Mac Mini late 2014 vs Final Cut Pro X

It should work fine but it won't be as fast as a new iMac or MacPro.

FWIW I and others successfully use 2012 i5 Mac minis and even older and slower Macs.

You should also get an external USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt hard drive to hold your projects and media as this will make editing more efficient.

. . . and a MacPro would be even better!

Let's be realistic . . . every Mac since 2008/9 has been perfectly capable of running FCP X, so you should have no problems with the mini you mention.

Obviously if you spend £1,000 more on an iMac you will have more power and even more with a MacPro.

This power equates to quicker rendering times which only really matter if you are an extremely busy pro with tight deadlines.

The normal editing will be pretty much the same, it's just that you will have to wait a bit longer for the finished video to render and export, but that's no problem for an amateur as you just relax and leave the computer to get on with it's job automatically.

What it boils down to is how much you want to spend, which is a completely personal decision . . . if you are quite happy lashing out vast sums, go for the most expensive . . . but be aware that the cheapest option will do the job, albeit a bit slower.

m.fromholland wrote:

… I,m planning to use both apps at the same time...

How do you do that? 😉

four hands?? 😝

For running tools like FCPX and Logic at the same time, it is recommended to offer the Os&apps tons of Ram... I noticed a diff. in performance on my MacMini btw. 8GBs and 16GBs.... No Logic in use here, but I guess it's same.

So,... invest in Ram.

And, as mentioned from Ian before: external, additional drives, usb3 is cheap. Video asks for terabytes and the Logic soundLibs are huge too.

Keep the internal 'clean', consider for extreme multitasking a SSD for OS&apps.

Consider a 2nd monitor (or one of those 21:9 beasts I'm keen on!) , both apps are 'single-windowed', if you really use them simultaneously, screen estate is important...

or, let the wallet decide, buy a late2012 MacMini with 16GB Ram and just use it.................. 😉

It's very easy to get drawn into the game of comparing specs and longing for the fastest.

I dream about more power all the time instead of actually using what I've got to make films.

Incidentally are you new to FCP X or have you been using it for a while, and if the latter, what type of films do you make and what is your current Mac?

The mini should go like a rocket compared with your MBA !

Hi guys I recently bought a brand-new mid tier 2014 Mac mini here are the specs.

And ever since I've gotten I have been using FCP some GarageBand Photoshop an adobe illustrator CS4 light room CS5 which all run very slow especially FCP which he takes forever to render a preview I've switched all of the settings to the lowest as well as trans coded everything into proxy and I'm not working with any huge videos just a few slideshows here and there. And took three hours just to load a couple pictures with a couple of different transitions and affects. sometimes it will stay on this loading screen or an hour without doing anything I'm not sharing it or rendering its just trying to load the preview. And the client I was doing the slideshow for it never was able to even render it so I had to take my whole computer set up to the actual location and play from file cut in the previewer still trying to render the video ends taking forever. I need any help I can get. Thank you.

YYou're booting off an external drive? That's going to be be a huge drag on performance.

My external drive is a 7200 RPM Seagate 4 TB drive USB 3.0 The genius bar at the Apple store told me that it would be faster than my 5400 internally.

I did a test to check if FCP would run faster on my internal drive and it actually ran slower.

TThe genius told you to put your system on an external drive? Ok whatever. Good luck with that.

Yes and I questioned them at first and he told me it would be totally fine.

Do you think I should go back to using my internal drive?