Advice on new Mac editing setup please!

Lintel

Lintel

Active member
Hi Everyone,

I'm looking into buying a new Mac for my video editing and would really appreciate any advice.

Being budget minded, if I was just starting out I'd be seriously considering a PC, but I've never owned anything other than a Mac (G4 in 2001 was my first) - and I'm actually very keen on FCPX. So I'm definitely looking at Macs only.

I've been editing on a MacBook Pro for the last several years, but it's now way too slow for my recently increased workload. Having done a bit of research, I'm pretty sure I'm going for a desktop setup this time - more bang-for-buck, and tbh my Macbook was plugged in 95% of the time anyway.

So my choice is between:

iMac 21.5"( customized: 3.1GHz i7 / 16GB RAM / GeForce GT 750M 1GB)
iMac 27" ( customized: 3.5GHz i7 / 16GB RAM / GeForce GTX 780M 4GB)
MacPro (the new one - lowest spec)

I currently only edit AVCHD and H264 (G6 and D5300) - no RAW - and it will probably be that way for the foreseeable future. I would like the option of using Resolve in the future but it's not essential, particularly right now.

The obvious answer is probably to buy the most powerful setup I can afford, but I think a Mac Pro is probably overkill, and with all the necesarry add-ons it's a bit out of my budget.

So I'm primarily looking at the iMacs. In terms of screen size I'm easy - I'd lean slightly toward the 21" plus a 2nd monitor, but 27" alone would be fine too. I think it all comes down to processing power really ...

As I say I'll be mainly running FCPX (and one thing I'd really love is for my new mac to rip through Neat Video rendering). Can anyone help with my decision? Will the extra processing 'oomph' (i7 and graphics card) of the 27" described above be of very great benefit? Ability to run Resolve smoothly would be a bonus but not an essential.

One final note - all 4TB of my external drives are Firewire. Will performance suffer a lot from not having Thunderbolt drives, or is it feasible to get by with my old FW's until I can afford a few new HDs?

Any advice or experience greatly appreciated - thank you!
 
I just went through a similar thing a month ago and upgraded from a 2009 iMac to the newest, fully optioned 27" (bought all upgrades EXCEPT RAM/most expensive HD).
I went with the 3TB Hybrid to save money. I just ordered the other 16GB RAM last week as Apple's is so overpriced. Most of my drives are FW800 so I bought a Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter and it works well although on FCPX start up I get a beachball for 20 seconds or so and I think that adapter is the reason. Beachball only occurs on start-up and wake-up. I also bought a Lacie thunderbolt to esata adapter but it really isn't neccessary and the Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter does fine. Bottom line is the $30 Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter will allow you to use your old drives just fine.
 
gkantziper said:
I just went through a similar thing a month ago and upgraded from a 2009 iMac to the newest, fully optioned 27" (bought all upgrades EXCEPT RAM/most expensive HD).
I went with the 3TB Hybrid to save money. I just ordered the other 16GB RAM last week as Apple's is so overpriced. Most of my drives are FW800 so I bought a Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter and it works well although on FCPX start up I get a beachball for 20 seconds or so and I think that adapter is the reason. Beachball only occurs on start-up and wake-up. I also bought a Lacie thunderbolt to esata adapter but it really isn't neccessary and the Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter does fine. Bottom line is the $30 Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter will allow you to use your old drives just fine.
Click to expand...

Thanks that's helpful - good to know the Firewire drives work OK.
Could you clarify how the 3tb hybrid drive saved you money? I was thinking of just going with the 250Gb SSD and using external drives - eventually I'll use all external SSD's hopefully.
I was told in the Apple store you can't upgrade the RAM yourself - weird.
 
If 256GB HD is OK with you that'd save you money over what I did, but I wanted more than that internally so I guess I saved money for my needs by going 3TB Fusion because it IS a 256GB SSD plus over 2TB of spinning drive - can't remember exactly the breakdown but suffice it say Fusion is a good thing! You can upgrade the RAM on the 27 yourself, but I don't think you can do it (easily) yourself on the 21.5.
 
gkantziper said:
If 256GB HD is OK with you that'd save you money over what I did, but I wanted more than that internally so I guess I saved money for my needs by going 3TB Fusion because it IS a 256GB SSD plus over 2TB of spinning drive - can't remember exactly the breakdown but suffice it say Fusion is a good thing! You can upgrade the RAM on the 27 yourself, but I don't think you can do it (easily) yourself on the 21.5.
Click to expand...

Oh that's good to know about the RAM - a vote in favour of the 27".

How are you liking the 27"? Was your previous iMac smaller? Do you use FCPX on it alone, or with a 2nd monitor also? I tried one with FCP in the Apple store today and it sure was nice to have all that screen space - and it ripped through my test rendering.
 
My new 27" is awesome. Fast! Thunderbolt is extremely fast. USB 3 is very useful too as it is much faster than USB 2 for file transfer. I don't use USB 2 for FCPX, but you can do it. I'm only using 1 monitor, but 2 are made possible by Thunderbolt. I'm a DP for 95% of my work, I only edit for a few client that know I'm not a full-time editor.
 
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