Imac 27" I7

[Willy Santiago]

Please give me advise if the below configuration is good enough to edit basic HD video using the latest version of Final Cut Pro,

Thanks for your input.

Imac 27"
2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x2GB
2TB Serial ATA Drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive
ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB GDDR5 SDRAM

[Ryan Farnes]

Yes. That is an excellent machine and with a quad core processor you shouldn't choke with h.264 or AVCHD footage I don't think.

In fact, some people that are interested in RED's Scarlet camera due out sometime (hehe) in the next few months are eyeing this particular iMac as an possible editing machine given its quad core processor and 27" 2560x1440 (beyond 1080p HD) display.

For "basic HD," yes, you're covered.

[Guy Cochran]

That's a great system. What type of HD footage? Different CODECs can still choke a fast machine for a variety of reasons.

[Willy Santiago]

Mostly are wedding video and once i set up the imac for editing. the next step is to acquire a HD camera.

[Nate Haustein]

Just ordered one yesterday. I'll let you guys know how it goes for AVCHD in FCP.

If the benchmark scores say anything, it should absolutely scream to the level of a quad Mac Pro :D

[Marcus Marchesseault]

These machines should do a decent job. Still, no matter how fast your machine, you should convert to an intermediate codec for editing like ProRes or Cineform. The very fastest machine available will still seem sluggish with some HD codecs use in cameras.

[Jim Andrada]

You might want to also think about a G-Raid drive or something similar.To a large extent Cineform etc trade off data rate for processing power so faster devices are a good idea IMHO

[Nate Haustein]

Just got it, and it's fast. Converts 720p AVCCAM footage to ProRes at about 4-5x realtime. Screen is amazing. Solid, and has 8 virtual cores to work with compressor. Quite happy so far.

[Nate Haustein]

Ok, thoughts so far: it's nice, and I like it very much.

With 6GB of ram the i7 runs FCP, Photoshop, iTunes and Motion very well. Things are fast when it utilizes all the cores such as with Compressor, however renders out of FCP6 are a bit disappointing because it only uses 2 of the 8 available virtual cores for the render from the timeline. That being said, it does a decent job of realtime playback with a few filters on–color correction doesn't even give a hiccup. This limitation is a known issue, but only makes me want a 64bit Final Cut even more.

4GB G-Raid seems to be keeping up just fine; I made it a RAID1 set instead of the factory RAID0 so it's a little wonky, but still supports 4-5 streams of 720p ProRes. Perhaps I'll reformat after this project into RAID0.

For what I paid, this should certainly do the job for a year or two, until I feel I need to upgrade to some other silly piece of technology. Even then, the delicious screen is certainly worth saving for a second monitor.

[Josh Laronge]

FYI, for mid 2010 iMacs, OWC OWC TurnKey eSATA Add-On/Upgrade Program for Apple iMac 27" '2010' (iMac11,3) - also options for additional memory and drive ugprade offers an eSata upgrade.

I'd love to hear some feedback from anyone who has done this. Specifically, do you notice a great increase in speed using a RAID 0 over the eSata vs. FW800.

I'd suspect it voids the Apple warranty too.

[Dan Magnafichi]

I do mainly web video production and I've been using the 27" I-Mac w/ 2 TB internal hard drive, 2.8 GHz i7 processor, 8 GB of memory and the ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card running FCP 7 for over 6 months now and have had excellent results. I have an external 2 TB drive that I use for media storage and Scratch Disk. I shoot on a JVC GY-HM700 camera that records to SDHC cards and can import the clips directly into FCP which is a great time saver. The 700 may be out of your price range for weddings but if not I highly recommend this camera/edit system combo.

[David Kuespert]

Hi, I just started with the Imac 27 I7 16 gig ram, 256 gig solid state primary with 2 gig 2ndary, with Final cut Suite. It still feels like the indy car is idling.