Urgent recommendation: Mac mini 1.25 or G4 450 dual

Need to make an urgent install of Final Cut Studio on either a Minimac 1.25/512mb (maybe 1GB) OR a G4 450 Dual/2GB

Of course there will be no Motion, but for the rest?
None is good, but which option is worst? (best?)

Glad for any advice
Lennart Malmer

Are you serious about trying to use Final Cut Studio or just trying to get by the cheapest way? The MacMini obviously has a faster single CPU G4 but runs on a 5400 rpm disk drive. It only has 400 MB Firewire connectivity and no video support for Motion, as you aluded to.

One the other hand, your G4 dual 500 doesn't even come close to the minimum requirements for FCP Studio.

Honestly, you'd be better off the get an iMac G5 and try to make that work, but it's not the best solution, which I am sure you will discover sooner than later.

If you're doing straight editing with DV, either will probably work OK. For the mini you might add an external FW 7200 RPM hard drive. I do some cutting on my Powerbook 1.5 g4 which is somewhat akin to the mini. You'll wait a while for rendering and compression, but everything should work. RAM is important, more is better!

If you're doing advanced compositing with HD or uncompressed or somesuch you won't have such a smooth ride.

the mac mini has a better spec than my 1ghz 17" powerbook that im typing on as we speak, and i edit (sometimes with heavy compositing) on that with an external fw400 drive with few problems.

now as youve read here - rendering and compressing will take AGES comparitively. but it will indeed work.

I recommend neither.



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My dual 450 ran smooth on fcp3.4-
higher versions 450 not up to task--Jay-