Mac Mini for Editing?

HybridCreations

HybridCreations

Well-known member
I'm a shooter that wants to try my hand at a little editing. Anyone using the bigger (of the 2) Mac Mini for editing? I wouldn't be doing much, probably some videos or shorts and dumping them out to tape via firewire. Any other low-cost recommendations you guys have? Thanks.
-Ryan
 
Hey Ryan. A buddy of mine tried to do use a mac mini running FCP. He was not happy with the results. He ended up returning it for a G5. What's your budget? However, if you want to do simple editing, another friend uses an e-mac with FCP 3, and loves it. Everyone is different, but for simple editing, an e-mac with superdrive won't run you much more than a mini mac would.

Hope that helps,

-Kris
 
Whatever you consider, have separate hard drives (system and media) internal or external, whatrever you like... It makes a HUGE difference and it's not that expensive. I would guess that a mini would do alright for a begginer, I might be wrong, but I'd go for a second opinion too...
 
The mac mini's slower spinning harddrive is going to be the main issue with using this system as a video editing machine.
I'd say get a refurbished eMac or iMac system - or get a mac mini and buy it an internal 7200 drive, and an external drive for the data files.
With the gig of ram (and you have to be willing to completely void the warranty on your new machine, which may not be a good move) and this setup the machine quickly approaches $1,000 - which brings you right around to probably just getting an eMac (even a refurb) with an external drive.
I'd say better still is to find an oldish powermac G4 with the mess of internal harddrive slots and the 2 gig of ram capability - make sure it's a later and preferrably dual processor machine w/ the 167 bus (1ghz and above roughly)...
Ideally, of course is a G5 system (powermac eternal).
 
For a while I used an eMac that is weaker than the current eMac generation and I was satisfied with FCP on it, sure rendering takes a bit of time but if your not doing stuff for clients where time is a factor I don't mind waiting a bit. You can build a pretty good machine out of a mini if you want to upgrade it. If you were to get the $599 mac mini, macworld has an article about Other World Computing's 72 Hour mac mini upgrade program, I'll put the quote here:
"For US$99, OWC will take your Mac mini in by overnight courier and perform up to three upgrades (each upgrade carries an additional fee). The basic fee covers the delivery charges both ways and a shipping box. You can have a 1GB RAM module installed for US$129; a 5400RPM or 7200RPM hard disk drive with 60GB or 100GB of storage capacity starting at $119; or an 8x DVD-R "SuperDrive" for $149.95, which is faster than Apple's current offering and has support for dual-layer recordable DVD media."
The url is http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/mac-mini/
The thing is once your done doing all those upgrades your essentially doubling the price which like someone mentioned before makes it as expensive as the eMac, and the new eMac is a better machine expect for lower ram once you upgrade the mini but apple can upgrade the emac ram for $125 and i've even heard of people doing it themselves. But if you'd rather upgrade the mini yourself you can probably find the pieces for cheaper from separate vendors, and then look up the video to install them yourself which was in the website I pasted above.

All in all I'd get the $999 eMac unless you already have a monitor you'd rather use instead then the upgraded mac mini becomes the cheapest, best non-screen mac you can buy.
 
I agree with ecking. An eMac would probably be a better way to go, especially with the upgrades you'll need to make the Mini a workable solution. I used an eMac with FCP and a gig of RAM for a couple of years before upgrading to a 20" iMac G5. The eMac was indeed slower in rendering - but I wasn't doing a lot of compositing or NLE filters either. When I did do compositing, however, the processer really took its time when compared to the G5. In both instances I use an external media drive.
 
Recently, I had to work with a dual 450 MHz G4 for a very small DV project, and it's still usable. The project didn't involve any effects or extensive color correction, so your mileage may vary.

In general, I don't think the hard drive speed will make a huge difference for ordinary DV, but an external FireWire drive is still pretty helpful. If space isn't a huge concern, the eMac is certainly a very good deal as well; while the lesser of the Mac Minis is fairly inexpensive, I don't know if the "better" one is as good a value.

Don't forget to add as much RAM as you can get; the stock 256 MB is definitely not enough. I'd say get at least 1GB (it's cheap these days).
 
Thanks guys. You freaked me out enough to wait. I'll let someone else do my editing for awhile, until I can scrape enough together to get a system that will actually work for me.=)
 
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