mac mini uses, suggestions

[Shane Ross]

I use mine as my media center, connected to my TV. Hulu…movies…over the air TV with the Elgato EyeTV. MIght also use it to compress things to h.264, but it will be slower than other machines.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Mark Raudonis]

You may not need an iMac to do this. I was at a tradeshow last week and they were playing back FULL HD 3D sequences off of this:

https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-WD-Media-Player/dp/B001JZFQU4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1257796459&sr=8-1

Looked great. (This was in the Panasonic Booth… not some dinky little fly by night operation).
I was impressed.

Mark

[Alan Okey]

You could use Qmaster to set up a distributed rendering cluster for Compressor. I wouldn’t be surprised if the new Mini is faster than your G5 when it comes to pure CPU grunt – the bottleneck in the Mini is more likely to be hard drive speed or RAM than CPU speed.

In any case, you could set up a cluster using Qmaster and send batch jobs to the cluster from Compressor while you continue to work on your G5.

Here’s a quick setup guide on how to achieve this:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1043581

[Chris Gorman]

Yes, I’ve seen the WD Tv before and agree it looked great. It’s a great price, until you add on the HDTV. The combo would probably cost me more than the mac mini.

Though I wouldn’t rule it out totally, the obstacle to the WD Tv plus HDTV solution is that I’m not prepared to buy an HDTV, and if I did, I’m not even sure how convenient it would be to lug around…how much heavier than my 23″ Cinema Display?

My Cinema Display has limitations with ambient light, but at least I know what to expect, and I already own it.

With an HDTV there’s so much guesswork about what will display my video best considering viewer distance from the screen, lighting, HDTV specs. etc etc. weight, best specs to get for good quality, but keeping cost down. The cheaper the better. . . if it does the job, but with so many HDTV choices, I don’t know what would be the best choice for this purpose.

For comparison purposes, I guess I’m looking at: will I get more use, more value, from the mac mini or from a WDTV and HDTV combo for same total price, eg. $600.

PowerPC G5 DP2.3, 4GB DDR SDRAM, ATI X800XT, OSX.4.11, QT 7.5.5, FCStudio2, FCP 6.0.5 Sonnet 5 Bay SATA (RAID or JBOD as needed), ACD 23″ & Sony NTSC Monitor via Matrox v.1
Sony ZIU hdv, edit w.ProRes

[Chris Gorman]

Thanks for the detailed response. I’m seriously considering this.

Hopefully, the mac mini slower drive won’t be a bottleneck. Seems the CPU would be the main factor.

I would want to run it in the background so I can continue editing on my G5, or, if possible, just put the source file on the mac mini and have the whole thing run from there..if that’s possible.

I hope it wouldn’t be a problem if the mac mini is running snow leopard, but my G5 is running Tiger with compressor 3.0.5

Well, I have lots to read and research, thanks for the info.

PowerPC G5 DP2.3, 4GB DDR SDRAM, ATI X800XT, OSX.4.11, QT 7.5.5, FCStudio2, FCP 6.0.5 Sonnet 5 Bay SATA (RAID or JBOD as needed), ACD 23″ & Sony NTSC Monitor via Matrox v.1
Sony ZIU hdv, edit w.ProRes

[Chris Gorman]

Looks like I can’t use the new mac mini as a render node with my G5. I talked with an Apple sales rep today and he said that I’d need a separate license to use the mac mini as a render node and that’s no longer available because that version of the software is longer sold. But the bigger problem is that my G5 in not an intel machine, so it could not communicate with the intel mac mini.

I don’t think I want to spend $600 for a mac mini and only use it to display my video demos at shows.

So, now I’m instead looking at the option of getting the WDTV and an HDTV. Maybe Samsung 720p 32″ LN32B360. It’s not 1080p or 1080i, but my h.264 files are not full frame anyway.I don’t have the tech expertise to know if the 720p will compromise the image/playback quality. Anybody have any thoughts on that?

PowerPC G5 DP2.3, 4GB DDR SDRAM, ATI X800XT, OSX.4.11, QT 7.5.5, FCStudio2, FCP 6.0.5 Sonnet 5 Bay SATA (RAID or JBOD as needed), ACD 23″ & Sony NTSC Monitor via Matrox v.1
Sony ZIU hdv, edit w.ProRes

[Alan Okey]

[chris gorman] “But the bigger problem is that my G5 in not an intel machine, so it could not communicate with the intel mac mini. “

Not true at all. I recently set up an Intel Mac Mini render node for a friend with a G5, and it works perfectly.

[Chris Gorman]

I think the G5 that came out immediately after mine was an Intel Mac. But mine is PowerMac. Are you sure your friend’s G5 was PowerMac?

PowerPC G5 DP2.3, 4GB DDR SDRAM, ATI X800XT, OSX.4.11, QT 7.5.5, FCStudio2, FCP 6.0.5 Sonnet 5 Bay SATA (RAID or JBOD as needed), ACD 23″ & Sony NTSC Monitor via Matrox v.1
Sony ZIU hdv, edit w.ProRes

[Alan Okey]

[chris gorman] “Are you sure your friend’s G5 was PowerMac?”

I’m positive. It’s a Power Mac G5 (PowerPC, not Intel). I have also set up a cluster at another location with a new Mac Pro (Intel) and an older Power Mac G5 (PowerPC).

Power Mac G5 = PowerPC, Mac Pro = Intel Xeon.

Who told you that an Intel Mac can’t “talk” to a PowerPC Mac?

It’s really a moot point however, since you don’t have a license for the second computer.