My baby sister wants to create videos on a computer. She is a professional actress and has creative talent, so the most difficult part is under control. She asked about computers.
I went to the local bookstore and pulled a half dozen books on iMovie and the other i-Apps. We went over what iMovie can do, and it seems powerful enough. She has used professional video editing equipment before (about 5 years ago) so the terminology, which was foreign to me, was familiar enough to her. There were things iMovie can do, described with words that I cannot pronounce. She can pronounce them just fine, and seems to know exactly what these words mean.
Next question is the hardware. She is on a budget, (starving actress, not super-star) and does not bring to the party a used PC screen or PC keyboard.
It seems like an iBook, which has both KB and Screen built in, and is faster than a Mac Mini, should do the trick, with a RAM upgrade sufficient for video editing. I figure a 1gig upgrade from OWC should do, for about $130 - $150. She would be happy with the price savings of a 12 inch. There are some at full list price, and Apple is selling some refurbished ones for a couple hundred less.
Does it seem reasonable to select a 12 inch iBook with a 1gig RAM upgrade, for video editing?
Long as your sister isn’t looking to produce any special fx extravaganzas, an iBook with more RAM would get the job done in a compact and portable package. However, if portability isn’t really a high priority, I would definitely tell her to consider stretching a little more for a new 17” G5 iMac. While sacrificing easy portability, the iMac is also all-in-one, more upgradeable, trumps the iBook in every arena of raw power, which you can never have enough of in video work, and the new models come with an integrated iSight as well. A lot of extra value for $1299 vs $999 for the basic iBook if portability isn’t a concern. A 1gb RAM upgrade for the iMac is also cheaper, weighing in at about $100 from OWC. An iMac will especially shine should your sister’s indy endeavors take off and she upgrade to working with Final Cut or Final Cut Express rather than iMovie.
Not at all! Of course, it’d be far preferable to get a dual G5 for this kind of work, even an older one, but I figure that’s not what you needed to hear.
Long as your sister isn’t looking to produce any special fx extravaganzas, an iBook with more RAM would get the job done in a compact and portable package. However, if portability isn’t really a high priority, I would definitely tell her to consider stretching a little more for a new 17” G5 iMac.
The key here is what kind of video editing she’ll be doing. An iBook with do iMove and FC express; barely. A PowerMac with the new chips will make video and audio scream. In between is the iMac, and unless portability is mandatory, go with the iMac and as much RAM and hard drive as you can afford. You won’t be sorry.
Thank you for your thoughts. Alas, they are opposite opinions!
Her financial position is that of a starving creative type working a clerical job in L.A. California, until she gets her “big break”. She has time on her hands, meaning that if the iBook takes 2 minutes to do something that the dual G5 could do in 30 seconds, she can wait. She has more time than money.
$900 (refurbished) to $1000 she can swing this year, maybe with a 1gig RAM upgrade as a Christmas gift from a friendly big brother. Alas, $1500 will set her back half a year…. $2000 for a low-end PowerMac with the new chips will, unfortunately, set her back a full year. It might drive her into the arms of a Windows PC vendor (ughh).
Obviously, if the iBook is barely useable, she must wait until she can afford something more. No choice.
With that background, how bad will it be to do video editing on a 1.2 ghz iBook upgraded to 1.25 gig of RAM, or a 1.33 ghz upgraded to 1.5 gig? Will it be slower but usable for someone who can get coffee while the thing cranks away in iMovie? Or will it be so marginal that she should really just wait 6 months or a year?
From the sound of things, portability is not really an issue. Given that alone, I would say do not get the iBook because much of the money paid is for the portability. Dollar for dollar, laptops are poor deals for raw computing power and in your sister’s case, as much raw power as can be afforded is what she really wants.
Given a budget of $900-1000 and your sis’ apparent desire to get started soon as possible, I would say without hesitation what she wants to do is run, not walk to the Apple Store special deals section and grab one of those refurb previous generation iMac G5’s while they’re still available. For $849 (pay tax, but free shipping) you get a 17” 1.8ghz G5 iMac with 512mb of RAM, 160gb HD, combo drive an 128mb Radeon 9600 video chipset. For $949 you get the same thing but with superdrive DVD burner. I believe it uses the same $100 1gb RAM upgrade as the newer iMacs do. This iMac’ll beat up an iBook and take its lunch money when it comes to video editing and is still an all-in-one solution.
Right out of the box, she’ll be able to get started with iMovie with a lot more headroom both in CPU power and hard drive space than with an iBook and as time and budget allows, she can get more hard drive space and move on up to Final Cut Express or Final Cut as her needs dictate.
Also note Dan a DV cassette offloaded to hard Drive for editing is approximately 13GB. So if she has 2-3 tapes of source for one project, that’s potentially 39GB of raw footage alone, before editing, compression, DVD ISOs, Apps, music and photo collection, OS, and 10% freespace headroom on the drive.
Just an FYI, HD space is important not just for speed reasons.
Wouldn’t the hard drive in the Mac mini and iBook be a bit slow for Final Cut Express. Even if I was thinking of an iBook I would probably wait now because I hear so much about new iBooks coming at MacWorld in January.
Well, I doubt the speed of the laptop HD will change much with the Intel switch. Not for DV import anyway. iBook and Mini HDs should be adequate, if just barely, for DV input, though while editing obviously HD speed has a dispproportionately large impact on performance related to other tasks.
I second that emotion regarding the Apple Store Refurbs. I’ve purchased dozens of machines like that from Apple and NEVER had a problem. You get full warranty so there’s really little issue or risk. If there’s ever a problem with a Mac, new or refurbed, it usually shows up in the first couple of months anyway, so still gets covered by warranty. Some good deals on mature equipment can be found on the Apple site. I no longer rush out and buy the latest and greatest.
