Hi all. Presently own a mid to high end laptop and desktop PC running off WinXP Pro etc.

Am getting back into video recording and editing. Been out of the Mac loop for awhile, and was wondering what would be the worst to best for this. From what I gather the Power G5's may be the best, but from a price perspective would the G5 iMacs be sufficient?

Will be using a Sony HDR-HC1 HD video camera for all of the recording.

Comments appreciated.

Chris

an iMac would suit you fine, its never going to be amazingly fast with HD but it will work well enough

Id recomment a G5 desktop

iMac have a slow bus and they dont have the raw cpu power to edit HD video(well not at a fast rate)

CompNow in melb have this system for sale
PowerMac G5 2.5Ghz DP 512MB//160GB/SuperDrive/R9600XT/PCI-X $3,199

Id be looking at something like that for editing HD

go the Dual powermac for sure, alot more suffiecient. take a look at these comparasins

http://www.barefeats.com/imacg52.html

Thnaks iSlayer. Was actually looking at buying your LCD and another forum members G5 Dual 2.0.

A dual 2.0 would work.
I wouldnt look at anything below that though.

You mean HDV, not HD right? For HD, I reckon we'd be talking some really really serious hardware. But the HC1 is an HDV camera, so you'll be fine with either of the above.

Having said that, I'm with iSlayer on this - I've edited HDV on an iBook and an iMac G5, and while they're sufficient, they are far from ideal - slow render times and lack of real time filters is a big downer. But editing HDV on at least a dual 2.0GHz Powermac G5 with as much RAM as you can put in (but at least 1GB) is a dream, just as easy and efficient as editing DV on lesser hardware.

By the way, great camera! I've seen great things from the HC1 - I've got an FX1, and I'd love to see how the HC1's CMOS imaging compares in actual use to the FX1's CCDs.

[EDIT] By the way, I'd treat any rumours of updated Powermac G5s at the moment with some skepticism - there's nothing solid out there, and you shouldn't delay your purchase for speculated updates, particularly when they're not fairly solidly supported at the moment.

Thanks - was a toss up between a Pana GS400 or the Sony. Reviews seem to head the Sony path. In fact some sites that have reviewed it say in certain areas it is better than the FX1. The HC is let down though in poor lighting conditions.

You could use an iMac G5, but you'd need to get 2GB of ram and an external HDD. A PowerMac G5 with at least dual 2GHz, 2GB RAM and 128MB ATI 9600 GPU (or better) is ideal. Also consider that to display HD video full size you need a 23" or 30" Apple Cinema Display HD (LINK), the iMac G5 option only goes up to 20" screen size (the same as the 20" ACD) and it can't display native HD, only a scaled down version. If that's not an issue with you, then the iMac G5 is a powerful, cheap (relatively) option.

Hope that helps,
Samuel