Using a Mac Mini for graphics/video/motiongraphics work?

[jrm27]

Hello all,

I'm the market for a secondary computer... a kind of desktop to use at home. My primary computer will be a MacbookPro. Most of the work I'll be doing with be media-centric... lots of graphic work, lots of video work, and probably a fair amount of motion graphics (AfterEffects). Most of my work will be done on my laptop. However, I'd like to be able to do some work at home on the "desktop" if need be, just in case the laptop is out of commission, or is residing at work, or is bogged down in a big render, etc... I know a mac mini isn't the ideal candidate for this, but I see no reason why it wouldn't handle most of the Adobe Creative Suite. Possibly, the only program that may tax it a bit hard is AfterEffects.

I'm thinking of getting an i7, probably a 2.3ghz quadcore machine... upgrading to the 2.6 would be nice, but as a secondary computer I'd rather save the cash if I can. An imac would be great (I use a mid 2010 imac now without much issue), but cost is an issue and I've got peripherals to spare. Besides media work, I'd probably end up using it to feed an AppleTV at some point.

Anyways, any thoughts on this type of usage with a mac mini?

 

[VideoBeagle]

giving this a bump as I have similar questions, so answers would be great

 

[pertusis1]

I used a mac mini i7 16 gb ram. Used it some with FCPX. Found it Ok, but would not want to depend on it to make a living. It would probably work OK as a backup/occasional use computer.

 

[chickenwingfly]

I have a 2011 mini (dual core i7, 8 GB RAM).
I use it as my main computer.

The problem is that people tend to see it as the "media centre" (to be honest I'd never waste $500 or something like that for a "media centre" computer!!!!!), but in reality it's pretty capable.

I'm not a professional graphics designer or video editor, but I do both and although you wouldn't expect it to render the sequel to Avatar on it... it works just fine, better than "it's ok as a last resource".

Nowadays I'd pick the quad core i7, but the lack of a proper graphics card (even if the crappy 6630M of mine) -just the HD4000- makes it less appealing.

You can find some interesting benchmarks at Barefeats.

About feeding it to the ATV.. sure that's what people would buy it mostly, I think.

In my case, I wanted a Mac (windows user previously) with a small footprint, energy saving, and that I could use with my (big) HDTV (main monitor), so a macbook air/pro was out, an iMac was out and the sole thought of having a "tower computer" like the Mac Pro gives me nightmares... never again I'll carry that burden to my eyesight.
If anything in the future, I'd buy a MacBook air, as my "second" mac.

Other uses include developing (with memory hungry IDEs), video and music encoding, music composing, local servers (httpd, mail, proxy) and the ocasional gaming.

Since I already had the magic mouse, wireless keyboard and trackpad (from a failed Hackintosh experiment), the first barrier was down when I started considering the purchase.

Hope it helps.