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New imac 27'' i7 (video editing)

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bibihos

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 31, 2010
4
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Hi i want to buy the new imac 27'' with i7 and i have few questions (i will use the imac for HD editing. The footage that i will use is from canon mark II 5D)
First my question is did anybody has problems with connecting a second monitor for preview?
Any problems with MAC OS 64 bit?
And is this machine good enough for full HD editing?
 
bibihos said:
Hi i want to buy the new imac 27'' with i7 and i have few questions (i will use the imac for HD editing. The footage that i will use is from canon mark II 5D)
First my question is did anybody has problems with connecting a second monitor for preview? Not sure, but I have not seen many posts about a problem on the form.
Any problems with MAC OS 64 bit? I have had none, and my mac never gets turned off.
And is this machine good enough for full HD editing? Yes, but it may be helpful to upgrade the RAM.
Click to expand...

See in Bold.
 
I will upgread to 8 GB RAM, but what is better for the performance 2x4 or 4x2 ?
 
Unless someone else 'chips' in I don't think its going to make a vast amount of difference. I would go for the cheaper option.
 
bibihos said:
I will upgread to 8 GB RAM, but what is better for the performance 2x4 or 4x2 ?
Click to expand...

Shouldn't be difference in performance but if you're planning to upgrade to +8GB, it would better to go with 2x4GB. I would just get it with 2x2GB and then buy 2x4GB for 238$ from OWC, that would get you 12GB for 40$ more than 4x2GB or 160$ less than 2x4GB from Apple
 
Hellhammer said:
Shouldn't be difference in performance but if you're planning to upgrade to +8GB, it would better to go with 2x4GB. I would just get it with 2x2GB and then buy 2x4GB for 238$ from OWC, that would get you 12GB for 40$ more than 4x2GB or 160$ less than 2x4GB from Apple
Click to expand...

- isn't there a performance hit with non-paired ram?

- you can send your original 2x2GB back to OWC for $ and put towards a third 4GB. you could also benchmark with hellhammers 2x2GB+2x4GB suggestion, then pull the 2x2GB and compare. of course, someone else has most likely done this already so there's always google.

- my experience is that AE / Color / Motion are much more ram dependent than FCP. I think FCP can only address 4GB (might want to double check that).

- the bottleneck for HDV is often the HD as an external scratch disk is typically used unless on a macpro. even fw800 / 7200+ HD can be an issue. unfortunately, eSATA isn't available on the imac which i personally find very frustrating.
 
alph45 said:
- my experience is that AE / Color / Motion are much more ram dependent than FCP. I think FCP can only address 4GB (might want to double check that).
Click to expand...

More importantly, FCP can't recognize multiple cores like other apps can. This makes a goddamn mac mini perfectly fine to edit HD footage on with enough RAM.

alph45 said:
- the bottleneck for HDV is often the HD as an external scratch disk is typically used unless on a macpro. even fw800 / 7200+ HD can be an issue. unfortunately, eSATA isn't available on the imac which i personally find very frustrating.
Click to expand...

You shouldn't use "HDV" for "HD video". HDV is its own format and you could confuse someone. No, a FW800, 7200RPM hard drive will work fine for 5dmkII footage. I have a 8TB RAID5 running off FW800 due to a busted esata port and there is no problems.
 
"You shouldn't use "HDV" for "HD video". HDV is its own format and you could confuse someone."

- good point, was being lazy. in my work environment DSLR footage is conformed with cinema tools before going to FCP. ProRez for format, flavor depending on project, output, etc. I don't do any 4k work so i'm not up to speed on that end.

- although FCP can't address multicore, most of the pro software i use can. prorez also scales with cores. imac should ramp up CPU when running FCP. Compressor can multicore as well as a number of 3rd party plugs. the hit is with RT FCP which as you mentioned is mostly addressed with RAM.
 
advres said:
More importantly, FCP can't recognize multiple cores like other apps can. This makes a goddamn mac mini perfectly fine to edit HD footage on with enough RAM.
Click to expand...

Because FCP is single core, the frequency is very important, thus iMac with 3.33GHz C2D is great for FCP but as far as I know, the GPU plays fairly big role in FCP, especially when using Motion for example. The compressor is multicore so when doing the final encoding, the amount of cores is quite important
 
Hellhammer said:
Because FCP is single core, the frequency is very important, thus iMac with 3.33GHz C2D is great for FCP but as far as I know, the GPU plays fairly big role in FCP, especially when using Motion for example. The compressor is multicore so when doing the final encoding, the amount of cores is quite important
Click to expand...

FCP and FCS are 2 different things. I said FCP, not the rest of the suites apps.
 
bibihos said:
Hi i want to buy the new imac 27'' with i7 and i have few questions (i will use the imac for HD editing. The footage that i will use is from canon mark II 5D)
First my question is did anybody has problems with connecting a second monitor for preview?
Any problems with MAC OS 64 bit?
And is this machine good enough for full HD editing?
Click to expand...
A little late to reply, but I edited a 30 min 1080p 60fps video on my i7 iMac. Here's my thoughts.
- No problems using a 2nd 24in monitor for preview.
- No known problems with 64 bit (even though I edited using iMovie '09 - don't laugh, only mac software that would not cough at 1080p60)
- Good call on the 8GB ram. I'm at 8GB and notice that while editing with a few apps open (safari, itunes, mail, etc), I'm using over 4GB in active memory.
 
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