Mac mini opinions
 

Any one doing HD editing with Mac mini???
Your coments are welcome !!

Thanks Franklin....

I do Full HD on 2006 iMac (2,16 Ghz C2D, 3 GB RAM, ATi X1600), and as long as I have transcoded everything to ProRes, I am more than fine. I usually don't do multiple tracks of HD, though.

Thanks Jiri, we use iMAC to since 2008, but I whant a second
MAC for another editor in my company, and Mac mini is one
of the target, so any one using this little toy, please any
coments are welcome !!!

Thanks in advance......Franklin

The 2.26 ghz Mac Mini has the same exact specs as a 13" Mac Book Pro (minus the screen, keyboard, and trackpad of course.)

the 2.53 ghz Mac Mini has the same exact specs as the higher end 13" Mac Book Pro or the base model 15" Mac Book Pro. Considering people use these Mac Book Pro models for design work you will be able to use the Mac Mini as well. In fact the top of the line Mac Book Pro only goes up to a 2.66 ghz or 2.8 ghz cpu which isn't all that much faster then 2.53 ghz.

Some will tell you the Nvidia 9400 video chip doesn't work well for editing but that is BS. Sure Motion may get a few more frames per second in preview but the Nvidia 9400 has enough power to get the job done.

I recently bought a 21.5" iMac that uses the Nvidia 9400 and Final Cut Studio seems to run pretty darn fast to me. Many of the out of the box Motion templates still run at 30 frames per second during playback.

Put it this way since the 2.53 ghz Mac mini is half the price of the 15" base model laptop you can use that extra money to buy a pretty darn nice set of 22" monitors to make one heck of a budget edit system. I know normal monitors don't look as good but again they get the job done as long as you don't use them for super critical color correction. Add a Graid drive with FW800 and you end up with one heck of a decent secondary edit system.

Hey Thomas !! good explanation, I think I will get the Mac mini to !!
of course FCP inside !

Thanks !