Sub $1000 Video Editing Machine

jdbon

I have a friend who is interested in learning video editing. She is the kind of person who only buys computers once every decade, so I advised her to buy something cheap now, and wait for the next gen 970s (or whatever). aside from basic tasks, she will be using it to learn Final Cut Pro. I was looking at used Sawtooths, refurbed eMacs and Cubes. What do you think is the best "bang for the buck". With the Sawtooth you can get up to 2gigs of ram, while you are limited to 1gb with the eMac. the emac has a built in screen, which is both good and bad be it that you get a 17inch flat screen, but it seems it is not very good at high resolutions. Do you think there is a chance there will be a $999 FP iMac with the next revision, and/or would a discounted FP iMac be better than a sawtooth loaded with ram and a fast new HD. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

ghost_user_name

well, I'd say get the Sawtooth for the sole reason of expandability. She'd have room to grow as her editing needs increase. With an eMac or an iMac, you've got no room for expansion, and you're locked into a single monitor size. But if she is just getting a machine to tide her over until a 970, why not just get the cheapest thing you can lay your hands on?



Seriously though, there is no reason to not invest in a Sawtooth for what she needs the box for. She'll have PCI slots for input cards, SCSI if ever needed, etc... and she'll be able to run any monitor she wants to, or even run dual monitors which is a big plus imho for video editing.



The basic premise of editing hasn't changed in a long time. It wouldn't be out of the question to buy an Avid Media Composer NuVista off of ebay. They usually sell with a couple of 20" monitors, drives, the computer, etc for around $700 - $1000. Granted, you wouldn't want to do much else with the machine, but 1) It's an Avid, and 2) It's an insanely cheap broadcast quality cutting station.



But my recommendation is the Sawtooth. Editing is a professional 'thing', so buy Apple's professional system for it.

leonis

Anything with 533Mhz G4 and 512MB RAM MINIMUM

gizzmonic

Tell her to go with Final Cut Pro Express, and get an older G4 (at least 500mhz), preferably one that can handle dual displays. The color correction in FCP beats the hell out of Premiere or even XpressDV. Spend most of the money maxing out the RAM and make sure that she has at least 60GB HDD.



SCSI isn't worth the effort if you're gonna run Mac OS X, it's incredibly expensive and the driver support just isn't there yet.



If you can afford the full version of Final Cut Pro 3, then you might want to look at editing in OS 9. I'm a video editor by trade and it's much faster in 9.

splinemodel

If you can get a gigE Powermac 533 and a decent graphics card, that should be a good start. I'm pretty sure you can find something along that line for less than a thousand.



Here's a current eBay auction.

733Mhz with 512MB RAM, 60GB HD. It has a while left, but it's at 750 right now.

<a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2304594138&category=14 912" target="_blank">http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2304594138&category=14 912</a>



Enjoy



[ 01-27-2003: Message edited by: Splinemodel ]</p>

objra10

First of all, Non-Linear editing is not something that you buy a starter kit on, and then buy an "real" deal later. You can always add on, but if your system is slow and inadequate, you are likely to get frustrated with it and quit long before you ever get really good at it.



That said, an 867 or old dual 1Gig will work well. As long as it's a G4, you can get real time effects in FCP. By the way, don't get FCP Express. If it's something you want to do long term, why spend $300 and then $1000? Just spend the big money now, and you'll be set forever.



Also, FCP doesn't run any slower in Jaguar than in nine. Actually it's much much faster in Jaguar than it ever was in OS 9.2 Anyone who says otherwise is drunk.



You don't need SCSI unless you are in a broadcast server environment with a huge RAID setup. Firewire is plenty fast.

breilly

from VideoMaker magazine's Products of the Year:

<a href="http://www.videomaker.com/scripts/article.cfm?id=9212"; target="_blank">http://www.videomaker.com/scripts/article.cfm?id=9212</a>;



Best Turnkey Editing System Under $2,000

Apple eMac

The cute integrated monitor and low price of this machine might make you skeptical about its performance, but the bottom line is that, with the included iMovie 2 editing software, the eMac does a nice job editing video. Apple made our choice easy in this category by throwing in a DVD SuperDrive and iDVD 2 to make discs.

<a href="http://www.apple.com"; target="_blank">www.apple.com</a>

$1,499





<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

red_rocket_mn

I built up a cheap system last year. It went like this:



G4 AGP, 350 MHz (believe it or not) used for $600



Extra 256 MB RAM $100 (bringing total to 368 MB)



Extra 60 GIG hard drive (ATA) $99 at Fry's



iMovie free



Final Cut 2.0 (educational price $299)



New ViewSonic Monitor $140 at Fry's



Extra Video card used for $40.



So far it's been ok. I cut a 5 min short for a class and the only thing I wished for was more screen real estate. I bought the extra video card in hopes of finding a cheap 20-21" monitor soon.



Do you catch a theme here. I'm cheap when, especially when this is "just for fun and not my job". By day I use someone else's 1 GHz G4 for print production. So that's my deal. The only thing I knew is i didn't want a pre-AGP G4 because those things were just glorified G3's



Feedback? I think Final Cut is recommened for over 500 MHz only, but I've had no problems with version 2.0 on system 9.2.2



-Cheers

ghost_user_name

I still say you should pick up an Avid Media Composer. Old NuVista systems, while old, are still a Media Composer. You'll learn the workhorse of the industry for under a grand. Sure, you won't get realtime effects, you won't do anything else with the box other than run Media Composer... but it's an Avid. They go about $700 on ebay for the computer, drives, monitors, and necessary avid hardware. Editing hasn't changed much over the years...