Will a Mac Mini handle Final Cut??

Z

zwbuntster

Limp Gawd
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Jun 26, 2005
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I was thinking of starting to do some more video editing other than a few things in iMovie on my powerbook, and because I am a student and don't have a lot of money, I was thinking about getting a mac mini. However, if I am going to use Final Cut Express, is this machine gonna cut it? What else would I need if not?
 
At work we have played around with FC 5 HD on the mini. Depending on the length of film, and amount of editing it will either be great or terrible. For us, when we got around 15 minutes worth of .dv and started making some serious transitions, effects, edits, enhancements we started to see the strain and lag. That, and exporting it out to H.264 with multi-pass etc took far too long. So for the purposes of what we do (which is an open access multimedia lab for students at the University) the mini was useless. With just the one, and only one we have, we use it for surfing the web. Hell, having Meeting Maker 5 running on it, with the internet sends the thing into a bitch fit. *Sigh* If you want, you could say its on par with a the iMac with the moving monitor, and the circular base.
 
It will run, but you lose a lot of the benfits of it running on a G5, like certain real-time features.

Check out apple's site, I believe they tell you what the G4 can't do. One thing you'll need if you do go ahead with a mini is an external Firewire drive.

What are the specs on your Powerbook btw?
 
OK, I will forget that idea about the mini then. My powerbook is a 1.33Ghz G4, 768 mb Ram, superdrive, 60GB HDD (I would need and external). Why, would it be better on my laptop?
 
Probably won't be better on your powerbook, but shouldn't be worse. Your powerbook has similar specs to a mini, likely even the same hdd speed (on the internal drives). More memory would likely serve you well for editing, and likely a firewire drive for storage. Unless you want a dedicated computer for editting (or some other reason from wanting a mini), I don't think there would be much of an advantage to getting a mini.
 
If your current PB is slow at it so then will be the mini, you need a G5 if you are doing anything other then just playing with it. The mini is made to get people into the Mac realm. Great for internet and iTunes, not for work. Good luck to you though what ever you decide.
 
i say if you go with a mini...max the ram out to 1GB. Makes everything so much nicer.
 
The Mac Mini is virtually useless withought the extra ram. My co-worker and I got the upgrade and another female co-worker got an un-upgraded machine, and for her to open up a browser it takes about a minute. And open office takes about double that time. All I hear is her cursing and screaming at the machine all day.... And that isn't even doing any serious work like graphic editing, I'd say stay away from the mac mini all together.

Edit: Well at least now you'll know what I think about the mac mini... 1 year after this thread was created lol.
 
Well, if it helps, I own a Mac Mini and I can actually run World of Warcraft on it (and enjoy it).....
 
OK I am not gonna get the mini. I would like an iMac, but I don't think I can afford one right now. Maybe if they change I will look into one. (Unless I could get one for Xmas) O well, thanks for the help.
 
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