$5000 for an editing workstation?

noumena · May 26, 2013

Let's say you were making a 90 min indie film with nothing 3D and limited to no CGI and you had $5000 max to put together the best possible editing workstation for the job. Can anyone with lots of experience offer their advice? I've been looking at this http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/860765-REG/Apple_Mac_Pro_Adobe_CS6_Premiere.html and would add a 27" monitor. Thoughts?

I've actually only acquired my GH3 and not begun shooting yet but, due to an unforeseen macbook blowout will need to buy my new computer six months sooner than anticipated.

FernandoAndre · May 27, 2013

What you guys recommend to edit footages from Blackmagic Production 4k?

jax_rox · May 28, 2013

FernandoAndre said:
What you guys recommend to edit footages from Blackmagic Production 4k?

Depends how you want to edit it.

I'd recommend keeping a simliar system to what you have now, perhaps upgrading RAM and maybe processor for real-time performance when you do your online/grade.

For the actual edit, you can easily transcode to a smaller proxy file that's easier to edit. Conform in the online.

Unless you want to edit 'natively' but I see very little benefit for that.

ChristopherArter · May 28, 2013

Personally, until the new Mac Pros come out, I would go with a beef'd out mac mini. An i7 with 16gb ram and an SSD. My background is not in editing, but in digital art & audio production (still somewhat intensive processes). An i7 mac mini with 16gb ram & ssd blows the doors off of any similarly priced machine, as I decked it out for a friend of mine for just under $1300. Granted, he already had an entry-level calibrated monitor so display is huuugely important. But at least the main machine was pretty reasonably priced. I'll probably build myself the same set up.

OSX + SSD = heaven.

TheArtist · May 28, 2013

ChristopherArter said:
Personally, until the new Mac Pros come out, I would go with a beef'd out mac mini. An i7 with 16gb ram and an SSD. My background is not in editing, but in digital art & audio production (still somewhat intensive processes). An i7 mac mini with 16gb ram & ssd blows the doors off of any similarly priced machine, as I decked it out for a friend of mine for just under $1300. Granted, he already had an entry-level calibrated monitor so display is huuugely important. But at least the main machine was pretty reasonably priced. I'll probably build myself the same set up.

OSX + SSD = heaven.

That's what I'm saying. You don't need to blow 1300$ just for an i7, an SSD and 16 GB of RAM.

jax_rox · May 28, 2013

TheArtist said:
That's what I'm saying. You don't need to blow 1300$ just for an i7, an SSD and 16 GB of RAM.

Money's not the only deciding factor when it comes to these kinds of purchases.

It can easily come down to OSX vs Windows 7/8, and I'd take OSX over that any day.

TheArtist · May 28, 2013

jax_rox said:
Money's not the only deciding factor when it comes to these kinds of purchases.

It can easily come down to OSX vs Windows 7/8, and I'd take OSX over that any day.

That's what I said, it all depends on how much you value OSX.

I also like OSX over Windows but it's definitely not worth me paying twice the price. W7 never failed me and doesn't have any serious (or even not serious) flaw that makes me run into the expensive arms of OSX.

MetalRenard · May 29, 2013

ChristopherArter said:
My background is not in editing, but in digital art & audio production (still somewhat intensive processes).

Music creation and production uses more RAM than any other digital art form. Visual arts use more of your processor. Build your system with that in mind.
(I do music hence the need for tons of RAM - my machine can go up to 64gb if I ever need it to!)

TheArtist · May 29, 2013

Seriously, music is more demanding in RAM than VFX work ? I can hardly believe that.

MetalRenard · May 29, 2013

Yeah, you'd be surprised. Classical music and the like quickly fills up your RAM because it loads all the beginnings of the samples to the RAM and streams the end of them directly from your hard drive, but these add up fast. If you use high quality sample-based VSTis (Virtual Studio Technology instruments) then that footprint gets massive. A piano uses up anything from 500mb to 1gb of RAM, drums can use 1 to 2 gb, then add each string section, brass sections, percussion... Then you have to add all the mixing plugins which includes at least 2 bits of software per track (things like EQ), CPU taxing plugins like convolution reverbs...
It really can stress low-end computers.

Anyway, back to the question at hand... OP have you got what you needed?

ItDonnedOnMe · May 29, 2013

TheArtist said:
I pretty much agree with everything freddiew said :

http://www.rocketjump.com/blog/why-were-switching-from-macs

AND Nofilmschool :

http://nofilmschool.com/build-a-hackintosh/

Except for their Macbooks and OSX, it's just getting ridiculously overpriced.

The Nofilmschool article is great if you want to build a hackintosh, but even he says in the article "But I will also say this: if you have enough cash sitting around for a Mac Pro, just buy the Mac Pro."

But I personally don't think the OP should be looking at a Mac Pro - they've not only fallen behind but they're complete overkill for most general editing tasks. And for the price of the entry level mac pro you can get an iMac which will be comparable in performance to the hackintosh.

I'd say grab a 27" iMac - pull it out of the box, plug it in, run the creative cloud installer, and start editing. If your primary goal is to be a filmmaker you've got better things to spend your time on than dicking around with your editing hardware.

Once you factor in the price of a decent 27" monitor (something like a dell ultrasharp, not just the cheapest one you can find) the hackintosh price difference is less than the increased resale value of the iMac if you sell it in a couple years to upgrade.

ChristopherArter said:
Personally, until the new Mac Pros come out, I would go with a beef'd out mac mini.

Mac mini is a poor choice for editing, especially when you're planning to use it with Premier. The latest iMacs come with nVidia graphics that provide significant performance increases in Premier (up to 10x) - the standard intel graphics on the minis don't have this capability.