Editing System for GH3

[Dr. John R. Brinkley]

Andrew's post about the Hackintosh for editing RAW files got me thinking about how to approach an editing system for the GH3 I'll be using (once it finally ships to the US).

 

 

I'm curious how much power and storage I would when shooting with a GH3. (Keep in mind I'm not thinking of a PC system, but open to the idea if someone feels they have great results).

 

Would a Mac Mini with quad core and 8gb RAM suffice? And has anyone done any DIY upgrades to a Mac Mini that works well?

 

I've been leaning towards a new Imac but can't stand the lack of adaptability and higher cost, which is why I was wondering if I could get away with a Mac Mini and getting my own monitor at a cheaper price. Tweeking a Mac Mini may be an exercise in stupidity I realize, but you can at least get into the guts and people seem to do various unauthorized upgrades, like putitng in an extra hard drive and such. But will this be worth it considering the cost?

 

I assume a laptop would not be enough power but maybe not?

 

Curious what others thought based on what you know about the GH3 and the file sizes and demands that will be required...

 

 

Cheers,

 

Dr. John

 

 

[fluxo]

hi there, í´ve got the lastest non retina macbook pro 15" and the GH3 files workflow is perfect :P

[Jenkly]

GH3 footage isn't always as heavy as some higher bitrate GH2 footage.  If you have a system that can edit GH2 footage, I wouldn't worry too much.

 

I've edited GH3 footage on a dual core.  It can be a bit sluggish and a little painful but it does work.  With the GH3 (as with any other camera released within the last year) I'd recommend a recent Intel quad core for smoother editing, 8gb ram (as a baseline) and a lot of storage (a few terabytes).  The system itself doesn't need the storage onboard.  With the mac mini, you can get a few external drives to store footage.  You can edit footage directly from them.  I wouldn't forget to add these into your budget.  An Invidia GPU may help you with editing depending on the software. 

 

Laptops come in a bit underrated these days.  I do most of my GH3 editing on one.   The system that I use can handle the footage and then some.  My specs: Intel Core i7-3720QM, 12GB DDR3 1600 ram, Nvidia 660m GPU.  However, I will say that both of my systems have processors that cost about as much as a mac mini...so it might be just a tad overkill.

 

I think that a Mac Mini would work.  If it is a good price for your budget I don't think it would hurt to try.  I don't have first hand experience but I can tell you that I edited a lot of hacked GH2 footage on an Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.0Ghz without any assistance from a GPU.  And that was really pushing my luck.  But it did its job, and I got a few videos out of it.

[powderbanks]

i use a samsung qx410 for editing hacked gh2 footage with premier. it's essentially a macbook pro ripoff; core i5 processor, 8gb of ram and ssd. i upgraded the ram from 4gb and added the ssd. i need to put the old platter drive in the optical drive bay. the bottleneck (aside from a better video card) i have now is usb speed..since the ssd isn't very big, i have to store my video files on external drives. usb3.0 or thunderbolt would alleviate the issue...or a new workstation..but it's still workable. the overall performance improvement of the ssd far outweighs the slight loss in performance for video editing

[toxotis70]

IPB 50 MBPS is the most difficult codec i ever seen !

Even with hacked gh2 and 150 Mbps i had no problem in my MBP 2011 i7 - 16gb RAM -SSD .

But now i have to convert them into prores 422 to have smooth editing in FCPX .

[Jenkly]

If you still feel unsure about it, you could visit an Apple store or other retailer with Mac Minis.  They may be able to help you if you bring in some GH3 files.  There are a couple of resources available on this forum where you can get some of the original files.