Hi all,
I'm about to start a small video business and I'll be mostly doing wedding and small business movies.
I'm thinking of getting the top spec Imac because of the graphic card with one of the 2 panasonic cameras.
I read somewhere there might be performance issues with the Imac because of the avccam format and that a mac pro was recommended.
Who is using this setup and is it working ok for you in full hd recording mode?
I'd hate to invest the money to find out the Imac isnt fast enough.
Thank you

Ok so I phoned a retailer who said the Imac is fine, even the first 27" model.
He said the issue was between the AVCHD format and FCP, advised to use AVID (not possible) or maybe the latest FCP X or Adobe Premiere Pro.
any thoughts?

Search DVinfo and you will find many discussions about problems editing AVCHD. The format is performance intensive to edit. Most of us simply convert the AVCHD to Prores format during ingest and edit in FCP. It will add to the ingest time and the files will be larger but take far less time to edit on your computer. Your computer's processing power will be used for rendering and realtime playback of effects. Or just use FCP-X.

I guess it'd be the same workflow as with the NX5, log and transfer in FCP but avoid LPCM in the camera settings.
Thanks for taking the time to answer

If those Panny cameras put the video in an MTS file, they will need to be rewrapped into one recognized by FCP. I use ClipWrap to both rewrap them and convert them to Prores in one step.

FCP X will easily handle AVCHD with no transcoding, or transcode during import if you wish. However, FCP X insists you import from the original AVCHD file structure on your SD card.

ok i get it, thanks a lot

You can copy the whole AVCHD folder and drop it on your desktop from there you can open it with Final Cut x or whatever software you are using to edit. Easy to archive that way for me. on an external HDD.

Final Cut X also has a "Create Camera Archive" function in the import pop-up window. Does the same thing as copying the card contents, but also puts everything in a sort of .zip folder archive so you can't accidentally delete clips. These archives show up in the left hand column of the import window. Kinda convenient as long as you don't have a million projects on the drive.