Suggesting on best Mac set up for home photographer

looking for suggesting on best Mac set up for home photographer and video editor using iPhoto and CS6 products for example. I have a 8 year old Mac and looking to start with a new clean build. I don't need to get too fancy can be a out of box Mac solution

Any Mac will be faster than an 8-year old one (especially since that Mac is almost certainly PowerPC-based).
You've posted in the Mac Pro forum, but ironically that's the one Mac that wouldn't really make sense (they're very expensive and are generally overkill for most home applications).
The iMacs are probably what you want to look at - I would go into an Apple Store and look at the two sizes to determine what works best for you. The 27" has expandable RAM; the 21" doesn't, so you are advised, if you buy the smaller, to max out the RAM from Apple to 16GB when you buy it.
Don't forget that they lack optical drives now, so you'll need an external USB drive if you use a lot of CD/DVDs. (Doesn't need to be an Apple Superdrive.)
Matt

Similar Messages

What is best mac and software for home video editing and creation

I am about to buy a mac to capture 30 years of photos, film, and video (multiple formats).
I want to then edit a series of videos to make movies to capture our family history. I know I will have a lot of conversions to make and will use a local video transfer place to do that.
I am not worried about price.
My goal is to make a series 30 of DVD's each about 1.5 hours in duration.
I have a lot of organizing, editing, publishing and storing to do. I know it will take me a long time.
I am about to purchase the mac and other things needed.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Dave

I do LOTS what you are about to do.
I think I can confidently say I have tried all software and the vast majority of video converters. Here is how I do it.
Computer: Mac Pro
Movie editor: iMovie 06, (more expensive than iMovie 11 but well worth the price) I have iMovie 11, but I would not use it for making DVDs.
DVD authoring: iDVD 09 / 11 ( iDVD has not changed in a couple of years, just make sure you're using iDVD 08 or later).
You will also need a A/D coverter. (Like the Grassvalley ADVC300)
I've played around with countless other conversion systems, ranging in price from $79 to $399. Short verison, this is the ONLY unit to own. No dropped frames at all, even with questionable quality tapes, no jitter, great color, excellent sound quality. Zero setup with iMovie 06 and iDVD 09/11.
This is a prosumer deck. The time code function is alone worth the price if you have old analog footage. Absolutely NO "Out Of Sync" audio.
ADVC300 is for anyone who wants to do editing and is concerned about quality of color and speed, for the novice it is an incredible gizmo that will restore VHS tapes to a state close to the original fixing midtones, highlights and shadows on the fly. Not only can you simply convert analog to digital you can actually manipulate the signal going in (if you want to).
A bit pricey but it WORKS.
http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc300
The program that comes with the ADVC300 has some nice filters that can improve video and audio of the source material.
I also own an Elgato EyeTV, it's in a drawer somewhere. The ADVC300 gives much better results ESPECIALLY WITH TAPES.
iMovie 06 and iDVD 09 is 100% "lossless" combination and my DVD's look like they came from Hollywood!

What is the best mac to get for downloading over 30,000 photos?

what is the best mac to get for downloading over 30,000 photos?

Download from where into what? What are you going to do with the photos?
I agree with Larry that a Mac with an SSD boot drive and addtional standard drive is blazingly fast. I have an iMac setup that way and it boots in 14 seconds. With the system and applicaitons and iPhoto library on the SSD drive and most other documents, backup photos, etc. on the std. drive. it works beautifully. However, I do not let the free space on the SSD drive get less than 50 GB.
I also have an external HD that I sue with Time Maching to backup both my SSD and standard drive in the iMac.
OT

Best Mic set-up for a Mac G5 dual?

Hello Folks,
What is a good Mic set-up for a Mac G5 dual?
Do I need the "GRIFFIN TECHNOLOGY IMIC2"?
Thanks!
G5 1.8 GHz Dual Mac OS X (10.3.9)

The iMic is more a consumer thing, not very professionnal. If you want a good quality setup but yet affordable, I'd choose a Focusrite Saffire for preamp/audio interface and a Rode NT-1A for mic. Also, you'll need the usual accessories: a pop-filter ( I highly recommend Stedman), a mic stand, a quality XLR cable and good headphones (I suggest AKG K240 Studio).

Best Mac Pro Configuration for LR?

For various reasons I'm planning on migrating from my home desktop pc ( 4 year old core2 2.4 ghz xp pro sp 3 32bit accessing 2.93 out of 4 gb ram) to a new or (lightly used recent) Mac Pro desktop. The Mac Pro is available in a lot of different configurations and I would appreciate advice on how many cores and how much ram I actually need to comfortably run LR3x and its eventual upgrades (within reason) and PS3 for now and later probably whatever is current. I'm a reasonably advanced amateur photographer; I shoot what interests me and now use LR for 90-95% of my post processing of my raw Leica and Canon image files. I do use some add-ons (SilverEfex Pro2 and such).
I understand from reading some articles that too much muscle in the Mac Pro can actually slow down LR, so if this is true I'd like to stay svelte; also economic issues are somewhat a concern.
I have already considered a laptop or an iMac and decided the Mac Pro is what I want. The question is just 'what will work best for me'?
Thanks in advance, and if you need more information just let me know.
--Bob
p.s. Is the Search Function disabled in this Forum? I couldn't get it to work.

thewhitedog wrote:
@ Bob: I think you may be have acquired some misinformation somewhere. There is no such thing as "too much muscle" in a Mac Pro in relationship to Lightroom - or any other program. OS X allocates resources to applications as they need them. Unused resources remain idle or are utilized by other applications.
Adobe posts the minimum system requirements for their applications, but these should just be taken as a starting point. In my opinion you should buy the best Mac Pro your budget can handle - and maybe a little bit more. The computer is an investment, after all, not a luxury. That said, what you need to run Lightroom efficiently and what Jay needs to do video editing are not necessarily the same. For video rendering more cores are better. For Lightroom the question of the number of CPU cores is less critical. Whereas, CPU speed is more relevant. For both, the amount of RAM can make a big difference.
I recommend as a starting point, at least a quad-core Mac Pro with 4GB of RAM. That would do if you were looking at an iMac as well.
I can understand, though, how looking at the current line-up of Mac Pros can be confusing. The older Nehalem powered Mac Pros look faster for less money, but this is now old technology. The new Intel Westmere CPUs offer significant improvements in performance. Unfortunately, they are also much more expensive than any previous Mac CPU upgrade. But if you want to "future proof" your new Mac, one with a Westmere CPU is the better way to go. The 8 core model Jay went with seems to be the best value, with two quad-core 2.4GHz Westmere CPUs. However, for just $200 more you can get the 6 core 3.33GHz Westmere CPU. For the purposes of Lightroom, the faster CPUs in the 6 core model will make more of a difference than the two extra cores in the 8 core version. And the 6 core version will handle just about any multi-tasking job you throw at it; that it, using Lightroom in conjunction with Adobe Photoshop, for example.
To confuse the issue a bit more, however, if using Lightroom is your primary concern, a Mac Pro may be overkill. The new iMacs, which came out since you started this thread, are excellent machines. You could get a lot more for your money with a 27" iMac, BTO with a quad-core 3.3GHz Intel Sandy Bridge CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 2TB hard drive for roughly $1,000 less than the Mac Pros you're looking at. Along with a capable computer you get a beautiful 27" screen on the iMac. I'm not sure why you think you need the Mac Pro. The iMac can now take up to 16GB of RAM. If you were to get one with 8GB factory installed by Apple - as a BTO option - there would still be two empty RAM slots available for a future upgrade. You could add an SSD to the iMac and still pay less than you would for the Mac Pro.
And the new iMacs have a Thunderbolt port; in fact, the 27" models have two Thunderbolt ports. These offer much better throughput and greater flexibility than any previous I/O connection. With an appropriate adaptor you can use almost any external device, including eSATA, FireWire 400 and 800, USB 1, 2 and 3 and even Ethernet and an external monitor. Of course the iMac still has a Firewire 800 port and four USB 2 ports, and an SDXC memory card slot. For what it may be worth, I suggest you give the iMac another look. Your budget will thank you.
TheWhiteDog,
Kinda, Sorta, Maybe... :-) The cost differential between the 8 and 6 cores is $200 when comparing new to new. I picked up the 8 Core Westmere 2.4 for under $3000 because it comes up on the Refurbished side... So now we're talking $700 difference. the difference in price can be used for memory (I got 4GB for $50 at OtherWorldCmputing's "Garage Sale), a drive.. any number of things. Since Apple treat refurbs as new for warranty purposes (including AppleCare), I didn't see any reason not to go with the refurbished model..
I agree a higher clock speed is better, but as you said, I also do video so more cores helps (amazingly helps).. Yes, for LR 6 3.33 cores may outperform 8 2.4s, but the 8 core machine flies with LR.
As for iMacs vs. Mac Pro.. the biggest difference is that you find with any desk top vs. a "fixed" machine like the iMac. The upgrade as far a internal (and external) drives on a Mac Pro is so much better as well as to upgrade video if I want to in the future as well. As for Thunderbolt, clearly a lot of potential, but it is a daisy chain design and the slowest device in the chain can slow down everything if not done right. There's also not a lot out there for Thunderbolt yet.. and I'm not 100% sure that there won't be an PCI card for Mac Pros for Thunderbolt (although it could be a system board feature only).
At under $3000 with 6GB of memory and a 1TB 7200 drive, combined with growrh potential and the Mac Pro I think has a longer shelf life vs. the iMac. Without those Thunderbolt adapters in the market place, you're stuck with FW800, which is a lot slower than even eSATA for external drives. Since most all the LR recommendations are to split the catalog away from the cache and away from the images themselves, it's a trickier and more costly venture on the iMac.. The 27" screen in nice, but I'm not a big fan of glossy screens. I don't think any of those allow you a matte finish option like on the Macbook Pro.
Bottom line Bob is there are different choices for different budgets... Heck I went with a 17" Macbook Pro for a long time, using an inexpensive Expresscard 34 to hook up external eSATA drives and a second 24" Dell monitor.. Great combo and I always had the portability aspect of the 17" for client work, being tethered, etc..
Jay

Best storage set-ups for large Libraries?

Let's say "large Library" means 500 GB and/or 500,000 Images, and above.
What set-ups for storage, on a Mac maximized with RAM, will provide the best Aperture performance? The best bang-for-the-buck? Assume Thunderbolt is available. I don't know much about hardware: RAID, hybrid drives, etc.
What sensible considerations should one make for backup and data-redundancy?
How can I determine if the storage media is a bottleneck in the performance of Aperture on my system?
I run most libraries off of external USB-3 drives mounted (sometimes directly, often via powered USB-3 hubs) to my
MacBook Pro
Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013
Processor 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB
System Drive APPLE SSD SD512E
This works well for small and medium-size Libraries, but for large Libraries, I'm spending costly time waiting for the system to catch up.
Some of that, demonstrably, comes when I run a three-monitor set-up. (But this provides some welcome advantages to me.)
Additionally, some back-ups and database repairs now take 12 hr. or longer.
Thanks.

Thanks William,
I kept my c. 2011 MPB and use it for making back-ups, which is done automatically after I leave for the day. My early-2013 MPB is so much faster (and has such a higher-resolution screen) that I don't use the older computer at all.
William Lloyd wrote:
Probably the fastest storage you can get is the La Cie "little big disk" which is a pair of 512 GB SSDs with a Thunderbolt 2 connection. The issue is, only the newest Mac Pro, and the newest retina MacBook Pros, have Thunderbolt 2 right now.
OWC tech explained to me that TBolt2 allows 2x the throughput, but that the drives have to be able to provide it. TBolt1 should provide 1,000 MB/s (do I have the units correct?), which is faster than most drives can provide. So the bottleneck, for me, isn't likely to be the port, but rather the drives. USB-3 can move 500 MB/s, which is still faster than -- afaict -- what my WD Passport drives can provide.
As I currently see it, I need faster throughput, and I need to either trim my large Libraries or find a way to manage them so that the regularly used files are more speedily available.
Regarding faster throughput, an external SSD comes to mind.
The problem, for me, is that the large Libraries are close to 1TB (with Previews). While I don't expect them to grow (the data acquisition phase is, for now, done), it would be short-sighted to assume they won't. That brings up the second consideration, which is how to best use spanned drives that contain an Aperture Library.
As I see it (with my limited understanding of hardware), what I really want is _a lot more RAM_, or, barring that, a huge SSD scratch disk. I have 200 GB free on my system drive, which is an Apple-supplied SSD, but it doesn't seen to be used as effectively as I'd like.
WD is now selling a new portable TBolt SSD, the "My Passport Pro", available with 4 GB of storage, and with a throughput of 230 MB/s. My current largest Library is on WB Passport drives, whose throughput is not faster than 480 Mb/s (Max) (I assume BITS, not BYTES, so 40 MB/s). That's a huge difference, while still only 1/4 of the speed possible with TBolt1, and 1/8 the throughput possible with TBolt2 (which my early-2013 MBP does not have, afaict).
These are the questions I am trying to answer:
- How can I measure my current throughput?
- Can I determine the bottleneck in my use of large Libraries in Aperture?
- Will new storage give me faster performance?
- Which storage will give me the best "bang-for-my-bucks"? (The La Cie "little big disk" seems to have it's bang limited by my computer, which greatly lowers its quotient value.)
In short: how can I get 900-1000 MB/s throughput on my machine, and is there any way to set up my Library so that, even though it is close to 1 TB, I can use a smaller very fast drive for the most read/written files?
--Kirby.

What's the best Mac Pro config for Fireworks?

What's the best Mac config for Fireworks?
I can pretty much get whatever Mac I want at work... My boss is sick and tired of watching Fireworks crash all the time... I figure a hefty processor and lots of RAM and maybe a SSD will help…
I should get a Mac Pro right? Which processor?
• Two 2.40GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon processors (12 cores)
• Two 2.66GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon processor (12 cores)
• Two 3.06GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (12 cores)
Should I get 24GB RAM?? Or is that overkill?
I'll get a 2TB serial hard drive…
I should get a 512 GB solid state drive offered by Apple right?
Or is it possible to get a larger better 3rd party SSD?
And then maybe two 21" Displays… Two 27s seems a little much… or does it?
Thanks in advance.

Oh and what about video cards? Or is Apple's default ok? (I'm not doing hard core PhotoShop retouching or anything).

Best wifi set up for multiple routers and appletvs

Hi, just got the new June 2013 "tower" airport extreme in my ongoing quest to improve non ethernet wifi in my large house (lots of bathrooms and solid block walls, no cable)
Trying to figure out best set up for the various routers and whether or not to use "Bridge" mode. Have the following
New tower airport extreme
2 x older airport extremes
3 airports
5 apple tvs each in a different room for streaming media to 5 televisions
SO planning to factory re-set all my old airports and then install the tower airport in prime receiving position. It will recieve the wifi signal via an ethernet cable from the "radio" on my roof which receives my internet signal. (Actually faster than most wired internet in the small town I live in).
Tower = main receiver and distributor of internet
1 x older airport extreme distributing this signal further into the house - SHOULD THIS BE IN BRIDGE MODE?
2 or more others distributing the signal from the older airport extreme further into the house - SHOULD THEY ALSO BE IN BRIDGE MODE?
I'm very unclear on the benefit of bridge mode. Currently all my routers operate freely and are just extenders - not in bridge mode. Devices just hook into whatever router is nearest - some of which show Excellent wifi and the furtherest show only "Good wifi. I have one room at the very end of my house where the wifi is pretty weak.
Any comments on set up or especially the value of Bridge mode and whether all down-stream routers should be bridged or just extended much appreciated. I guess there is a possibility that I place the 2 older extremes in two main extending locations. One for one section of the house and the other to receive the signal direct from the Tower Airport Extreme to distribute the other end of the house section. So should they both be bridged....?

When an AirPort is properly configured to extend the wireless range of another, it is automatically reconfigured into Bridge mode.
Each of AirPorts that you will use to extend the new 802.11ac AirPort Extreme would all need to be configured as such. Please check out this Apple Support article on how to extend AirPorts.
The key here is to understand that the extended network works in a wheel-like fashion with the base station being extended at the hub of the wheel and each of the extending ones on one of the spokes. This should help you plan the best placement of each base station for maximum performance. For more details on optimum placement, please see the following AirPort User Tip.

Best Plan/Set-up for Peru

Hi -
I am moving to Peru from the United States, and since I am new to Skype I thought I would ask the experts what the best plan or set-up for staying in touch would be. Basically, I would like to have the ability to call landlines and mobiles back in the USA, and for landlines and mobiles to be able to call my Skype line in Peru. I would prefer an unlimited plan rather than having to worry about counting my minutes or overages.
Also, I am wondering if I would be able to divert calls to my current cell phone number to my Skype line when I am in Peru. If that is the case, would I be able to access these calls on my cell when I return to the United States?
Thanks for all the help. Apologies if this is basic or doesn't make total sense, but as I said, I'm new at this and looking to begin to understand it all.

I am moving to Peru from the United States, and since I am new to Skype I thought I would ask the experts what the best plan or set-up for staying in touch would be. Basically, I would like to have the ability to call landlines and mobiles back in the USA, and for landlines and mobiles to be able to call my Skype line in Peru. I would prefer an unlimited plan rather than having to worry about counting my minutes or overages.
You would probably want to do two things.... First, purchase a subscription for calling phones in the USA. Probably the best plan in this case is the Unlimited USA & Canada subscription at US$ 2.99/month. Then you would also want to purchase an Online Number in the US area code that you prefer (provided it is available). The Online Number is US$ 18 for 3 months or US$ 60/year, but you get a 50% discount on the Online Number when you have a subscription like the Unlimited USA & Canada subscription. If you get a subscription and a US online number for a year, you can end up with a US phone number and calling to all US (and Canadian) numbers for around US$ 60/year - or US$ 5/month! Not a bad deal, especially when you're in Peru.
Another obvious thing you'll need in Peru is a good Internet connection. You probably knew that already, but that's a must for this to work well for you down there.
Also, I am wondering if I would be able to divert calls to my current cell phone number to my Skype line when I am in Peru. If that is the case, would I be able to access these calls on my cell when I return to the United States?
You should be able to do that. You'd have to check the instructions for your phone, and maybe contact your mobile carrier, about how to do that. Setting call-forwarding on your mobile phone is completely separate from Skype. Make sure that call-forwarding from your mobile phone is not limited to a maximum number of minutes per month, as some carriers do that. If you set the call-forwarding before you left the USA, you can turn that off whenever you are back in the States.
One thing that you could do with a calling subscription covering US numbers along with a US online number is this.... encourage your callers to use the Skype Online Number to reach you, instead of the mobile number. You can set up Skype to call-forward unanswered calls to a telephone number if you have Skype Credit and/or a calling subscription. When in the States, Skype can be used to forward calls from your Skype number to your US mobile number. Other than not receiving SMS messages on a Skype Online Number, then it does not matter what your mobile number is. Just use the Skype Online Number as your number for anything you need in the US. I've done this for several years, with a subscription and a US Online Number. It works pretty well.
Good luck in Peru!
Patrick
Location/Ubicacion: Arizona USA
Time Zone/Hora Local: UTC/GMT -7
If this message has adequately addressed your issue, please click on the “Accept as Solution” button. If you found a post useful then please "Give Kudos" at the bottom of my post, so that this information can benefit others.
Si esto mensaje le ha ayudado, por favor haga clic en "Aceptar como solución". Si encuentra un mensaje útil, por favor "Da Kudos" al final del mensaje, por lo que esta información puede beneficiar a otros.
I am not a Skype employee. No soy un empleado de Skype.

Question: best Hardware set-up for final cut univ. and mac pro

Hi, I was wondering if anyone has used final cut universal with their mac pro and can recommend a hardware set-up (Processors, memory... ) they found best adapted for it.
my mac pro:
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
thank you
MAC PRO Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Final Cut Studio/video editing requires all four parts of a system…
1) Processor performance
2) GPU performance
3) RAM
4) Hard drive performance
… to be working in tandem. If any one of these areas a caught short then the system as a whole is disproportionately affected. It's one of the downsides to video is that everything needs to be working as well as it can.
So, what I would recommend for you is the following setup as your goal is something like…
Mac Pro 2.66GHz
6GB RAM (4 x 1GB + 4 x 512MB - I'm presumng you already have the 4 x 512MB)
ATi X1900 XT graphics card (or better - depneds on what's available at the time)
2 x Western Digital Raptor 150GB RAID 0 for boot and scratch
2 x Maxtor MaXLine Pro 500GB RAID 0 for data
Any further eSATA storage requirements for cloning, backup and data
Not cheap but should scream.

Can anyone suggest the best external hard drive for MAC PRO?

As my tower is whirring like the proverbial jet, I was told at the Genius Bar to back everything up before trouble-shooting. I've researched various 500 GB ext. hard drives, but they all seem to have drawbacks. My biggest priority is reliability. Any ideas? Thanks.

You will find suitable products at MacSales.com or you can purchase a hard drive separately and install it in an external Firewire enclosure. You will find enclosures at:
MacSales.com
CoolDrives.com
FirewireDirect.com
NewEgg.com
In the future please choose the proper forum for your topic. You posted this question in the MacBook Pro forum instead of the Mac Pro forum.

Best mac to get for general university tasks?

Im going to university in September and like the sound of the MacBook air. However I'm just worried that I wont have enough memory even though I am doing animal science it will be mainly written tasks than anything more production like...
What would you advise is best?
Thanks

If you want something to carry around campus the MBA is a great computer - I'm totally happy with mine. Dominic's suggestion for the 256GB model is spot on and 8GB of RAM should see you safely thru your undergraduate years.
I've started seeing more and more students carrying iPads with keyboard covers and I took that route myself this spring at a convention. I needed to travel extra light so I left the computer and charger at home. The MBA has great battery life for a full notebook but doesn't come close to matching the all day goodness of an iPad. Add a mini or iMac in the dorm and you're all set.

What's the best mac configuration setup for Logic?

I think that I didn't configure my Mac good enough to work with Logic and I hear that there is a special configuration that should be used to have everhything work together as best as possible in terems of memory use etc. But what are the best settings? And where do i configure them?

Are you talking about within logic or the actual system?
as far as logic is concerned, the preferences / audio tab will offer you most of the controls to optimize logic for your system.
as far as the actual mac, the best would obviously be a 12 core mac pro, speced till it would spec no more LOL.
but a I5 imac and that much ram is still a reasonable beast in the home studio stakes.
the best way to use all the RAM is to run logic in 64 bit,
find logics icon in the finder, and either right/ctrl click and click get info or press cmd-I.
this will bring up the get info dialog, and uncheck run in 32bit.
hey presto, logic can get to 16gb of RAM (in theory).

Best Mac Pro Configuration for Editing

Hey guys. I'm looking to upgrade my editing capabilities from a iMac G5 to a Mac Pro computer system. I pretty much want to go all out on this thing, as I don't look to upgrade again anytime soon. I will be working with a fresh copy of Final Cut Studio 2.
I was wondering, however, about what would be a good configuration for the hardware itself, more specifically the video cards that are available now.
Which video card would be the best for HD video editing and manipulation? I was thinking about just getting the most expensive one, but I have heard some video cards are made for one thing more than another, and I want to make sure that I get the right configuration the first time.
Again, money is not too much of an issue as this will be an expense for my business.
Any help would be appreciated.
Message was edited by: Troy Minassian

Well I'll try not to be too vague here but I think it's going to be easier for me to give you a few hints but mostly talk about where to do more research.
First: Formats -
With good ol' DV, any off-the-shelf, completely stock, Mac Pro will handle it - absolutley NO sweat. Just add 1 (or more) iternal SATA drives for capturing media, and you're off to the races. HDV...this could go either way. In theory, again, a basic Mac Pro can handle this. The format's total throughput is no more than DV. However, my thought is that using straight HDV in it's "native" format can be a real pain in the butt. Cruise over the Final Cut forum and do a search for a phrase like "HDV" & "Yuck" and you'll end up with a big long list of issues. I'll not go too far into detail, but HDV is a highly compressed format with a GOP-structure. Dealing with GOP-structured media in an NLE is not pretty.
The good news is if you're even considering something like an Io HD then the HDV issues can be conquered with it. You would use the Io HD to transcode the HDV to Apple's ProRes codec on the fly. That's what the IoHD does. It's an external capture card whose form factor makes it nice and portable. So you'd come out of your camera or deck - into the Io HD - and out via firewire to your computer. The one "trick" is: you're married to ProRes. That's the one & only codec this box does. (To the best of my knowledge, that is.) Anyway, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Just good to know going into it. Here's a review of the Io HD over at the creativecow.net. And by the way, if you've never hung out over there, note that it's a great resource for help. Tons of in-the-know pros hang out there.
As far as AVCHD, I'm personally not too familiar with it. I know that it too is not very intensive to deal with - per se. But the whole tapeless concept is still somewhat new and as such has it's share of "gotchas". For that I'd do a search over there on Apple's Final Cut forum. I know a search for AVCHD is going to turn up many many posts.
Regarding the RED. Again, it's so new it's got it share of workflow bumps to be aware of. (Personally, I love the concept of what this camera is all about. I checked it out and NAB and was really impressed with where they're going with it.) But for better info on that, I'd steer over to the Final Cut forum here and the Final Cut form over at the COW. Further, the camera has it's own forum over at the COW. And another great source of info is reduser.net. This camera is sweeping the industry. But it's changing the workflow quite a bit too.
Second: Processing -
As far as overall CPU power goes....Sure! A higher clock speed is basically going to be a faster machine. Here's some stats. But what's the cost? The 3.2 is faster than the 2.8. Is this worth $1600 to you? Only you can answer that question. For me: I just spent a month vacillating over a new machine purchase. I had originally "decided" months ago to get a new Mac Pro Eight 2.8. Then I thought I might save some loot and buy a G5. Then I thought, No! That's a dumb idea.... I could spend only about $600 more and get a refurb'ed 2.66 Quad core. Then I figured I could spend $800 more than that and end up - right back where I started - with a new 2.8 8-Core. So for me, the $1400 more, to go from a used G5 to a new 2.8 Octo, just made sense. But the point is: it's a completely personal decision. For me, that overall margin of money/performance made a lot of sense! On the other hand, did it make sense for me to spend $1600 more and get the 3.2 instead of the 2.8? Not at all! So only you are going to be able to decide if $1600 buys you enough of a performance hike.
Then, Extras -
Too, you're going to want to add as much RAM as you can afford. The other big question is storage. You've mentioned a spectrum of formats. On the one hand you've got your DV. Again a single SATA drive will be more than enough to capture to and playback from. But with ProRes HQ you're getting more demanding on the drives. For this, you'd want to now add, let's say, 3 more internal drives and stripe them together into a capture RAID. But you could even go up a few steps and get something like the CalDigit HD Pro and get multiple streams of HD playback with the security of a hardware-controlled RAID 5 scenario. So there's a couple of different ways to go here....However, if you start with very very fast, reliable drives, you're setting yourself to handle higher-end formats. Drive speed can be a killer. But if you start at the top you can basically head off any format woes for the future. (For a while....Nothing's completely future-proof in this game.)
Finally, Monitoring -
You've got to figure out how to look at/hear the media outside-of-the-computer. Meaning - you're going to need external monitoring equipment: Video and Audio. Again this will open more questions for you. But these items are key to your knowing what you're REALLY working with. So you really need a NTSC monitor, an audio mixer/control surface of some sort and some powered speakers. The Final Cut forums will be good places to research what others are using in these arenas.
Anyway, good luck with it all! You've already discovered a great resource: this forum. If I were you, I'd start to spend more time on the Final Cut forums. These types of queries will get solid answers over there. I'd recommend establishing the habit of performing a search when you've over there though. The chances of someone else, already asking the same thing that you're investigating, is quite high. Almost guaranteed. Enjoy!

What's the best Mac to get for college?

My daughter is getting ready to attend college in the fall and I would like to get her a MAC. Which one do you recommend and why?

She'll certainly want something portable and while the MacBook Air is the lightest, I would be more prone to suggest a slightly heavier (but not too hefty!) entry-level MacBook Pro. If she needs to run Windows apps, she can, and there are a number of applications that are cross-platform (the ubiquitus MicroSoft Office for example).
See -> http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=ME293LL/A&step=config.
Good luck!
Clinton

Suggesting on best Mac set up for home photographer

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