iMac or Mac Pro for video editing?

http://www.google.com/search?q=iMacvs+Mac+Pro+videoediting

Gets asked often enough and once you realize you might want 8 cores, more memory, and work with 4 SATA internal drives and have some ability to expand...

The stock config is just fine. Some iMac and Mac Pro cpu tests -

http://www.barefeats.com/imp02.html
http://www.barefeats.com/harper7.html
http://www.barefeats.com/harper.html

Check the Apple Store Specials. They offer good value on this year's and last's, and I would not hesitate, might even prefer.

What video formats are you talking about? DV, HDV, etc?

Mac Pro is a better solution, regardless. Here's why: Simply upgrading an iMac HD is not enough. You do not want to capture your video to the boot drive. It's too much to ask the drive to manage the OS, your editing software, AND your media. This scenario might work - but is certainly prone to dropping frames. Ideally, you want one drive for OS + editing software & a separate drive to capture media to.

Now, since you can only have a single HD in the iMac, you're demoted to using external capture drives. So let's say you get yourself a FW800 drive for capture and then hook up your camera/deck to an available FW400 port. You'd think you're safe - and again, you may be. But the problem now is that the iMac has ONE and only ONE FireWire bus. So in theory these 2 devices: HD & Camera are battling for the same bandwidth. So you've still got a bottleneck happening.

So DV only would probably work. But it may have issues that the expandability of the Mac Pro can conquer. Hope this helps.