Video Editing with Mac Mini and FCP X

paologpaolog
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014


Hello,


 


i am planning to get a Mac Mini to do editing in Final Cut Pro X.


 


I went to a store and the guy suggested to get the HD Fusion Frive 1 Tb. I Know that with the 128 gb of SSD the booting and the opening of the apps is much faster.


 


Is it worth though the 250 euros more that i should pay, since i edit and render videos from and to and external usb 3.0 drive?


 


To me it doesn't make sense, but i would love to hear your opinion.


 


Thanks


 


PaoloG 

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,323moderator
    It's a good idea to get an SSD for your boot drive but it's possible to install a 3rd party SSD in the Mini and they are much cheaper. The Fusion drive only has 128GB SSD. You can get a 250GB for ~150 euros and 500GB for ~300. The OS will make a Fusion drive out of it anyway if you install both SSD and HDD. It's not the easiest install procedure but shouldn't take more than 20 minutes.

    The benefit of the SSD is that everything is much snappier, less beachballing because the OS isn't waiting for the drive. In terms of editing, it could have an effect on that if you split your projects and files as your render files can go to the SSD, which is still faster than a USB 3 HDD. With a Fusion drive, this depends on how full the SSD is though. Once the 128GB fills up, it goes the same speed as a 5400RPM HDD for sequential writes.

    Say for example, you have a title sequence that lasts 30 seconds and FCPX needs to render out a 1080p ProRes clip, that's about 100Mbps (12.5MB/s) = 375MB for 30s. To write 375MB to a normal HDD, it would take about 5 seconds. An SSD could do it in less than 1 second. If you scale it out to longer sequences, it can mean waiting much longer for renders to finish.

    I'd say no to a Fusion drive because it's not great value and once you fill it up, it's not going to be much more beneficial than an HDD but an SSD is a good thing to have so consider installing one.
  • Reply 2 of 4
    paologpaolog Posts: 2member


    Hi Marvin


     


    it makes perfect sense. I think that if i read and write files from and SSD drive is going to be much faster and snappier than on a traditional drive.


     


    Say, however, that i read and write files FROM and TO an external USB 3.0 7200 rpm drive.


     


    Will it make a difference in my system whether i have an SSD or traditional hard drive?


     


    Thanks


     


    PaoloG

  • Reply 3 of 4
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,323moderator
    paolog wrote: »
    Say, however, that i read and write files FROM and TO an external USB 3.0 7200 rpm drive.

    Will it make a difference in my system whether i have an SSD or traditional hard drive?

    No, it won't make a difference at all to reading and writing data externally.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    nightcrawlernightcrawler Posts: 643member


    My experience as an hobby-editor with macmini (late 2009) and Final Cut Pro X are these:


     


    1. You can't have enough HD-space. My macmini has a 160 GB internal HD and I was quickly filling it up, so I bought an external 1TB Firewire 800-HD, and now I feel relieved.Of course an SSD would be snappier, but the prices are at least 3x as high, but if money is no issue, getting a (or two) 500 GB-SSD would be an idea.


     


    2. The most important upgrade I did just a few days ago was to upgrade my 2GB RAM to 8 GB-RAM. The difference is like night and day. It's like the years before I was running my macmini with handbrakes on. Everything feels way snappier, especially when running multiple programs at the same time.

Sign In or Register to comment.