New mac suggestions for video editing

Question

I have been looking at getting a new mac to do mostly video editing and DVD authoring. I currently have a 450mhz g4 sawtooth that I thought about upgrading, but figured with the costs to just retire it. I have about a $1200 budget so I am unable to splurge and get a mac pro. Does anybody have any suggestions on what would work best for the money i.e. G5, G4 DP MDD, Macbook.
Thanks
Jamie

Answer 1

A refurbished MacBook Pro is a little more than your budget (at $1,449), but I think it's a better choice than the MacBook, as the MacBook has no expansion slot and an inferior graphics card.
I eliminate the iMac for the same reason - no expansion slots.
Basically, it's not recommended to capture video to your built-in drive, so you'd need to connect either a FireWire drive or an eSATA drive (with an ExpressCard adapter). However, your video camera is also likely to be FireWire, so you'd be trying to daisy chain a camera through the FireWire drive which is likely to cause performance problems. Even if the MacBook had two FireWire ports (the newest models do, a FW400 and a FW800, but the refurbs are the previous generation) they still share the same FireWire bus, so it's wise to get a FireWire ExpressCard adapter to add a second FireWire bus to the computer. That way, the drive can use one bus and the camera can use the other. Most cameras operate at 100 Mbps speeds, and slow everything else on the same bus down to those speeds as well. While DV is only 25 Mbps, you still have much less headroom to work with if the bus is operating a 100 Mbps speeds.
If you go with a MBP (or any Intel Mac) and you don't already have Final Cut Studio 5.1, you'll need to order the crossgrade. For users of Final Cut Studio 5, it's only a $49 upgrade, but you have to take advantage of it before the end of the year.
Adobe's CS suite will run slower on an Intel Mac than on a PPC due to having to run under Rosetta, but most of those apps should still be tolerable. I don't think I'd want to use After Effects under Rosetta, however.