40 minutes project using MacMin ?

[Doggies]

Is 40 minutes the total amount of footage you will be working with or is 40minutes the length of the finished project?

And if so, how much total footage will you be importing into your MINI.

Problems do become more eveident/prevelant as soon as projects cross the 30 minute line. Especially if you are cutting every 3-6 seconds..

[Nate]

Yes,
It is doable. But double check your projected time-line and travel / location schedule.

A 15″ Powerbook is much more Ideal. Less pieces. And don’t forget plenty of external Hard-drives..

[Gs2005]

Hi Thanks for getting back to me.

+ 40 minutes is the length of the finished project.
+ I have a lote of footage but thought of difitaize just the parts I need
+ What do you mean by “as projects cross the 30 minute line. Especially if you are cutting every 3-6 seconds..” ?
+ Will a G5 processor will effect the final product ?

[Scnyc]

My friend just submitted a feature length film to Sundance that they cut primarily of a power book ( 1.5GHZ) and a mac mini and a G-Raid drive. Basically the project lived on the G-raid and he connected into which ever computer was availble to him as long as it had FCP 5 on it. As the project grew to a large proportions it took considerably longer to open the project off of the mac mini and the power book as opposed to a dual G5.

[Doggies]

It really is hit or miss. After cutting more than 35 shows that are 30 minutes or longer, I still never know what to expect from FCP.

I am using fcp now with 7 lacie 500gb external drives – 600 hours of footage – 30,ooo logged clips… all captured low res anamorphic….. it is a monster of a project..

and I am having fewer problems and crashes that normal.. knock on wood..

the real challenge will be using the media manager to relink everything in high res!!!!

I would get a powerbook over a mac mini

[Mitchji]

Hi,

For your application (you need transportability, you don’t need to run on batteries) I suggest a G5 iMac (I would get one with a 20″ screen which will fit in the bag) with one of these bags for travel:
https://luggerbags.com/G5.htm

This is what a friend who edits on location had to say:
I just got my iMac today – infinitely faster than any powerbook I could have bought at three times the cost. I got the cheapest I could find: a new 1.6gHz 17″ with a CDRW/DVD and 256 RAM on eBay. I upgraded to 1GB RAM and got the iLugger bag.

[Gs2005]

Thanks Mitch this is very helpful.
I kind of shay away from buying hardware on eBay did you had successful experiences with a specific seller over there ?

[Daniel Serrano]

Hi.. just my 2cents…

you could use a Mac Mini… with FCP on it and a firewire disk to capture the footage, that way the HD insede the mini just runs the software, and in case you get access to a faster machine you can speed things up sometimes….

also you can like do the editing by segments… lets say its 40 minutes… you can have 4 projects of 10 minutes each, and taht way it will not be that slow when opening the project… well it work for me with an eMac time ago… and well the Mini has a G4 better that the one my eMac has….

one more thing… (sounds familiar), be sure to max out the RAM because you will need it…

Hello from Mexico….