• Apple Final Cut Pro

  Configurator conundrum

  Posted by Mark Suszko on February 17, 2012 at 3:19 pm

  I’m planning on getting a new 27-inch imac in the next month or so, and I wouldn’t mind if you gave me some opinions on how to configure it. This will be a do-it-all family machine for web surfing, playing around in Garage Band and iDVD, and Flight simming, that will occasionally get put to use editing videos like PSAS and commercials and donation appeals at home for extra cash. I plan to learn FCPX on this machine but to also snag FCS3 and install that, perhaps on it’s own partition. I don’t expect to need or get an external drive this year, might buy one if a good enough gig comes up that requires it. Of course, I want maximum bang for minimum buck spent. Keeping it under or at least close to $3k is the goal.

  So I’m staring at the configurator at Apple’s site and wondering if this is the right setup:

  2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
  16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 4x4GB
  2TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive
  AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512MB GDDR5

  Or is there a compelling reason to get the somewhat faster 3.1 gig processor?

  As far as picking hard drive combinations, What do you think is the best way to go, considering what I’m going to use the imac for?

  I think I heard rumors of a slight model change for around April NAB time, but should I really worry that much about waiting to see that? From my standpoint, the only appeal in waiting until NAB is to see if the new release puts any downwards price pressure on the model I want now. I have some anxiety about waiting and holding onto the money because that’s just a temptation for some household crisis to come along and lay claim to it. That’s happened four times already since I got serius about savingf up for the damn thing, it’s a main reason my current imac is 13 years old:-)

  Jason Jenkins replied 14 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Jason Jenkins

  February 17, 2012 at 4:22 pm

  Looks like a good configuration. The SSD will make for a very snappy OS and speedy application launching. The 2TB drive will be great for your FCPX projects. I recommend cloning your SSD onto the 2TB drive or an external. I’ve only had one drive die on me in 12 years of video work and it was an SSD after 10 months of use.

  Many are going with the upgraded video card for a boost in FCPX. How much difference does it make? I don’t know of any definitive comparisons.

  To control which events/projects FCPX sees at a given time, you’ll want to use Event Manager X or sparseimages. Otherwise you’ll have every event/project on your system load every time you fire up FCPX.

  This thing is going to be so much faster than your old iMac you’ll be looking for your socks!

  Jason Jenkins
  Flowmotion Media
  Video production… with style!

  Check out my Mormon.org profile.

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