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Thread: What to look for in a Mac for video editing?

  1. #1
    IAIB Broadcaster sunkast's Avatar
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    What to look for in a Mac for video editing?

    I am possibly looking to get a Mac for video editing, but I'm pretty unfamiliar when it comes to what is good for Mac. How fast should the CPU be and how much RAM should I ideally look for in a Mac that would work well for video editing? Also would anyone have advice on whether I should go with a MBP, Mac Pro, or iMac?
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  2. #2
    Administrator andrewzarian's Avatar
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    Thats a great question im sure someone here will know

  3. #3
    IAIB Broadcaster Donovan's Avatar
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    I did video editing on an Air purchased in the first quarter of this year, so I would think that the latest iMac would definitely work fine. If you want portability, then go with a MacBook Pro.
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    Administrator andrewzarian's Avatar
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    get the 15 inch Retina !!

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    Senior Member Linuxcooldude's Avatar
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    It depends on many factors. Short videos could be done quite well on nearly any Mac machine. Large to huge videos work better on a Mac Pro. The actual editing part, once you import the files is easily done on a lower end machine, its the rendering part once the video is finished does better on a multicore machine with more memory. Also video card may play into it depending on the video editor takes advantage of opencl or cuda for acceleration of realtime effects / import-export ect.

    Really need exactly what you want to do with the videos, the length, budget ect. would be helpful.
    <a href=http://www.justin.tv/linuxcooldude target=_blank>http://www.justin.tv/linuxcooldude</a>

  6. #6
    IAIB Broadcaster sunkast's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Linuxcooldude View Post
    Really need exactly what you want to do with the videos, the length, budget ect. would be helpful.
    Editing all of the GFQ Network shows. Generally videos that are 1-2 hours long.
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  7. #7
    Senior Member Linuxcooldude's Avatar
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    Ouch...lol. I would say a Mac Pro with maybe minimum 12GB of ram. Maybe a hexa core machine 3.33GHZ seems to be the best bang for the buck from what I've been hearing. With at least a 64 bit video editor that would allow you to use more then 4GB of ram. iMovie is only 32 bit. Yeah you could do it on much less, but considering the amount of shows and length, render time would be quite lengthy on a lesser machine.

    But hey, thats just me. I would do your research and talk with some other video editors to see what they think.

    Curious, how many shows and are they 1-2 hours a piece or all together? How many times a week?
    <a href=http://www.justin.tv/linuxcooldude target=_blank>http://www.justin.tv/linuxcooldude</a>

  8. #8
    IAIB Broadcaster sunkast's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Linuxcooldude View Post
    Curious, how many shows and are they 1-2 hours a piece or all together? How many times a week?
    List of our shows can be found here: http://www.guysfromqueens.com/showsongfq/

    • AZ Show - 2 hours
    • The News - 30 mins
    • IJS - 1 hour
    • WTT - 1 hour
    • CH Show - 1 hour
    • TNW - 1 hour
    • FFA - 2 hours
    • BBR - 1 hour
    • TBT - 2 hours
    • BTC - 1 hour
    • IAIB Spotlight - 1 hour (bi-monthly)
    • Picks of the week - 10 mins


    Most shows are weekly with the occasional hiatus.

    Plan is to learn Final Cut Pro to edit with. It can't be worse than the PC I have now. It does alright. But I'm looking to see if a Mac will help with the work load.
    Last edited by sunkast; 08-04-2012 at 07:26 PM.
    Watch Tech News Weekly every Friday at 3pm EST on the GFQ Network.


  9. #9
    Senior Member Linuxcooldude's Avatar
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    Wow, thats a lot of shows...lol. Yeah, I would say a Mac Pro. Myself, I don't think I would rely on a MacBook Pro or even iMac if I had to edit that much video.
    <a href=http://www.justin.tv/linuxcooldude target=_blank>http://www.justin.tv/linuxcooldude</a>

  10. #10
    Senior Member cseeman's Avatar
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    I would avoid the MacPro. There's really limited benefit given that it's using just speed bumped Xeons from 2010. It might have some benefit if you were doing a lot of compression but not much for typical editing.

    Currently I'd recommend MacBookPro Retina with 16GB RAM. For editing, the Ivy Bridge Quad Core i7 will do fine as well as the GPU. Many have reported that FCPX screams on such a machine.

    If you're willing to wait (and it may be some months) the next iMac (current one is from early 2011) and next MacPro (may not be until next year) should be very powerful.

    The amount of video isn't an issue, the codec and compositing would be a factor. The current MBPr handles AVCHD natively without issue. I think Apple demo'd 9 simultaneous using multicam.

    Keep in mind you should use and external drive. A Thunderbolt RAID would be blazing fast.

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