It has to be said that perhaps the most popular editing applications for enthusiasts may well be iMovie. It's free / very cheap with your Mac and it's also that it's a very capable editing package offering a solution for almost everyone. But what do you need to run iMovie? Do you really need to go an buy the latest iMac to edit with iMoive? Well, if you have the money then please don't let us stand in your way. But if like us, you have a life to take care of and pay the bills then perhaps there are some cheaper alternatives? Mac Mini Cheapness Let's look at our base system we still use and see what that would cost you to set up. We have a Mac Mini "CoreDuo" 1.8GHz machine that's coming up to being 10 years old! The 80GB Int HDD is getting a little small but with a USB2.0 attached 1TB pocket drive this makes for a great amount of storage. From ebay we upgraded the RAM to 4GB which also helped massively. It run's 10.6.8 which means that we can run iMovie '11 (9.0.4) and be able to work with SD and HD footage, but sadly not 4K. As it a Mac Mini we use a standard 22" DVI attached monitor and a set of Logitech PC speakers. So how much would this cost you? Well, the Mac Mini would obviously need to be purchased from ebay or a refurb company, but a 4Gb Mac Mini of similar spec would only cost around £100 ($NZ180) Throw in another £100 for a monitor and £30 for speakers. So £230 and you'd be all set. iMAC for cheap? If a Mac Mini isn't you thing then perhaps the iMac is. Complete with its own Monitor all you need to add is a Speakers, Keyboard and Mouse. The Aluminium iMac 20" is perhaps the cheapest usable one to go for. This 20" iMac only has a screen resolution of 1680x1050 and so isn't native HD but this still doesn't stop you from editing HD content, or running a second monitor at 1920x1080 through the Radeon HD GFX card. The good news with this model is that OSX10.11 is supported, unlike our poor old Mac Mini who's stuck at 10.6.8. We've seen 20" iMacs, such as the ones discussed, for as little as £300 to £350 at refurb stores so its not much more expensive than the Mac Mini by the time you've added in the Monitor. Where to get iMovie? Well, if you have the latest OSX and your machine has enough grunt, then you simply need to go to the Mac Store and purchase iMovie for (currently) $14.99. However, if you don't have an up to date machine (like our Mac Mini) then how do you get hold of an older iMovie? Well this is a little more tricky. iMovie shipped with the Apple iLife bundles and so it will come down to being able to find a copy of iLife (Amazon or ebay) that supports your Mac OS. So here's a quick run down of what iLife you'd need for your OS and the iMovie it comes with...
iMovie for iPad? We have to confess that we actually haven't used this as we feel that to edit short films you need to be in an environment that can take all your footage and allow you to view material freely and view and hear it in the best way. We're also unsure about the whole 'editing by finger process.' However, if you shoot on your iPAD and then want to edit this quickly together then this could be the one for you. The actual application is identical to the standard iMovie. * We'll have a look at editing on iPADs in a later post when we can generate some time to play with it ;o) Our Mac Mini
Our old Mac Mini was discovered in its box still running 10.4.3 and old iMovie HD 6, which is what it came with. So after adding extra RAM (free from a friend) and updating to 10.6.8 and iLife '11 we were all set. As you can see above, we run our Mac Mini on a single monitor with a coupe of Logitech Speakers and a simple analogue VO Mic. We've edited SD material and HD material, working at 960 rather than full HD, to help keep the systems speed up. It edits well and for short films 5 to 10 mins long its great! If we wanted to spruce it up we'd add a bigger internal HDD (SSD?) but as we use USB/FireWire 400 storage then the little 60GB HDD is not too much concern for us. So in summary, you can make a great suite from older Macs without breaking the bank! Now stop reading this and go make a film!
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