Macs from B&H Catalgue - good for HDV?
 

As you know I`m looking into getting a Mac. I got a B&H Catalogue in the mail and saw these macs and was curious how you guys would rate them for editing HDV. Whether I use AE and Premiere or FC Studio is yet to be decided...but HDV will definitely need editing, so I need that capacity

2.66GHz - Two Dual Core Xeon Woodcrest processors
1GB Ram - 667Mhz DDR2
500GB 7200rpm SATA hard drive
16x Dual Layer SuperDrive
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

$2999 - ATI Mobility Radeon X1900 w/ 512MB GDDR2
$2749 - nVidia GeForece 7300 GT w/ 256MB GDDR2
$2499 - same as above, but only 250GB hard drive

Nathan,
Any Mac being sold right now will do a fine job editing HDV. Obviously the faster the better and the Mac Pro offers additional expansion options. However, as long as you put a minimum of 2gb ram and 500gb of 7200 rpm media storage you'll be fine with any new Mac.

well by fine do you mean bare minimum? Lag issues? Longer/shorter render times? The first three projects are short films that will require alot of AE style work, so I want a machine that will handle it without issues.

I'm editing on a G5 dual 2.5ghz w 4gb ram that is nearly 4 years old and I have no problem with lag issues. Render times for me are ok.

What you have to consider when buying a computer is the balance between a price that is affordable to you vs. required performance. For instance, say you have a project that will take 3 hours for an 24" iMac (2.8 ghz, 2 gb, $2300.00) to render or 1 hour for a tricked out Mac Pro (Dual 3.0ghz Quad, 16 gb, $10,000.00), only you can decide if the 8 grand difference is worth it to you. Everyone wants the fastest computer. But, the reality of price comes into play. I'd suggest for your decision you pick a budget you're comfortable with and then buy the most powerful machine you can get for that price. If your budget is 3K look toward the 24" iMac if your budget is 4k or more get a Mac Pro. Will you notice a speed difference between a 3k iMac and 4k (includes a 23" display) Mac Pro; probably not unless you're bench testing it. If you're not going to be adding a capture card, a Mac Pro may not be worth the extra to you.

the $3k Pro on this list can`t capture video?

Even, the $700 MacMini I have can capture and edit HDV video. With a $3K MacPro it is not even a question. All you need is plenty of RAM and FireWire hard drive for storage.

P.

But does that one come with the ability to capture footage? Or does it need a special card or something? I haven`t used a Mac in 5 years so I`m not sure how they are setup. I would imagine the would come preloaded with firewire ports as seem a no brainer these days, but I may be wrong

All Macs come with FireWire 400 port. Higher end Macs come with both FW 400 and FW 800 ports. I capture HDV and DV video with MacMini (intel) and iMac G5 (two-year old model) via firewire ports without any problem.

Nathan,
I think you mentioned you use and XHA1. All the Macs currently being sold will easily handle it. I can't comment on Premiere but with FCP you just plug the cam into the computer and choose the HDV easy setup (either 1080i60, 1080p30 or 1080p24) and you're good to go. FCP will control the camera. Video capture can't get much easier.