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iMacs and Final Cut Pro
I’m wondering if someone here might help be able to help me answer some questions. I’m proposing that our high school (a long time Dell shop) install some systems for Final Cut Pro.
I teach Video Production to multiple classes of high school students, of 12-20 kids each (on Dell systems using Vegas Video). Their final videos typically run 5-7 minutes (once in a while we’ll have a long project of 15-30 minutes). These projects typically entail 3-4 video tracks and 3-4 audio tracks. Students sometimes do green screen work, and they like to use special effects like lens flares, or funky transitions, in their videos. These types of projects run just fine on our single processor Dual Core Dell Pentium system, with 1 gbyte of ram, two internal SATA hard drives and whatever native motherboard graphics chip the Dell comes with.
I’ve got a proposal from Apple for Final Cut Studio, and iMacs with 2gbytes of RAM and a single 320gbyte hard drive. The problem is that this Apple proposal is already quite a bit more expensive than the Dell solution (including VegasVideo). One of our tech folks has heard that the iMacs won’t cut it, that I need Mac Pros with quad core Pentiums, 4-8 gbytes of ram, external raid arrays, etc. I have no experience with Macs or Final Cut, so it’s hard for me to respond.
Can an iMac handle FCP for these kinds of projects? What type of performance can I expect? Is 2 gbytes enough RAM? Should I have dual hard drives? What graphics adapter do I need?
Thanks!
JR -
11 Replies
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I’m surprised you never even looked at the “technical Specs” on Apple’s website instead of listening to one of your colleagues.
The latest iMac is fully capable in handling FCP.
If I were you, I would find a VAR to consult you in your exact needs for your school. You will still qualify for an educational discount.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group -
[John Ranta] “Can an iMac handle FCP for these kinds of projects? What type of performance can I expect? Is 2 gbytes enough RAM? Should I have dual hard drives? What graphics adapter do I need? “
Absolutely you can cut on iMacs with those types of projects. You can even cut DVCPro HD and ProRes. But for school based projects, you really might want to look at Final Cut Express. Less costly and a more streamlined version of the app.
You cannot put a second hard drive inside the iMac. What you want are external FW800 drives for the media storage. You do NOT want to put the media on the main system drive.
The base graphics adapter will be fine.
[John Ranta] “The problem is that this Apple proposal is already quite a bit more expensive than the Dell solution “
Welcome to the world of Apple. On manufacturer, zero competition, you pay what they say. I’m not complaining because I’ll take Final Cut Pro over everything else that’s out there and Macs just work.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Walter, thanks for the response. I will be looking at Final Cut Express for 2/3s of the systems, but I want to get 1/3 of the systems with Final Cut Studio for my Advanced Production students.
Tax dollars are tight. Is it worth it to upgrade to 4 gbytes of RAM? Thanks again – jr
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[John Ranta] “Tax dollars are tight. Is it worth it to upgrade to 4 gbytes of RAM? Thanks again – jr”
If you can afford that and the external drives, sure. 2GB of RAM will work, I’d rather see you pick up the external drives for media.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Walter, I hear you. I like the external drive idea as well. I use Western Digital external firewire drives in my Dell video lab. They’re supported on Apple or Windows – will these be okay? 500gbyte drives run around $100, and I can fit those into the budget I think. JR
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[John Ranta] “Walter, I hear you. I like the external drive idea as well. I use Western Digital external firewire drives in my Dell video lab. They’re supported on Apple or Windows – will these be okay? 500gbyte drives run around $100, and I can fit those into the budget I think. JR”
As long as you’re cutting compressed formats like DV, DVCAM or HDV. Anything else, those drives will probably choke. Keep in mind that the more those drives fill up and get fragmented, the more issues you’ll have in cutting.
I’d recommend LaCie, G-Tech and Other World Computing for external FW drives. Getting a two drive RAID is even better.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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One thing you need to pay attention to is the format of your cameras. It sounds likely that you are using DV. In that case, your Western Digital FW400 drives will be OK, if they have Firewire. For some strange reason Macs don’t love usb connected drives for video editing.
Be careful and read up on camera specs and format requirements for FCP and FCE if you currently use, or are considering using AVCHD cameras, as these require stronger multi-processors, more RAM, and the faster drives Mr. Biscardi recommends.
RAID drives provide speed and/or data protection, but are probably out of your budget range. FW800 drives are great, but not necessary of you are using DV25 (mini DV), or even HDV.
Not to throw a monkey wrench into the equation, but have you taken a look at Adobe Production Suite CS4? You can run it on PC’s (or Macs) and, as you know, you can purchase nicely powerful machines that may be more cost effective than Macs (check required system specs at https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/systemreqs/). See funding: https://www.adobe.com/education/resources/k12/funding/
You could also transfer any existing internal drives from your old machines to the new ones, saving cost there (check compatibility(EIDE vs. SATA, etc), of course).
The Premiere Pro video editing is quite similar to FCP. You also get Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, After Effects, Soundbooth, Encore DVD, all very useful software your students can use on their video projects and other multimedia projects they might do.
I feel Adobe offers a much more useful software package for doing the type of multi-tasking that might be done in a high school (much better than LiveType, Motion, Color, and Soundtrack Pro which are highly specialized and have steep learning curves.) And there are great training resources for use in your curriculum, both paid and free for all Adobe products in the suite. https://www.adobe.com/education/resources/k12/
Anyway, it’s something to consider.
Reid VanVoris
e-Mail: r1108@hotmail.com -
[Reid VanVoris] “For some strange reason Macs don’t love usb connected drives for video editing. “
That’s because USB is not recommended for video editing because they cannot provide sustain data throughput required for video editing. USB should not be used period for any video editing system.
[Reid VanVoris] “Not to throw a monkey wrench into the equation, but have you taken a look at Adobe Production Suite CS4? “
That would be a MUCH better solution on the PC vs. Sony Vegas. Might even run on the same Dells that are already installed in the lab.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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[John Ranta] “I will be looking at Final Cut Express for 2/3s of the systems, but I want to get 1/3 of the systems with Final Cut Studio for my Advanced Production students”
Keep in mind that projects from FCP cannot be worked on in FCE, and once and project from FCE has been opened and saved in FCP it cannot go back to FCE.
There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity! -
It looks like I asked one of those “Russian Doll” questions. It might help for you to know how my students typically handle a project.
High schools are different than production environments. For my kids to make a 5 minute movie might take a calendar time of two to three weeks (storyboard to DVD) because they can work on it one 50 minute class period (and maybe some time after school) per day. It usually takes them a week or more to write their story board and film their scenes. They usually end up with a half hour or so of raw footage which they import into editing, along with music, jpegs, sound effects, etc. For my Advanced kids, who might be making 15-20 minute videos, the total calendar time might be 3-6 weeks, and they might end up with a couple of hours of raw footage and associated files.
We work almost entirely with DV tape – for a number of reasons. Most of our cameras are standard def $400 Canon consumer DV cameras (high school budgets). We have a couple of GL2s which can record in high def. I like students to record everything to DV tape (that way kids have their own backup if a drive crashes and we don’t have to worry about codecs when capturing raw avi, etc).
But to my naive brain it makes no sense that AVCHD would be any more processor intensive when editing than avi or mpg or any other format. I understand this might not be true when rendering, but during editing? Why?
I’m surprised by what I’m hearing about USB. I capture raw clips (avi) from DV tape to USB drives all the time with our Dells and Vegas. We edit those in Vegas with instantaneous response time, no slow downs. I even have kids on group projects editing clips over 100mbit ethernet (shared network server). There are no problems or delays during the editing process. Vegas’s architecture must be different than FCP or FCE.
We had Adobe Premier in here 4-5 years ago, and had a number of problems with it (constant crashes, incompatibility with firewire cards, clumsy user interface, etc). It might be much better now, but we’ve invested a lot in Vegas, and it’s been working just fine. We’ve got 60 licenses installed in 3 computer labs. Thanks for the tip but I’d rather not open up a review of Vegas versus Premier at this point. I want to focus on getting FCP in here, in one lab 🙂 .
Thanks for all the replies, it’s been quite helpful. JR
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