Which G4 would be Suitable for A/V Work?

[cjtmacclassic]

I've recently sparked an interest in the PowerMac G4'S, And have been looking in to purchasing one. However, due to the several variations of PowerMacs, I cannot decide which would be suitable for A/V processing (Final Cut Pro, iMovie, etc...) So what's your opinion on this? which would be the most suitable configuration?

Regards,

Coulter

 

[Unknown_K]

It depends on what you want to do. The faster the G4 the faster encoding will be. Are you planning on capturing the video on the G4 or just converting it to different formats after editing?

I only have one OSX editing system designed for the G4, and that is a Matrox RTMAC running Final Cut Pro 2 on a B&W G3 upgraded to a G4-450 CPU (RTMAC needs a G4). It can capture analog as well as work with DV video (pre HD video). There are also older OS 9 era hardware and software (Targa 2000 hardware comes to mind with Premiere). There are other cheap capture cards out there for the G4 if you want to test them out.

If you want to do HD video maybe a G4 is too old.

 

[cjtmacclassic]

I'm not really into the whole HD mess, I don't see a major difference between SD and HD on screen, nor when connected to an external monitor (TV). As for video capture, I'll be using a Sony Handycam with firewire, but won't record directly to the Mac

 

[waynestewart]

I used to do a lot of video work with a Sony camcorder. I used a dual 1ghz MDD which was pretty state of the art at the time. Also had a 700mhz eMac. Occasionally a friend would come back from a trip and we'd have both the MDD and eMac rendering his videos. You had to have a bit of patience but it worked well. Since then I've acquired a dual 1.25ghz MDD overclocked to 1.33. Out of curiosity I did do a 1080 HD video with it. Took a couple of days but it did the video.

 

[CJ_Miller]

My fave is the one called "Power Macintosh G4"

Depends on what you want to do, but I recommend MDD models. If you are doing any live video work, or encoding - the processor and bus speed helps. If you plan on using X instead of 9 then G4 minis and aluminum powerbooks are the fastest G4 computers you will find. Any G4 can be useful though, unless you are using H264 or other such resource intensive formats. MPEG and other formats in standard definition should be ok.

 

[kem554991]

I wouldn't buy less than an MDD with a single or dual core 1GHz processor. My single core 1.25GHz MDD works very well for light A/V work while simultaneously serving as my primary system.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I do edit HD on my G5, but I would shudder doing it on my MDD.

For SD, however, an MDD would be the best bet.

 

[wardsenatorfe92]

Definitely a MDD if possible.

Back in school, when I was head of our video broadcasting team, we had a wide range of Macs that we allowed the students to use to put together news stories, edit footage, etc. (using iMovie). Even had a 400MHz G4 tower (running OS 9), but that got taken out early in the year for use in another media class. In short, my main editing computer that year was a 933MHz Quicksilver (OS 10.3, 128MB RAM). I was really shocked, but it was perfectly capable of basic editing in iMovie.. you just had to have time and patience. Toward the end of the year though, the machine refused to boot up.. so I had to dig a MDD out of the closet (believe it was a dual 867mhz, 1GB RAM, but OS 10.2.. had a "DEAD" sticker on it.. lol). It booted up right away and I was able to edit in some older version of Final Cut. It did decent.. was even able to use LiveType. I won't lie though, I would have rather had an iMac G5.. but it did the job. This year though (now that I'm gone), they took all the G4 Towers out but one and they inherited some eMacs and new MBP's.

^Note, this was also editing SD video.. nothing fancy.

 

[kem554991]

I was ON a broadcast team last year, but we got a pathetic HP/Compaq on which we ran a PowerPoint until the live broadcast started. We had a nice camera, which was replaced with a $1200 one that as of the end of the year had not yet arrived :-/ . We had a cheap RCA video A/V switch and an old converter box (VGA to S-Video or composite) that was so old it had drivers and installation instructions for Mac OS 6/7 and Windows 3.1/95. This particular combination caused really horrible quality problems that made the slides illegible in all but the largest of fonts. I took pity on the next tech person and tried to acquire an older OptiPlex GX270 or GX620, knowing that I definitely couldn't secure one of the district's few Intel iMacs or Mac Pros, but I couldn't evn get a different PC.