[Father of 3]

I've been following this forum for some time now and have read lots of the macmini threads. I am planning to make the switch sometime in the near future and think the mini is the ticket for me. It would be used 95% for web surfing, e-mail, quicken, and photo storage. The only other thing I'd like to be able to do without too much frustration is light (emphasize light) video editing/converting from camcorder miniDV to DVD. I plan to upgrade to at least 512MB ram and pehaps up to 1G and use the superdrive. Is the mini adequate for what the video work? More than adequate? Great? Also, I have lots of old tapes in non-digital form. I assume there is an analog - digital component I will need to buy. Has anyone used one they could recommend and know how much they might cost?

Should I just step up to an I-mac?

Thanks much in advance.

[sunrain]

Well, when you say you've got "lots of old tapes" to covert, it makes me think you're not looking at "light" video editing at all. That analog/digital conversion and even the simplest of edits on those will tax your mini. The new iMovie HD is great about long clip lengths (I've gotten it to import an entire tape as one clip), but then actually *working* with that clip could be quite sluggish. I *think* you could get along with a mini, but you might want to consider an iMac.

When I've done analog/digital conversion of tapes in the past, I actually use my DV camera to do it. As far as I know, any DV cam with analog inputs can provide the conversion through the firewire cable. Just how it's done will differ from camera to camera I'm sure. There are dedicated devices out there, but I'm not up on them.

Regardless of if you get a mini or not, you're definitely going to need an external firewire drive to hold your video work on.

Oh, and welcome to AppleNova!

[Franz Josef]

Would echo sunrain's comments above - I'd have thought the analogue-digital conversion would be fairly CPU intensive and you would notice the benefit of using of using a G5 under the hood.

[FallenFromTheTree]

The new Rev B iMac G5 2.0 17" with the optional 128MB graphics card will make you a whole lot happier in the long run than a mini considering your usage.

VHS video content might require an external HD with a mini and
you're still dealing with a 32 MB graphics card as well.

If budget is an issue, you could always try the mini, then hand it down to the kids later once you have become totally spoiled using Mac OS X

[newt]

I have the mini and do the same type of video editing that you do. It should be fine if you don't mind waiting a little while. It's not that long though.

[polvoronn]

Originally Posted by newt I have the mini and do the same type of video editing that you do. It should be fine if you don't mind waiting a little while. It's not that long though.

what are the specs of your mini and how long does it take to make a dvd including encoding times)?

[awilso]

Originally Posted by Father of 3 I've been following this forum for some time now and have read lots of the macmini threads. I am planning to make the switch sometime in the near future and think the mini is the ticket for me. It would be used 95% for web surfing, e-mail, quicken, and photo storage. The only other thing I'd like to be able to do without too much frustration is light (emphasize light) video editing/converting from camcorder miniDV to DVD. I plan to upgrade to at least 512MB ram and pehaps up to 1G and use the superdrive. Is the mini adequate for what the video work? More than adequate? Great? Also, I have lots of old tapes in non-digital form. I assume there is an analog - digital component I will need to buy. Has anyone used one they could recommend and know how much they might cost? Should I just step up to an I-mac? Thanks much in advance.

Hi and welcome.

I have a mini (1gig) and have successfully editied and burned a DVD - about 1.5 hrs worth of DVD. It took about 3.5 hrs to burn the DVD and the prep after I had it ready to go took about 1.5hrs. So it can take quite a long time. On the other hand on my Powerbook 667 I have done a lot of small 5-10 minute films and it is quite acceptable on time frames. So my answer to you is this: If you are going to do short films (kids parties etc the odd holiday) a mac mini will suffice, but anything more and you need some power otherwise your mini will be monopolised. I am assuming you already have a display, cause if your going to buy a 23" mac display its cheaper to go the imac route.

Can't help on the analogue front I tend to just take it down to the photographers and have them tranfer it for me. (I'm lazy that way).

Small stuff = mac mini
Larger stuff = Imac
Full on stuff = Dual processors

[beardedmacuser]

I've used an old 733 MHz G4 PowerMac for quite a bit of video and DVD stuff using iMovie, Final Cut, iDVD and DVD Studio Pro. While it's a little bit slow, it works OK. It gets there in the end, and as it's just for personal use there's no problem leaving it rendering, encoding or burning DVDs overnight.

More important than processor speed is the amount of storage. Digital video can rapidly eat gigs and gigs of hard drive space. But I guess an external firewire hard drive would be able to provide you with more than enough storage. The mini will do everything an iMac can, but it will just be a little bit slower (and cheaper!).

[dougiemac]

Bah! Mini with 512 is ok, Mini with 1 gig and you'll be fine good sir.

All you need for analog to digital conversion is a digital converter box $40-$200. This process is no more taxing on your computer than any other light editing so don't worry. If you truly are doing light editing (kids, parties, family outtings) Mac Mini will do you justice.

[beardedmacuser]

...forgot to say I made a DVD out of loads of old VHS video of events from several years ago. I just used my video camera to record from the video player, then imported it into Final Cut or iMovie. Rather than a straight conversion into the computer, my digital tapes mean I can re-import things when I want to go back and start another project on the same material without having to go back to the old analogue tapes which I no longer have.

[Father of 3]

Thanks for the responses so far. I would say 90% of my "video editing" work is going to consist of a straight transfer from tape to DVD. 10% will be deleting scenes, perhaps adding stills, music, etc. Probably less than 10% actually seeing as how I have little time to actually put into any real editing work. 100% for home use - birthday parties, vacations, etc.

[Brad]

Yeah, that's pretty light work. The Mac mini should definitely do you fine once supplemented with a faster, larger external drive. Heck, I've done heavier editing in iMovie on an ancient iBook G3 500 MHz and it coped fine.

[Bryson]

Aside from the Graphics card, the Mini has a very similar spec to my Powerbook, which edits video fine. You'll be ok.

[Father of 3]

For what I'm planning to do, will the 80gb hard drive suffice? If not, I would probably just do the 40gb and buy an external. How much does a nice external drive cost (say 100gb or so) and should I be looking for 5400, 7200?

[Brad]

How many hours of video will you be working with at a given time?

DV-compressed movie files (the stuff that comes right outta the camera) typically weight 3.6 MB per second. That's 216 MB/minute or 12.7 GB/hour. Also keep in mind that you'll be duplicating some of that material whenever you render a transition or an overlay or an effect. You can imagine how quickly the necessary amount of disk space balloons.

Also keep in mind that you should try always try to keep several GB of free space on your system for the OS to use as scratch for virtual memory. There's nothing worse than running out of drive space and memory and the watching the OS throw its arms up and say, "uh oh!"

So, 80 GB might do well if you're only working with a couple hours of footage at a time.

Though, the Mac mini's drive is pretty slow. It might drop the occasional frame if there's any other disk activity while you're capturing or outputting it. Your mileage may vary with this.

If you get an external drive, you should at least get one that runs at 7200 RPM. You could save a little cash and build your own instead of buying one off the shelf.

[sunrain]

Originally Posted by Father of 3 For what I'm planning to do, will the 80gb hard drive suffice? If not, I would probably just do the 40gb and buy an external. How much does a nice external drive cost (say 100gb or so) and should I be looking for 5400, 7200?

I'd stick with the 40GB and buy an external. Other World Computing has a great selection of external firewire/usb drives. The Neptune line of external firewire drives are a good value. You can get a 160GB drive at 7200rpm (and 8MB buffer) for around $150 the last I checked.

Edit: right, scratch space. forgot about that. the 80GB (plus external) will probably suit you better then...just to be safe.

[709]

I second, third, whatever the motion to roll your own external. Check DealMac every so often and you'll find some great deals on hard drives. For example, today they've got a 160GB 7200RPM WD drive for 50 bucks after rebates. An external FW400 enclosure such as this will set you back less than 40. Not bad.