editing gear

Steven Adams · April 21, 2009

Hi,

I have been to B&H, sweet water, mac mall, and their systems are all set up "about the same"

for around $3299.00.

I am starting film school in June and I want to get a Mac Pro because I believe they have a longer life span than their counterparts for editing. I will be shooting SD and HDV. I currently use an HV30.

What I think I need:

320gb stock drive, 1TB drive, 1 super drive, 8GB ram, 22in Monitor (I have heard that the Dell IPS 2209WA is the way to go since Apple decided to gloss up everything) nVIDEA gforce 512mb of cache.

I have FCP5, will that work with Leopard? Should I go with an academic version of FCS? I have heard you can upgrade the ADVs of FCP, yes?

My budget for the system is about $3500.00 give or take $200.00

Any insight is well appreciated!

Thanks,

Steve

Daniel Hueque · April 21, 2009

I am building a great desktop PC specifically to run Avid for about half of the price you're looking to spend. I know you said Mac/laptop, but if you're interested I can post my finalized setup when it's done, which should be soon.

I don't know anything about Macs though, sorry. It's just that $3000 plus seems like a lot so I thought I'd offer.

Tom Hepburn · April 22, 2009

Steven,

I would hold off if possible so you can take advantage of a student discount with Apple, if you're going that route.

Personally I would opt for a mac, but that is chosen based on my situation.

Good luck,

Tom

Steve McBride · April 24, 2009

I have a MacPro with 2x 2.66GHz Intel Xeon Dual-Core processors, 5gb ram, 250gb harddrive, and 500gb harddrive that I'm looking to sell. I've done pleanty of HDV editing in FCP and it has performed beautifully. Let me know if you're interested and you'll definitely be able to save some money.

Matt Read · April 28, 2009

Definitely wait until you become eligible for the student discount. If your school has a bookstore or other "official" school store that sells Macs, try buying from there. They might give you a larger discount than you would get buying from Apple directly.

Also, look into buying a refurbished Mac from Apple. Apple guarantees them same as a new Mac and I believe they are eligible for the Apple Care protection plan (look into that to make sure I'm correct in that). Also, if there is a store that sells Macs in your town, ask to see if they are selling, or will be selling soon, their display Mac.

My Mac Pro used to be the display model that my school's bookstore used. I got it for significantly less than if I had bought it from Apple, even with their student discount. They also gave me an extra $100 off the student discount price for Final Cut Studio 2.

I would also suggest getting a 24" Dell monitor rather than the 22". Last time I checked, the 22" wasn't quite a full 1080p monitor, but the 24" was. You'll appreciate being able to watch your films at their full resolution.

I would also pass on the 8GB of RAM. I have 2GB and I have no problem editing or doing effects work on 1080p video. If you do feel the need to get more RAM, check crucial.com. They have the cheapest prices on Mac RAM I've found. Also consider buying your 1TB drive from a 3rd party as well.

DavidFu · May 1, 2009

8 gigs of ram is over kill, and so is buying harddrives from Apple. I would recommend Raiding up two 1T drives in a G Raid, that way you have 2T's, portable and costing you just about 300-400 bucks. But again, SD and HDV, Imac is sufficient in my experience. If you are going to editing HD footage, I'd recommend upgrading to Final 6. In terms of computers, for HDV the iMacs out now are fine for that type of footage and really anything up to ProRes will run fine on an iMac with a Firewire800 external. I'm running FCP 5 on my 2 year old Macbook Pro and it handle SD footage fine, but for HD I use Imac or Mac Pro. As long as you're not looking to add a Kono card, you should be fine with an Imac. If you purchase Mac, you can wait till summer, when Apple typically does their summer deal of giving you an Ipod with purchase of a Mac. On top of that you can apply a student discount (there is a student discount for high schoolers also, so you don't have to wait until you get to film school).