ibook g4 800MHZ good enough?.

[Guest]

helpful site...

thinking of getting a portable Mac for DV editing, I like the ibook's looks and price. Is the ibook with 800mhz maxed ram(600+M) and an external HD enough for DV editing? or... is it too slow?(with FCP4 and OSX) how many secs. min. or hours slower is it when u say process or render video as compare to a high-end G5? thx

or.. should I get a PC with vegas? small xpc with 1agp 1pci slot adequate?

I don't have anything yet... need to get one or the other... also... still not decide to get the PD170 or DVX100a

all suggestions are welcomed

[Jive]

An XPC with any current processor, nice vid card, and a decent amount of ram will be far speedier than an 800mhz G4. If you're really stuck on using FCP, then get a mac. I have no details on speed differences between your configured 800mHz G4 and a G5, but a current model PC has the potential to equal (and perhaps exceed) the power of a G5.

However, your comparison kinda moreso comes down to whether you want to be as a portable as a laptop will afford, or for the most part stationary with an XPC (tho it does offer a much higher ease-of-transportation than a full-size PC due to its smaller size).

BTW, get a DVX ;)

[Guest]

what do u suggest I should get? I am new to this, no computer, no camera yet, and no experience on any NLE.


need to get the computer end of this month, camera will get next month.


also if i do get the ibook add more memory and an external HD, will it be way too slow for editing with dvx? thx

[turbo-gi]

the I book g4 800 will do its job perfectly fine. But there are definitly faster computers. The question is, how much time will you be editing. If you plan extensive projects you should get the fastest computer you can. Sitting and waiting for your renderfiles to be done can be fun for a little time, but then it gets very anoying and you wish you would have bought the faster computer. If you need to carry the computer with you frequently I would recommend that you might consider the Powerbook 15" over the Ibook. They are build to do the video job. better graphics, larger screen....the bad thing about the Ibooks and powerbooks ist that they have only one firewire port. Which means, that you can only hook up either the cam or the harddrive.

[magicdavek]

I recently used my original white iBook, which is a mere 500 MHz G3 with 256K RAM and a 10 GB hard drive to edit a 5 minute dance using five cameras (thats five video tracks and 10 audio tracks). I was running Final Cut Pro 1.2 under OS 9.2, but I had no difficulty and surprisingly little wait time. I was amazed. You have a G4 (unlike my measley G3) at 800 MHz with more memory and a bigger internal drive. I didn't use an external drive for that project (I had to make room on the drive because those 5 videos at five minutes each took up about half of my internal drive). I had to be portable for that project, so I used what I described. I'm sure OS X and FCP 4 require more firepower, but you have a LOT more fire power than I had. And will you be editing 5 tracks of video together? Maybe one reason it worked okay is the project required very little rendering and no effects, all straight cuts.

Personally, I'd like an answer to your question because a G4 iBook is something I'd be interested in as well. I can't run FCP 4 on my G3, and Powerbooks are more expensive. However, there are rumors of a price drop on the upcoming Powerbooks. We'll see.