FC/MAC Set Up Suggestions

C

Calvin3

Member
I'm a MAC/FC newbie looking for suggestions as to how to set up a system most economically. I'm moving from LA to SC so I'm essentially losing my access to Avid bays, easy deck rentals and sound design folk. Thus, I'm looking to set up a home system alternative without spending a large amount of money.

I would love some input as to what the differences are when running something like Final Cut Studio on the different MACs (G4 vs. G5). At this point, the prospect of purchasing the power G5 with the monitor extra, FCP Studio/Pro, plus any and all accesories that I am going to need is a bit daunting (and financially impossible in the short term). I understand that it's possible to run the programs on less powerful systems, but I don't want to sacrifice my investment today for something that is not scalable and will eventually not suffice.

Sorry for being so long-winded, I guess the essential question is what's the best system I can build for the least amount of money.

Thanks for the input.
 
You can certainly edit on G4 systems. The biggest G5 will provide more speed and more real time effects so it comes down to how you value your time and what type of work you do.
if it's straight editing then you'll probably be fine with the G4 to start with. Get big. fast internal drive for the media and big firewire drive to be able to offline footage.
 
I'm currently on a powermac g4 running fcp 4. Hey, if that's good enough for Murch (Cold Mountain) than its good enough for me.

Napoleon Dynamite I believe was mad on G4 too. I'd love a G5 but haven't had a reason to upgrade, yet. The G5 I think would be NEEDED for say motion and AE kinda stuff.
 
Hi Calvin,

I'm currently running Final Cut HD (4.5) on a 4 year old G4 867 (single processor!) with Tiger installed and it runs smooth and fast. you could get a better system than mine and still stay under the 1,000 range.

However, if you plan to use Motion or the upgraded After Effects, check the system requirements because I cannot run those.

J
 
Thanks everyone. That's exactly what I wanted to know. For my needs, I think the G4 might be the way to go. I did notice something in the specs about DVD output req'g the G5. Assuming that I can find alternative avenues for this as well as other things that pop up as I learn the system. Just wanted to make certain that I would have all the tools I need to cut what I have and then get some type of decent output. The one thing I didn't want to do was severely limit myself right from the beginning. Sounds like that's not a huge issue.
 
I have a DP 1.8 G5, and it is pretty decent, but not what I would consider "blazing fast". You can find some decent discounts right now on the older G5's. The DP 1.8 can handle a decent amount of realtime, but a Magic Bullet preset in realtime will choke it (for example). I think I also subconsiously expect FCP to have the same performance as my Protools HD setup, which isn't exactly fair :) If you get a G4, I would probably shoot for a DP for sure. I think in a lot of cases you will find that the prices for the recent G4 PowerMacs are so high that you might as well just get a G5.

It is hard to be all that enthusiastic about purchasing a new Apple right now knowing they are switching to Intel chips.
 
Calvin, what did you hear about DVD output requiring a G5? I can't think of any reason why that would be the case, so I would double-check. You could probably find a decent used G4 somewhere, and a dual processor would certainly help cut those render times down.
 
Rasquachemedia said:
Calvin, I run dvd studio pro 2 on my powermac g4 and have many dvd's.
Click to expand...


DVD Studio Pro 4 requires a G5 for authoring and playback of HD DVD's. My experience is that while H.264 can make some nice output the encoding is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. At least compared to MPEG2 or MPEG4.
 
another dual 1.8 g5 guy here. i love mine. i don't do hardcore color correction or 3d stuff- i edit video and record and mix music, and it has been performing admirably. i also do some motion graphics (ae-not motion.) the sense i have (i could be wrong,) is that motion is much more processor and ram intensive than ae. which would make sense given apple's stupid predilection for shipping all of their new software with about 15 gigs of lame templates that wouldn't get used by the world's tackiest ukrainian wedding videographer. (nothing against ukrainians or wedding vieographers, btw- it's just that i used to work at a small dupe place and we got a lot of eastern european wedding videos. it seems like these guys still think that the star wipe is god's gift to video and that it -or the heart wipe- should be inserted any time one shot is followed by another.)

btw, there is no reason in the world why you need one of apple's monitors. sure they're beautiful, but a viewsonic lcd would be just fine and cost you much less money. or any other decent monitor. i actually use a 19" crt. it takes up more space on my desk than i'd like, but it does a perfecly good job of showing me what i'm working with.

imo, the hd dvd thing isn't worth worrying about at the moment. when the sony vs everyone format war is over and people start to own the decks, then it'll be a consideration. until then i'm not concerned about it. i'm sure others will disagree with that sentiment.
 
Another G4 person here. I make about 30% of my living cutting, and I still have no problems with my Dual 1Ghz G4, FCP 4.5, DVD SP3. I have used the G5's, and they are nice, but unless I start doing some HD work, or my system makes me suffer, this little baby will carry me oever to intel. At least that is the plan.
 
Thanks and a follow-up

Thanks and a follow-up

Again, thanks for the advice everyone. I am thinking about picking up one of the iMACs. Likely the 2GHz with the 17" screen. Apart from what comes out of the box and my trusty copy of FCP, what else am I gonna need in the way of peripherals?

Also I'm carrying around the transfer tapes of my 35mm short project on Digbeta and DVcam tape. I'm worried that I won't have easy access to decks once I move to SC, so I am wondering if my best course of action is to digitize the DVcam and burn it to disk, so that at least I can work on it and output a rough cut on DVD. Then go back later when it's time to do something better (for festivals and such) and use the EDL to cut the Digibeta (or eventually take it all back out to film) assuming I can find a accessible deck to get the Digibeta in the system once I'm in SC.

Thanks again for all the help.

C.
 
if you're going with the imac, i think it would be the wisest to max out the ram and the hard drive.

probably consider an external fw harddrive too.

then, just the deck of your choice, an ntsc monitor, and decent audio monitors.

the main weak point with the imacs is the expandability thing. you can't just crack it open and toss in another hard drive, as you can with the towers. but if you really can't swing a tower, they are definitely functional machines.
 
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