video editing CS5 iMac i7

[shiseido]

I just installed CS5 and was able to play with Premiere Pro and After Effects. Before I was debating on getting an iMac 27 i7 or a Mac Pro. Well for the money, the iMac i7 does everything I ask it to. Computers can still get faster as this thing is fast, but it's not instant...meaning, it still takes time to render.

But to give you an idea...on my 13.3 Macbook, a 1 hour render takes about 10 minutes on the i7.

The interesting thing is playing Starcraft 2...I don't hear the iMac fans at all...however, rendering HD video puts the CPU to work. I only have 8GB of RAM now and it seems responsive, but I can guarantee for these kinds of video editing programs, the more RAM the merrier. I order 8GB more RAM today and I will have a total of 12GB (I stole 4GB out of my Macbook temporarily).

I can certainly say for anyone thinking about iMac for video editing...it definitely can get the job done. If money however is not an issue...go with the Mac Pro...the extra hard drives make a difference. For those on a budget...like me...this is the top of the line product for a prosumer. It's hard to beat the price for the big monitor and i7 chip. BTW...even 27 isn't enough... I got an external 24 next to it and in fact... running both After Effects and Premiere Pro...it would not be out of the question to have a 3rd monitor for web browsing or have a document to look at or something.

Let's all hope Adobe supports our video cards in the future.

 

[ravencr]

Does it play the video within the software while editing without hiccup at all? That's the main problem I have with editing on my MBP 17" loaded. It just can't keep up...upgrading to an iMac if I can get this confirmation. What are you using to edit the HD footage?

Chris

 

[tc3jg]

Starcraft 2 plays good on my i5 so its gotta do well on a i7.

 

[ravencr]

Okay, here's the verdict:

I imported my AVCHD files from my HMC40 directly into iMovie via usb. Then, I imported the .mov files into Adobe Premiere, and the difference is amazing. Premiere has no problems playing the video now...it's not jumpy skipping multiple frames, etc. So, now the question is do I need to upgrade...lol? You guys might have saved me a small fortune!

On a different note, but similar, based on what we discussed above, I found out some interesting things in regards to the imac and mbp I thought I'd share, as well:

1) The MBP can have a SSD or any other 2.5" HDD installed in place of the existing optical drive if desired.
2) The iMac can do the same thing, but instead of the optical drive being replaced, the internal card reader is replaced instead, so instead of being able to run 2 drives, one 3.5" and one 2.5" drive, you can run one 3.5" and two 2.5" drives.
3) Express card esata doesn't tend to work well with optical drives, so fw800 is the preferred connection to an external blu-ray player, for example. It's slower, but plenty fast for the burners apparently.
4) OWC's two different SSD's basically are the same, but the Raid version has more space allotted for bad sectors to be stored as they go bad, so essentially that's why they last longer and maintain the same speeds longer than the regular ones they offer. It's 4 times that of the regular ones...
5) In regards to using the SSD as a scratch disk or any use for that matter, OWC says it's totally fine, but the main reason people don't is because of cost.
6) Apparently if you've seen Raid drives that can read at 250mb/sec, the bottleneck isn't the drive but rather the expresscard esata card that will essentially cut that in half.
7) If you're looking to upgrade to an external blu-ray writer, Toast Titanium with the blu-ray plug is required on a mac to burn blue ray discs, because mac basically has no support for this natively. I'd imagine if you use Premiere or possibly final cut, they'd do it no problem...not sure, but not through iMovie.

All I can say is Stephen Lorence at OWC was amazing. After spending 1:30 hours on the chat with him, I got all my questions answered, and now my only concern is do a need to upgrade to the iMac or not? And, if not, should I get a SSD drive to replace my internal optical and run my apps and OSX only off of it, leaving my existing drive in place for my files, etc?? It would definitely be way cheaper, that's for sure.

I can't say enough how much I appreciate everyone's help on here...I couldn't have figured all this out with you. Many thanks!!

Chris