Video editing computer and software?

Jacal

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Can any of knowledgable fellows help me please? I'm wanting to buy a desktop for Vid editing and general social stuff, at the mo I'm using my MacBook Pro and iMovie, although it will do the job I'm finding it hard work with a 13" screen + iMovie is a bit basic and I'm wanting to try to advance my basic skill.......So.....Curry's have a couple of 27" iMacs i5 at what seems to be a very reasonable price (1299-1399)
Thanks if you have read this far.....What I want to know, will one of these pooters be ok and what reasonably price software would be a goos choice.....TIA
 
Cheers Andi.
Thought about it but the battery needs changing and I'm unsure of the price of a iMac 27" 5k monitor. I do know that I will have to change my MacBook battery anyway but the desktop would be the main computer.
 
Cheers for the heads up richie will take a look but was wanting to go the 4k route. Just doing 1080p in iMovie is a pain.
 
but was wanting to go the 4k route.

i5 iMac is wasted money.
Depending on what you want to do (I'm assuming hobby stuff): i7 at least, 32Gb of RAM minimum and 1TB internal SSD. You'll need an hefty/fast-ish external mechanical drive too, but those are cheap.

The RAM on the iMAc is still user serviceable, so you can replace that yourself (at much lower price) buying from Crucial.
SSDs are replaceable on iMacs but wouldn't do it on a new machine as it voids the warranty and also is a general pain in the ass to remove the glass. :D Just order the bigger storage option.


Final Cut Pro is insanely fast on the Mac. If you are coming from iMovie the transition will be easier I guees.
I absolutely loathe it and normally use Premiere, but that's also because I already have the full Adobe Suite, so it is included in the price and I am more used to the UI, despite the performance difference.
 
Cheers stolzy

er-minio....errrrr didn't know I needed the Starship comp ;) Your right be it "Hobby stuff", the Macs i"ve looked at is i5s and only 8Gb RAM, and 1TB Fusion hard drive.
Would this slow down the edit so much it would be unusable?.....Obviously I can upgrade the RAM but as you say not the HD.
 
can you still upgrade the stuff in the new imacs..? I thought they're specc'ed up and that was it..? unless you ask for a custom build...?

my choice would be Adobe CC... get the full deal and there's so many help out videos you can always find a way to do something... you also get access to their stock footage, images etc.

Avid is a pro choice we have to use themall, and actually they're all good but the problem is learning the different interfaces or terminology...

I would sign up for Angie Taylors online training course, adobe CC... and workout your workflow first and the requirements and get into good practises with how to build a project folder...

technical lists

1 HD in 4K native at 100Mbs can be more than 50Gb
1 hour of HD 1920x1080P at 40Mbps using a Sony wrapper is anything from 16Gb-20Gb
1 hour of HD NXCam squashed into H.264 is 900meg and you could cut that...

the heavy lift of the files and keeping them in RAM is a machine killer....!

try to workout what kit your using and how the files need to be moved....

camera 1 is 4K
camera 2 is a go pro..
camera 3 iphone
camera 3 stills or a mixture.

audio capture what device how does it fit into the plan...

then buy or better lease the machine you'll get a better unit on a monthly scheme than you can afford to buy off the bat, after three years they'll let you buy it anyway...
 
an you still upgrade the stuff in the new imacs..?

I think the RAM is still user serviceable.

didn't know I needed the Starship comp

It's not (only) that.
A decently specced Mac will last you 5+ years generally. The better the configuration, the longer it will last. Consider the cost spread over the years.

8Gb of RAM is too little even for day to day usage sadly. Full stop.
You can order the machine with the minimum available, but you have to add it straight away. 32Gb at Crucial should set you off about 150gbp (against 600 at Apple).
You can do with 16Gb and upgrade to more later on.

Fusion drive is ok. I worked off one of these for several years.
Just get a large enough drive = 1TB.
Just the software and the apps will eat a lot of space. You will have a lot of local caches (unless you configure your setup properly) that normally eat a lot of space.
Consider that you always want to have about 20/30% of the drive free.

i5 processor is bottom of the line. False economy. Especially if you want to do 4k video. Get an i7 at least if you can, it will serve you for longer.


the Macs i"ve looked at is i5s and only 8Gb RAM, and 1TB Fusion hard drive.
Would this slow down the edit so much it would be unusable?

Depends on how much you are doing.
But it is not going to be very fast. Main bottleneck being the RAM in that case.
The i5 in the iMacs you saw at Currys should be the i5-8500 6 core. Speedwise should be comparable to the (older) i7 4 core processor I have in my current machine from 2016. It is ok. But I don't think it's gonna last any longer.
 
Built a machine for this recently. Spec is AMD RYZEN 7 3700x chip 32gb of 3200 CorsairLPX ram. NVIDIA 2060GTX 6GB video card, 2 512gb MVMe M.2 ssd cards, 2TB ssd drive and 6TB mechanical drive. About £1300 for the parts from scan running W10 pro. Using Davinci Resolve (free) for video editing on a Benq 4K monitor. Runs very quickly for 4K with a lot of the work done by the card. I recon it was about half the price to build this spec than buy off the shelf :)
 
Cheers er-minio, Lo-IQ and Mzokk for the detailed info and will look further into what I can get for my budget which I was hoping to be around the £1500 mark.

It's looking like the iMac would be basic i5 for my bucks with a RAM update (Check to make sure it's still upgradable) which obviously wouldn't be anywhere near future proofed BUT 'there again' this would primarily be a main home desktop and to hopefully learn how to edit vids so would this be good enough ?......It would also work well (hopefully) in conjunction with my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) 2.4 GHz Dual-Core Intel Cor i5, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, Intel Iris 1536 MB running macOS Catalina.

I haven't considered the Windows based comp for the above reason and I'm just a sucker for Apple comps and find them not to frustrating to work on although I have to agree you seem to get a hell of a lot more bangs for your bucks with a Windows based machine!

So....'What do I do' buy a basic Apple i5 and upgrade it with RAM....OR....look at a Windows based machine seeing as my laptop is quite old and will also need replacing at sometime.........Errmm Questions, Questions!
 
I'm just a sucker for Apple comps and find them not to frustrating to work on although I have to agree you

I am (was) too.

In general, the computer is a tool to achieve something.
Use the tool you are most comfortable/familiar with and you'll achieve your target faster :)
 
I use a MacBook Pro 15inch (i7, 8gb ram, SDD internal and external) with FinalCutPro - works well.

I echo the use of an external monitor - it might also be worth considering a MacMini i7 (very easy to install an SSD and increase the memory) and cheap as chips. Connect up a large PC hdmi monitor and you are away. No point spending $$$$$ on a hobby unless you get hooked on it. I more often use the MacMini (i7-3.2ghz, 16gb ram, 1tb SSD and a cheap LG 27inch monitor) for the video editing now rather than the MBP and my MacMini setup including monitor cost less than 500notes.
 
I used a (top spec at the time) MacMini as my main home machine for a number of years and served me well, and I had a MacBook Air for when on the go and an old Pro in the office.

BTO MacMini with i7 and 1TB SSD is 1500GBP. Plus you'll have to add the cost for RAM as usual.
I was looking at one as an option a few months ago.
I do use an external GPU these days, so that solves the Mini's bottleneck.

I'm just not yet convinced to move back to a 2 computer setup though.
Been working off my MacBook Pro for the last 2 years, and not having to maintain two different computers saves a lot of time. Otherwise you spend an awful lot of time running updates everytime you pick up the laptop :D
 
Bloody hell ! Img that sound a serious proposition, I'm on it now! Have you any links to suppliers?

I wasn't clear on my post (my bad) - I'm not talking about the new models of MacMini - I'm using a late 2012 model running MacOS Catalina and FCP 10.4.7 - I am happy to use an older piece of kit for my "hobby" plus the background rendering processing on FCP works really well on my setup so I don't even notice any age-related delays (if there are any that is). Scrubbing through the footage shows no delays at all for me.
 


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