I was (still am) a Vegas user on two Pent 4 PCs, I have two systems in the event I was doing two jobs at the same time, or I was to have an equipment failure.

I landed a movie gig, and the work was to be sent to me in FCP setup on a hard drive, so I went out and bought a Mac G5 and Final Cut Pro, and learned my way around as I edited.

I suggest you get a Mac and FCP and get with it if you want to do freelance work. But I am seeing the jobs being offered to me, being offered for less money as the years go on. Finally I am seeing many more requests for free work, and deferred pay. I am concerned that video editing wages are going south, and may not come back.

I think the Imac is fine to edit on or even a Mac Book Pro 17" for the price, serious grading using Magic Bullet Looks or using motion is where theses machines slow down and also several video layers will need constant rendering which is a pain but you get used to it.

Bang for buck the Imac looks great.

Wish they could make the Imac a matte screen as the glossy screen reflects everything in sight.

Cool

Be concerned because that's the way it's clearly going. I'm seeing offers for $25 p/h including your expensive system. Notice that the executives never take a wage cut.

I have looked around the forum to see if others are experiencing the same thing in their locations. I did not see much on this topic.

Elsewhere, I saw an offer listed to do some shooting work. They wanted a 3 chip HDV camera, sound equipment, and a higher end tripod, and were offering $8-$10 an hour for about four hours. That looks to me like about $8,000 to $10,000 worth of equipment on the lower end. I am not sure that is doable on a pro level.

$25 an hour will not keep one up with the upgrades, updates, repairs, or any training for new advancements. But it is better than being asked to work for copy, meals, and credit.

I'm wondering if this thread should be shared in the "Taking Care of Business" section.

It worked fine for me. New 21.5" iMac connected to a G-RAID via firewire 800. The G-RAID is connected to a Sony FX1000 via an 800 to 400 cable (supplied w/ G-RAID) with a 6 pin to 4 pin adapter (purchased separately).

Yeah, ditto. I had a bunch of crap wired up to a belkin firewire hub (fw 400 btw) and it was fine. Although lately my hub has stopped acknowledging my apogee duet, which I now have to plug directly into the imac, though the firewire ports on the hub seem fine when I plug other devices into 'em. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?

Hmmm.....not sure why you think this. Mac Pros are about as ideal as you can get for pro-level jobs
in my experience. Maybe you meant to say iMacs are not ideal for pro-level jobs for the reasons
stated??

I have an older 15" non-unibody MBP with Expresscardslot 34 and I bought an iMac 27" i7 2 months ago.

Some notes:

- yes you truly loose expandibility. At work we often work with SATA drives in a RAID, connected trough eSata. I can only use Firewire, so I have to dump everything on a firewire drive. It's okay for now, but with literaly TB's of material, this sometimes isn't easy.
I can connect it to my older MBP of course, but there I loose the power.

- Saying that an iMac is an absolute no go or the same as a laptop with a big screen is indeed a step to far. The size of the screen increases your productivity with Pro-apps, and the power and speed of the machine is not comparable with a laptop.The I/O options though, are the same as a current 15" MBP and it can limit a lot depending on your workflow and environment.
If you buy an iMac though, I would go for the i7 option though. In compressor the extra cores make a difference. This machine I have renders faster then the older 2.66 ghz Mac Pro's at work. It really renders fast, the only limiting factor is - again - the HDD's you can connect.

- The screen is a pleasure to work on. Especially the sheer screen estate have to work with it magnificent. In Final cut I can make my browser really big to have long lists of shots, and still have more then enough room for timeline and viewer/canvas.

I bought it tricked out with 8GB RAM and the 2 TB option, and I really am pleased about my purchase. Yes, I really miss at least an expresscard slot option, but I knew that was the thing I would be giving up when I bought it. I still have the MBP and it's a great combo.
I agree that professionaly, a Mac Pro is a better option, but if you cannot afford it, chances are big you can make a workflow around the limitations of an iMac and learn the system. I have edited for 2 years on a Macbook Pro and although it sometimes happened that I needed the Expresscardslot, it wasn't that many over the course of 2 years. And with the work I did on the Macbook Pro (also my first Mac), I earned enough money to not only make a living, but also buy an iMac.
If you can afford a Mac Pro, you can think about it, they are great machines - but wait untill new Mac Pro's arrive.Currently they are not that good of a deal.

<Corrected by Mike himself>

Oops. Yes, that was a typo. I did mean to say iMacs are not ideal for pro-level work.