FC Express HD 3.5
 

Is anyone editing HDV using FCE HD 3.5 on an iMac? Preferebly an Intel iMac but any experience and comments welcome pertaining to FCE/HDV on iMacs. I have asked this question on a number of forums with no response of actual experience. I am contemplating purchasing a 2.0GHz iMac, 2 GB memory, a second 20 inch screen, I currently use external Firewire HDDs with a G4 dual 800 FCP3. A price comparison with a new Mac Pro is that the iMac set up costs $3400 and a MacPro with an upgrade to FCSuite is $6,000. Yes, I know there is a big performance difference but I don't need all that and $2600 is a good contribution to an HDV camera. Comments, suggestions, advice welcome,

Thanks

Ned C

Performance makes the different
 

Yes,

the performance is the importantst different, and when you are cutting on external FW400 drives, there is no further different. When you buy an MacPro, I suggest to use an internal 500 GB serial ATA harddisc for video. This speeds up the editing dramatically. For example: All CGM effects are running in realtime on the MacPro 2,66 GHz. On the Macbook Pro 1,83 GHz Intel Duo some of them are not running seamlessly in realtime. And when you are working in HDV, the render performance is very important. When you cut a movie, the whole movie has to be recoded before you put it back to a HDV reel.

I hope that helps.

All the best,
Klaus
FCP Plugins by CGM, www.cgm-online.com

Editing HDV with FCE on an iMac
 

Thanks for your information but it does not answer my questions. I asked aoutr FC Express on Intel an iMac can you provide any thoughts on this

Thanks

Ned C.

Hi Ned,

if you like to upgrade to Final Cut Studio, I would buy an Mac Pro. Because with this machine, you get a much better graphic card, which you need for Motion. The iMac graphic card uses the computer memory because has no own memory. This is a very heavy loss of Motion previewing speed.

And if you like to work with Final Cut Express 3.5, you can buy an iMac.

If you like to work in HD, I would prefer the Mac Pro. First you can work with FCE 3.5 on the Mac Pro and later you can upgrade to Final Cut Studio.

I hope that helps,

Klaus,
FCP Plugins by CGM, www.cgm-online.com

Ned, i am using fce hd 3.5 on an intel dual core 2gig 20 inch imac with 2g ram.

I am not sure i can be very hepful to you though as im inexperienced both with macs and fce.

I have fce installed on the internal 250gb drive and have captured hdv footage from a sony fx1 onto the same drive.

Im not very far forward with my project but the first thing i noted was that playing clips was far from smooth....i'd use the word 'jerky' to describe the appearance of panning shots. Now i believe this could be attributed to various things like using the cams image stabiliser when shooting, or simply the interlacing.......but my hunch is that its to do with the performance of my system. Klaus responded to you referring to imacs 'heavy loss of motion previewing speed'. Maybe this is it! Anyway, it is difficult to assess clips for how well i shot them and if they contain bumps and wobbles.......i play a clip several times and it varies so i reach an opinion based on mutiple viewings.....somewhat slow and tedious and a generally unacceptable way to continue.

I'm keen to add an external drive to capture footage but i dont know if it will help this particular issue.

i havent had time to pursue answers and solutions to the poor playback...or even establish if its actually normal, so please just take this as an uninformed first opinion...not a condemnation of the imac/fcehd combi'.

A question about capturing HD with the FCE 3.5 HD on an Intel mac.

I have a G5 1.6 mac, FCE 3.0 HD, and an HDR-HC1. HD capture is about 40% real time, but works. My problem is the scene detection and cutting the front and back off of clips. I'm consistantly losing at least 5 seconds of video off of each end of each clip. Some of the material I shot happened pretty quick, so I cut the camera off quickly after each shot. Being unable to capture the whole clip is a real problem.

I know this is how the program captures and handles video using the AIC, but I would like to know if the newer version of the software and a faster computer would shorten the "lost" video from each clip.