New editing mac for wedding

[Luke Oliver]

Hi Everyone

I have a 2.2.8 GHz Quad core mac pro with 6gb of Ram, its 3 years old and im looking to replace it this year

Just a few questions for all the wedding guys.

Will the new Imac be sufficient for FCP editing of weddings in terms capabilities

Do you use I mac or a mac pro? IF you use an Imac how do you handle all your back up

Is it worth replacing after 3 years?? or should it last me longer, This will be my busiest year yet and I cant let anything fail me

Sorry for all the questions

I hope everyone had a lovely christmas

Kind regards

Luke

[Tim Bakland]

Still enjoying my late 2007 Mac Pro 2,1 -- souped up with lots of RAM and drives.
Was hoping to get a couple more seasons. Still works nicely with FCP 7, HD footage and Magic Bullet

[Nigel Barker]

Like you both my wife & I each have a three year old 2x2.8GHz Mac Pro. She has 16GB RAM while I have 12GB. We have moved on from FCP7 & now use Premiere Pro which uses all eight cores & all the RAM as unlike FCP7 it is a 64-bit application. It is wonderful to be able to edit Canon DSLR footage natively & not to have to wait for transcoding or rendering. Both machines have been upgraded with a 600GB Velociraptor 10K rpm hard drive. I have also added an Nvidia GTX285 graphics card to mine as Premiere Pro can use CUDA to offload work to the graphics card that would normally require CPU. It speeds up export of the final H.264 files by a factor of 3 or 4 & works as well as using a Matrox Max for near real time export of H.264 for Blu-ray.

So my recommendation if you want to spend money on an upgrade is keep the Mac Pro which is still a great workhorse. Move to Premiere Pro & add some more RAM plus an Nvidia GTX285. The faster disk makes application startup etc snappier but my next upgrade will be a 256GB SSD as I have seen the radical improvement in performance & new lease of life that an SSD upgrade has done to my three year old MacBook Pro.

[Chris Estrella]

If you want a machine that won't fail, the Mac Pro is it. I too have the same machine (Mac Pro 3,1 right?) and I can see it going strong for another 3 years. That is, if technology doesn't go into hyperspeed and deliver 4k resolution footage in consumer cameras! Haha.

When I'm done all my current projects, I too will transition to Premiere and take advantage of editing with native DSLR footage and its signature Mercury Playback Engine. I already replaced my dying Nvidia 8800GT with a GTX550 Ti (which is a PC card, but can be made to work on a Mac) which Premiere recognizes for MPE.

So, in short, my vote is to upgrade your current Mac Pro with more RAM, an up-to-date graphics card, and perhaps an SSD. Figure around $500 for all that, depending how much you get. You can't upgrade an iMac! Then perhaps you can consider the new Mac Pros when they (hopefully) come out later this year.

[Chad Whelan]

I am on a 2006 MacPro1,1. (2 x 2.66) It has the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT card. I have had no problems with HDV footage at all or 1080 60i prores files. Recently I have been editing 1080 60p prores files. I have noticed some studdering with the clips and have wondered if this could be related to the graphics card. Also on FCP 7, 7 GB RAM. Otherwise, I had no plans to upgrade as this machine has proved to be very reliable.

[Glen Elliott]

Originally Posted by Luke Oliver

Hi Everyone

I have a 2.2.8 GHz Quad core mac pro with 6gb of Ram, its 3 years old and im looking to replace it this year

Just a few questions for all the wedding guys.

Will the new Imac be sufficient for FCP editing of weddings in terms capabilities

Do you use I mac or a mac pro? IF you use an Imac how do you handle all your back up

Is it worth replacing after 3 years?? or should it last me longer, This will be my busiest year yet and I cant let anything fail me

Sorry for all the questions

I hope everyone had a lovely christmas

Kind regards

Luke

We have a mix in our studio. A Mac Pro 8-core with 10 gigs of ram (for sale btw), two 3.4 i7 27" iMacs, and a 17" MBP. To be honest editing on one machine to the next doesn't feel any different. Thus the reason I feel the iMac is the best bang for the buck.

I had my newest 27" i7 sent to OWC for the turnkey 256gig 6G SSD upgrade and it's SMOKING fast. Another plus is thunderbolt will be hitting the mainstream this year with lower prices and more selections.