[macaframa]

I am at a new high school and I am teaching multimedia design. Like many schools, the dummies didn't buy Macs. Although. a lot of schools that teach Multimedia Design do have Mac labs. I have the most worthless desktop systems. They are from some local company and freeze and overheat and just suck. Anyhow, I will have about $4,000 to spend, maybe a little more, and want to get a few Macs to do group video editing projects and other multimedia on. What is the most entry-level machine that would work?

[SirCastor]

Buy a few iMacs. They will be sufficient to do video work on, even with FCP.

[harrisjamieh]

Some people may think this is crazy, but, so long as you are not using/planning on using anything like Motion, or anything else graphics intensive, a 1.83 Ghz Core Duo Mini will do the job just fine. Video editing does not use the video card. I say the 1.83 Ghz mini because I guess a superdrive will be needed to burn finished movies to disk.

This may be a better solution, as 1, its cheaper, and 2, if you already have machines (albeit crappy), you could use the display, keyboard and mouse from them, instead of having to chuck them out. And you would be able to get more Mac Mini's than iMacs.

The mini can be config'd with up to a 160GB HD, but it might be worth getting external firewire drives for a capture scrath disk, as it will be faster.

[stevesnj]

17" imac make sure it has a DVD burner 2gb ram, 500 GB HD, Final Cut Studio, external monitor adaptor, I made up a quick cart with 2 17" imacs an Final Cut studio, it a little over with the 2 licences for Final Cut

Apple Mini-DVI to Video Adapter M9319G/A

$17.10 $34.20

iMac 17-inch, Intel Core 2 Duo Z0DJ

$1,595.00 $3,190.00
Keyboard & Mighty Mouse + Mac OS X - U.S. English 065-6557
Accessory kit 065-6556
SuperDrive 8X (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) 065-6563
2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1GB 065-6567
500GB Serial ATA drive 065-6569
2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 065-6564

Final Cut Studio 5.1 - Academic MA290Z/A

$499.00 $998.00

Subtotal Please note that your subtotal does not include sales tax or rebates. $4,222.20

[k_munic]

I did video edit on amateur level with my G3/500 iBook...- worked like charme.. as all other pointed out, video doesn't need THAT much of a beast...

but you mentioned multimedia...
a) Flash needs more speed..
b) DVD encoding needs more speed...
c) Motion/Maya/AE needs all the speed you can get....

consider different machines for different tasks.. do you really need DVDencoding in realtime? or isn't an used (=cheap) G4dual/1GB/lotsof harddrive space your "overnite delivery machine" (transfer edited movies via LAN onto "RenderBeast", clickdone)?
just for editing, any 1GB miniMac is good enough for the beginner, using iMovie/FinalCutExpress...

[James.d]

So funny, My wife is in the exact same boat, she's teaching a media production class for the first time and has no idea where to start. They have some older mac's (with 128mb of ram) and have been using a really old version of iMovie, but we're working on a technology grant.

My question for you Macaframa, what have you been doing in terms of the curriculum? did you find any resources on the web to get you started??

[macaframa]

No, not much of anything. I got a lead on a class at another school, I sent an e-mail to the teacher to get some ideas. So far. we are starting slow with PowerPoint till I can figure some stuff out.