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Go with the dual 3.0 GHz if you can afford it.  You won't be sorry.

As far as the video card is concerned the X1900 XT with 512mb of GDDR3 RAM is about the nicest card you can get now if I'm not mistaken.  (Without going to a professional CAD card.)

Check out this page for the differences in the offerings for video cards that Apple has.

http://www.apple.com/macpro/graphics.html

A big fat hard drive is also recommended for doing your video editing.  What I did is keep the stock drive (250 GB for me) and add a big fat drive for data and video (750 GB +).

That should get you started with a fairly decent machine.

Depends on the format?  What do you want to edit? SD, HD, HDV?

-mark

Don't forget a fast dedicated scratch disk.

somedude9325 wrote:

I want it to be able to handle hd, hdv etc.

Well HDV has the same data rate as DV, which is 25Mbps.  Real HD like DVCPRO-HD, HDCAM, uncompressed can run from 100 Mbps to a whole lot more.

I dual G5 will handle HD.  The most important thing for you is going to be RAM and fast hard drives if you want to handle any HD format besides HDV.

There are lots of good choices for hard drive arrays; but I would highly recommend you get one that interfaces with the computer over FibreChannel.  Apple's Xserve is a good choice as well some of the higher end products from G-technology.  Rorke makes some very nice Ultra320 SCSI enclosures also.

For anything other than HDV it will take some investment.

-mark

I would be concerned about tossing long, sustained loads repeatedly on an iMac. Thats a tight heat envelope enclosure and laptop components are more geared towards energy conservation than tuned to sustained loads the way the MacPro Xeons are.

Crucial is one good place for RAM, and this site advertises for it so you should be able to find the url.

Gatchaman wrote:

Even though it's the same data rate, HDV is a lot more processor intensive than DV, as it's a completely different and more tightly compressed file structure.  A G5 can "handle" it, but it's a much smoother process on a mac pro.

Well I guess I do not have to worry then, because I think HDV is a crap format. In fact anything that use GOP type compression is crap for editing. (and yes I know they have technically found a way to edit it, it is still crap)

Go with DVCPRO HD or Apple's new ProRes422.

-mark

Gatchaman wrote:

avkills wrote:

Gatchaman wrote:

Even though it's the same data rate, HDV is a lot more processor intensive than DV, as it's a completely different and more tightly compressed file structure.  A G5 can "handle" it, but it's a much smoother process on a mac pro.

Well I guess I do not have to worry then, because I think HDV is a crap format. In fact anything that use GOP type compression is crap for editing. (and yes I know they have technically found a way to edit it, it is still crap)

Go with DVCPRO HD or Apple's new ProRes422.

-mark

If you have the $12000 for the camera, go for it. 

Does any camera actually use ProRes422 yet?

No, but I really like the fact that it is full frame as opposed to HDV and DVCPRO HD which are not full frame, they are both anamorphic-ally squeezed a bit.

There is nothing saying you could not shoot in Digital Beta or HDCAM and then digitize in using ProRes422...which is probably the workflow most would use.

AJA Video has a new Firewire800 interface that has the ProRes 422 codec in hardware.  It is the sweetness.

-mark