Originally Posted by Oliver K.

I'd second Damian on holding off with buying a Mac Pro. They will be updated pretty soon.

The current iMac models are pretty fast. I am cutting FullHD on a 2011 i7 iMac with 8GB, and it is blazing fast.

What software are you using for editing?

During cut it is important you make use of proxy media!

Also SSDs help a lot, but you need at least Firewire800 connection to make any use of those on your iMac.

I think "12 Core Mac Pro with 24GB of Ram" is a nice machine, but overkill for editing. It is a different story when it comes to rendering, but if you don't need to do this a lot, you can let the Mac do that work overnight or (if you use FinalCut Pro X) distribute that rendering load to the Macs in your network.

My 2cents,

Oliver