Mac mini to play/edit Gopro 1080p videos

[vladodias]

Hi all,

I've recently bought a Gopro silver and found out that it needs a decent hardware to be able to play the hi-res 1080p videos I shot with it.

I'm wondering if the current Mac Mini base model would be able to do it, as my PC is struggling.

Cheers,
Vlad

 

[Jambalaya]

My 2009 Mini (base model) will play 1080p video so the current model will certainly do so. If you are doing video editing I suggest 8GB ram, either Apple installed or add it yourself (check warranty impact)

 

[Donka]

I used the Late 2012 i5 model with 8GB RAM for editing 1080p video in iMovie. Works perfectly. Would be fine with 4GB as well I would imagine.

 

[Yahooligan]

I use my late-2012 Mini (see sig) to edit GoPro and other 1080p video in Final Cut Pro X, it's not only able to play 1080p video on my Thunderbolt Display without issue, it's able to render and transcode faster than real-time.

For example, I imported two 2GB video files (About 20-30 minutes worth) into FCPX, told it to create optimized media, added them to a project, trimmed them in the timeline, added titles and transitions and ended up with a video about 3m20s in length. Sending the project to Compressor to create a full 1080p video took 1m48s. That's 1.85x real-time.

So the iGPU and CPU are both more than capable of working very well for viewing and editing video. It may not be as fast as an iMac or MP, but it's no slouch.