Well, it sounds like FCP edits AVCHD differently than Premier...am I correct?Are you editing HD footage with yours? AVCHD?When you say issues, what has it caused exactly? Have you found a reasonable way to cool it down? External Fans? SMSFanControl? Thanks for all your comments. I really appreciate it.
Chris
I think the AVCHD thing is a red herring, but to answer your question - I don't know what Premier does specifically, but AVCHD is not an editing format, and contemporary desktop machines generally don't have the power to edit them comfortably. Just because your camera hardware produces AVCHD files doesn't mean you have to shop around for AVCHD-capable hardware. Instead, all video-editing packages have some sort of intermediate format option/s you will use. In the case of FCP, which is the only system I know well, when you connect your camera and import your footage, FCP will transcode your raw clumsy AVCHD into clean, editable ProRes (or, presumably, any other codec you might like to edit it - ProRes seems the best choice though). Usually transcoding is bad, as you lose quality. In this case though it's the Right Thing To Do. ProRes is still extremely high quality but is much more managable.
(If this is still confusing, think MPEG2. No one edited in that, it was a destination format. AVCHD is a camera format, not what you want or need to be editing in.)
I edited both SD and HD footage and the iMacs worked well with both.
Heat related issues. One (older) mac suffered from random shutdowns due to heat. A more recent iMac developed the "grey smudge" issue which you can see mentioned on various threads in these forums - I'm reliably informed this is heat related. Lastly, although I haven't experienced this myself because my iMacs end up being cycled fairly often, people say high temperatures reduce HD lifespan - so you wouldn't want to be not backing up your footage, if you are storing it on your internal.
I have used temperature monitor and smcfancontrol for a long time, because I also use intensive apps under bootcamp Windows, which requires heat management. Although I'm sure this helps with HD longevity, I must sadly report my i7 27" 2010 iMac has developed the grey smudge issue in the top right of the screen - despite fairly high fan speeds (generally - occasionally I forget to set them higher and temps soar, I guess that's what did it).
It seems that Apple will replace these "smudge" screens if you are under warranty, which I am at present. But it's this sort of thing which is making me consider a "tower" option next time round. (I may have considered a tower before this actually but my workspace was very limited and I needed the iMac form factor.)
EDIT: Ok, I had no idea Premiere edited AVCHD natively. That sounds sort of weird to me but then maybe I'm just too used to the FCP/ProRes set up. Anyway, I should say in that case, IF you want to use Premiere, AND you want to or have to edit in AVCHD - then I can't give you any info on the iMac's performance.
