iMac or Mac Pro?

I'm just started editing w/ FCP via a class at my local community college. I want to edit features and docs in the future but right now I am mainly learning and editing projection video to display as a backdrop when my band plays shows.

I currently have the cash to buy a brand new iMac 3.06 GHz (Intel chipset) 1TB hd ATI Radeon 4850 or I can hold off about a month and buy the Mac Pro at close to stock with no upgrades.

Is it worth holding off? I figure the Mac Pro is totally unecessary at the moment but I could grow into it. I plan on taking more film production classes and editing student films to gain experience.

Or is a Mac Pro overkill for my level? My roommate has a Canon Vixia HG20 which records in AVCHD. I will probably end up editing much of what he shoots. Will an iMac be able to keep up with this format?

Thanks for hearing me out.

A Mac Pro will be much more upgradeable.
And in the long term a better buy.
Do you have a good monitor?
Thats where the imac shines.

My Mantra when buying gear...and it was like this when I was broke & in Film School...is:

"Better to have more power and not need it than have less power and need it."

I had a Powermac 9500 with 96 MB (that's megabytes) of RAM / a Targa 2000 Pro and a Sledghammer 8 GB RAID in school and I had the most powerful system on the block (maxed my credit cards out at $14,000 on this system as a student). I too thought I might have gone overboard with the gear...but when all the video cards fried in the PC lab (* burp - gag *), it was me that took the Graduation video home and cut it with half the class in my bedroom. I won the Course Director's Award for my initiative and it ended up leading to my first gig. It all comes out in the wash.

IMHO there is no such thing as overkill when it comes to the CPU. Fastest processors / as much RAM as you can afford (16 GB is a good place to start @ around $600 these days which is ridiculously cheap). Got to also think of expandability....you can only get 4 GB RAM and only a single hard drive in an iMac (I think). You can put 32 GB and 4 full sized hard drives in a Mac Pro. It goes on & on. Mac Pro wins.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

bj and Joey,

Thanks for your feedback. I'll defintitely hold out a little longer and get the Mac Pro.

I presume this applies to the monitor as well? Going with the Apple 30" HD Cinema display versus something like this Samsung?

No
I wouldn't get the 30".
It would be better to buy 2-24" monitors.
Dell has some good ones and some Samsung monitors are good too.

That is good news indeed. Thanks BJ.

Everyone here seems to like the dell monitors which should be around $400-500 each.
Not sure what model.

The Dell 2408 comes highly recommended by everybody but me.

I've got two 23" Cinema Displays in my room, and two 2408s next door in Edit 2. To my possibly very weird eyes, they're light night and day. I wouldn't give up my Cinema Displays for anything.

Until and unless Apple, at some point in the future, adds an ESATA port or an ExpressCard slot to the iMac, that machine will continue to be a disappointing compromise platform for editing. You can certainly live with Firewire 800; we have six iMacs with G-RAID 2 Firewire framestores for offline editing. But the lack of storage or video I/O options on the iMac is a pretty serious limitation.

Consider broadening your options beyond the "new iMac/new Mac Pro" thing. I took a good look at the new Mac Pros when they first came out, and I found them very disappointing from a price-performance perspective. The previous-generation 8x2.8 GHz Mac Pro was a better buy all around, in my opinion. See if you can pick one of those up refurbished, or from leftover inventory at a VAR or reseller.

Or you could ever look at a Macbook Pro. Unlike the iMac, the Macbook Pro has an ExpressCard slot that you could use in the future to add eSATA storage from Caldigit or G-Tech, leaving your Firewire port free for a camera or deck or for an Aja IO. Or, contrariwise, you could use the ExpressCard slot for a Matrox MXO2 and use the Firewire port for something like a G-RAID 2, if that's a better choice for your particular workflow.

Yes...you don't need the 30". 2 - 24" Ultrasharp Dells give you much more screen real estate at less $$$ than the single 30".

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.