine, but as usual, the more the better. Many experienced Mac buyers buy extra ram from third parties. Usually this is cheaper than getting a decked out system from Apple. If your not into opening the case, then get someone else to do it.

Sounds like you can wait a week to see what is announced at next weeks developer conference. The next version of OS X will be talked about, and likely have an expected release date announced. That is usually some quarter of a year. Likely the first half on 2007. Also the G5 tower replacements are expected to be announced. If that happens, then shortly after that you might be able to get a good deal from the Apple online store.

The Apple online store has a section for selling refurbs. You can save a decent amount and put the savings into more ram, for instance.

I think iMovie will handle your 16x9 video. As I understand it though, the quality of those comsumer 16x9 images isn't great because the camera is compressing the image horizontally. I keep meaning to look into it closer.

I currently have an iMacG5 17" powerpc 2gigs that I use Final Cut Pro 5 on (it's also for sale if anyone's interested). It has served me well, and does a suprisingly good job being a single core processor.
iDVD is a decent software, real easy to work with. I have not tried iMovie though.

As people have mentioned before, the more ram the better. I would also buy an extra harddrive with an external case, or dish out more for an external harddrive.
Go with SATA or SATA II hd/external enclosures with either firewire or usb 2.0.
Partition your harddrive (that's inside your mac, or soon to be mac) and have your program run off a different partition than the one that the OS is running on. Use the external harddrive to capture footage on. If you want, you can buy another external harddrive to format the movie on.