Using a min mac for FCP?

R

Ralph nixon

Well-known member
Can you edit using FCP on a mini-mac if all you are doing is a one time only short twenty two minute docu? Would the mini need more Ram or a better video card?
Would my big old 17" monitor be fine for editing? Thanks.
 
kylelewis1 said:
What are the specs on the mini?
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Fast G4 processor
* Up to 1GB memory
* Dedicated graphics processor
* DVI connector, VGA adapter
* Slot-loading optical drive
* Spacious hard drive
* Built-in Ethernet
* Built-in modem, Airport and Bluetooth vary by configuration
* Expansion via USB and FireWire
* iLife Õ05, Mac OS X Tiger, Quicken 2005 for Mac, games
* Models vary with built-in modem, wireless and SuperDrive options
* 1.42GHz PowerPC G4
* 512MB DDR333 SDRAM
* ATI Radeon 9200
* 32MB DDR video memory
* 80GB Ultra ATA hard drive
* SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
* DVI or VGA video output
* Built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth
* Optional 56k Internal Modem

And the camera that I most likely will have no choice but using may not be able to generate time-code. Is that a huge problem? Could Mel Brooks old joke that "the hardest thing about film is putting in the sproket holes" be translated to video if the word sproket was replaced with timecode? (Ha. Ha.)

Thanks
 
I have a friend who edits SD on his eMac. You can definitely edit SD footage on this CPU. HD? Well, probably not.
 
HD? Well, certainly you can edit it, just takes a while is all. My Mac Mini plays back HD pretty well but I haven't edited any HD since I don't have an HD/HDV camera. From what I could tell from the store models with FCP on them and the few HDV test clips, the render times will KILL BILL, er,... I mean KILL you!

Then again, the floor models had just 512mb of RAM, I've outfitted mine with 1gb of RAM and that made things incredibly faster. By the way, if you're thinking of getting a Mac Mini, be sure to get a mini Pal add-on hard drive/USB and Firewire hub from some online Mac store or Fry's Electronics. After a while, you'll need more USB and Firewire ports and that external hard drive wouldn't be too shabby either since, as most of us know but it bears repeating, the Mac Mini uses a pretty plain laptop hard drive instead of a full fledged desktop hard drive.
 
i had a mini until recently...it was just fine until you wanted to do any rendering..i'd say it's a-ok if you're doing SD and don't mind letting it render overnight for anything..make sure you get an external 7200rpm drive though..
 
agentjonny said:
i had a mini until recently...it was just fine until you wanted to do any rendering..i'd say it's a-ok if you're doing SD and don't mind letting it render overnight for anything..make sure you get an external 7200rpm drive though..
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Excuse my ignorance but rendering is simply loading the stuff from the camera into the editing program yes. Digitizing it? Do you need your camera to render and if so does it add to its wear.

How expenisve is the 7200rpm drive and how will it help me?

Thanks.
 
Ralph nixon said:
Excuse my ignorance but rendering is simply loading the stuff from the camera into the editing program yes. Digitizing it? Do you need your camera to render and if so does it add to its wear.

How expenisve is the 7200rpm drive and how will it help me?

Thanks.
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capturing is getting it from the camera to the computer..rendering is when you change something to the digital file, like color correction or adding some type of filter, or even outputting to a dvd or quicktime file...you can get an external 7200rpm drive for about $120...the mini drive is a little slow, so it can sometimes hiccup during capture, so thats why having a faster drive is better..
 
I have my mini booting from an external drive I actually use it more than my new G5... the case is from OWC and I bought a 160gig 7200 drive WD from best buy for $50 a few weeks ago...
 
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