ltdiver 3 #1 November 22, 2001 Ok.....looking to invest for video DV editing (tired of borrowing someone else's 'puter to create and play)...I've read past posts from the archives and they seem split as to who uses a Mac or PC.Whatta you guys think. Which one is the one to invest in? Mac with iMovie and Final Cut Pro...or perhaps Sony Vaio with Ulead and Premier?(landed a job that finally pays! :-),ltdiver__________________________________________http://www.discover.net/~ltdiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Strynx 0 #2 November 22, 2001 I'd go for Mac. I record music using Digidesing on a G4 and i find that compare with PC it works the data ALOT faster and it gives me more Freedom. So i don't really know about movies but i figure it should be similar. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 4 #3 November 22, 2001 Good, cheap, fast and works right out of the box -- can't go wrong with an iMac & iMovie. (Of course, you -knew- I'd say that. You're baiting me -- right?)I just finished (ok, a couple of days ago) my 112-way Sequential video -- highlights and all 15 jumps plus some extra stuff, titles, lower 3rds, credits -- the whole thing. 30 minutes in length w/ a total of about 4.5 hours of material in a 60 gig FireWire Maxtor drive connected to the iMac and cut on iMovie.Could NOT have been more simple.Could have been slightly more "neat and tidy" in the list management phase if I had cut it on my new copy of Final Cut Pro AND I do admit that now that I have a copy of Final Cut Pro, that's what I'll be using from now on, but CLEARLY iMovie works just fine for projects like these.Good luck on the Pieces of Eight thing. Was that a new record?Paulhttp://futurecam.com/skydive.html Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mountainman 0 #4 November 22, 2001 Well, if you want a machine that you can play games with and do anything else with, a PC would be it. Just think about how hard it is to find anything for a Mac.-------------http://www.JumpinDuo.com"oh no. Not another one"-Alienangel Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
skyhawk 2 #5 November 22, 2001 purly video work go mac Click Me Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wildblue 7 #6 November 23, 2001 Macs have always done video editing, graphics, and sound better than PCs.And as far as "everything else" - You can get Microsoft Office for the Mac, and just about any other major software title. Mac doesn't have the games that are out there for the PC, but that is rapidly changing.Apple's new slogan should be "This isn't your father's Mac" - a lot has changed with them over the last few years.I ain't happy, I'm feeling gladI got sunshine, in a bag Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mountainman 0 #7 November 23, 2001 They are coming out with more and more stuff, however, if you want to just go out to your local store and buy some stuff for it, you are going to have a hard time finding a good selection like you can with PC.I have never been a big fan of the Mac anyway, so I'm bias. -------------http://www.JumpinDuo.com"oh no. Not another one"-Alienangel Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
prost 0 #8 November 23, 2001 You will pay twice as much with a mac to get half of what you get with a pc. If you want to join the mac clic you must pay. They make it easy if you don't want to have to put in a lot of time learning the system, but you have to pay dearly for it. Any time you upgrade or buy anything for the mac it will cost you a lot more than a pc. As far a s the software availability goes, I have been hearing the same story about it getting better for years. It is not just software that is the problem. Try to go down to best buy and buy another hard drive for your mac. You will see about 20 for pc's and none for the mac. This situation will not change The reason it will not change is two fold. First, 95 percent of the computers out there are not mac and therefore there is not that big of a market. Secondly Apple wants a hand in the profits for everything for macs. This stifles new companies from bringing out new products for the mac. It is interesting that the hardware for pc's will work on systems running linux. The reason they will not run on macs is because apple makes everything specialized to the mac so they can get a profit from everything. Now I know this post will get me a lot of hate replies from the mac cult. The mac love in groups will most likely start plotting against me as soon as the first member reads this. you see mac fans tend to be fanatical and will defend a completely senseless position to the death. William Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kris 0 #9 November 23, 2001 Actually, I'm a Linux zealot and my other PC is an SGI O2 running IRIX but I have to give my $0.02 and clear up some mis-information...You can take ANY of those IDE hard drives off the shelf at Best Buy and put them in any Mac that's a G3 or above.The 8 36GB 10K-RPM U-160 SCSI drives that I just bought to make my video-RAID came out of a Mac that was running as a file-server and my nephew is using my old Maxtor 60GB ATA-100 hard drive from my Athlon box in his Mac G4 just fine.If someone is just looking for something to cut video on, go for the Mac, it will be cheaper for the performance, period.For a PC, you will probably have to buy the Fire-Wire card ($60), good video-editing software equal to the Mac Stuff (I'm not talking Ulead Video Studio, think Adobe Premier & Adobe After Effect = $serious cash) and enough processing power to cut & render the video at the same speed the Mac will ($=you don't want to know). You'll need at least a dually-processor setup to keep up, trust me.You can still get MS office & other popular work-related software for the Mac but if you are just doing video, the Mac is the way to go and has the absolute easiest learning curve.If you ever want to play serious games, then you may want to think about going the PC route as the PC is still the undisputed king of gaming. Nothing a Mac has will touch my GeForce3 when it comes to running Unreal, Quake-3 or other games flat-out at 1024x768.As for upgrades on the Mac, the SCSI adapters, video-cards, ethernet adapters and storage I have seen are all competively priced compared to their PC counterparts and Mac's from the G3 on take the same RAM as PC's do. You will pay more on a Mac for processor upgrades though (if you can get them) but they are generally plenty fast as is.Mac's are not specialized on the hardware any more. That was true when they were still using the NU-Bus but they're PCI now and a lot of PCI cards for the PC will work in the Mac.I do believe that Apple's harsh licensing strategy is the reason we're all not using Apple's now but then again, Apple has always been exceptional at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory even though they truly do have the superior product.Kris Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RemiAndKaren 0 #10 November 25, 2001 Quotethey truly do have the superior productNext thing you'll tell us is that BETA was better then VHS... RemiMuff 914 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 4 #11 November 25, 2001 Sony Beta WAS superior. Unfortunately, it was also propriatary and required large licensing fees if other manufacturers wanted to play, they didn't, so they licensed the JVC VHS format which, because of supply v. demand became less expensive to manufacture.The last death nell of Beta was the introduction of the 6 hour VHS cassette. As it turned out, a vast majority of consumers didn't care a flying fig about quality and found the 6 hour mode of the VHS format just too enticing.For the record, the 6 hour mode of VHS is REALLY crappy. In fact, nothing on VHS tape is very good. It doesn't really meet the requirements of NTSC video -- and the 6 hour mode is WAY bad.Still, good enough for the average consumer, so I guess that's what mattershttp://futurecam.com/skydive.html Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
skyhawk 2 #12 November 25, 2001 i have to agree beta was better but just cause something is better doesnt mean it is going to win in the marketplace, its usaully the opposite consumer want something that meets there needs cheaply rather than superior quality at a more expensive price Click Me Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ltdiver 3 #13 November 25, 2001 __________________________________________________its usaully the opposite consumer want something that meets there needs cheaply rather than superior quality at a more expensive price__________________________________________________And thus the popularity of PC over Mac???curious, your take on it quade...?ltdiver__________________________________________http://www.discover.net/~ltdiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ltdiver 3 #14 November 26, 2001 ___________________________________________________"Good luck on the Pieces of Eight thing. Was that a new record?"___________________________________________________Thanks, Paul. Working on the video right now as we speak. Great people, POE! I feel honored that they asked me to do their video. As for the record...they got a real nice 13-way last Sunday, but their record of 14 (done in Raeford, NC) still stands. If anyone knows of other amputee skydivers around the world, let them know of this great group of skydivers and perhaps the record will increase next time we get together.See: http://www.ParachuteHistory.comThanks for the Mac info, as well. I've been looking at the G4. When do you think the price will come down? It's almost twice the price of the Sony Vaio of the same perameters.See: http://mac.price.com/jump.htm?epg=2918&ID=-2147450990&prodid=-2145931960&vendor_ID=-2147483220&siteid=00000008Hmmmmmm....ltdiver__________________________________________http://www.discover.net/~ltdiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mountainman 0 #15 November 26, 2001 I dont know how many of you have a Sam's Club store near you, however the one that is about 5 minutes from me has a Sony Vaio with a 2.0gHz processor and a great set-up of hardware for a good price. Check them out!!-------------http://www.JumpinDuo.com"oh no. Not another one"-Alienangel Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wildblue 7 #16 November 26, 2001 Just to clear up a few things:I pretty much agree with everything Kris said except - you can get a Mac from the factory with a Geforce3!And prost - I had a Mac 7200 running LinuxPPC. It ran pretty good!Macs for the most part are engineered better, they just seem to screw everything up once in awhile, and have a hard time getting back into the market.BTW - I am not part of the Mac religion, I just know a few people that are, so I keep up with the stuff. If I had a wad of cash to blow, I'd probably get one. OSX is just too cool.I ain't happy, I'm feeling gladI got sunshine, in a bag Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 4 #17 November 26, 2001 For the record, OSX ain't ready for prime time yet. It doesn't have the tight integration that the more mature 9.2 does.I can run either, but prefer 9.2.Paulhttp://futurecam.com/skydive.html Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RemiAndKaren 0 #18 November 26, 2001 Quotei have to agree beta was bettercome on guys... wasnt the wink enough of a clue that I was joking???RemiMuff 914 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wildblue 7 #19 November 26, 2001 QuoteFor the record, OSX ain't ready for prime time yet..1 fixed a lot of the major stuff that was missing/broken. It may not be totally ready, but it's still way coolI ain't happy, I'm feeling gladI got sunshine, in a bag Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
skyhawk 2 #20 November 26, 2001 come on guys... wasnt the wink enough of a clue that I was joking???Yes but i was bored :-) Click Me Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
indyz 1 #21 November 29, 2001 My 20 pound, 20 year old Beta player/recorder still works just fine. Unfortunately, tapes are getting harder to find. Since I only record things to watch the next day, then I copy over them, I'll probably pick up a TiVo or something like it soon... good quality, tons of record time, and I can set it up to record the whole season of Iron Chef (Japanese, not the new American version) at once.--Brian Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AggieDave 6 #22 December 4, 2001 Sure, Macs do AV work better then a PC out of the box, I still shy away from them to do any sort of *real* work. At one point I used to be an Assistant Sys-Admin and eneded up doing a lot of Tech work (small company), my experiences with Macs wasn't pleasent. Though I would still love to have a G4 to play with, I wouldn't want to depend on it for anything important. With that said, I would say the same thing about Microsoft, though my Win 2000 machine is fairly reliable. I've done some large video projects with my system and it performed quite well, too. (AMD Tbird 1.1gig, 512mb ram, fast hard drives, etc...). At this point, if I was going to put an A/V machine together, I would use a PC based machine, dual AMD 1.5gig, atleast 1gig of DDR, SCSI setup. I'd probably run Win2000 and overclock the crap out of the processor. Use a water block to cool the CPU...well, there's a lot of *tweaking* that would go on. AggieDave '02-------------Blue Skies and Gig'em Ags!BTHO t.u. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
indyz 1 #23 December 4, 2001 Don't bother OC'ing the processor, get a Thunder K7 mobo with dual 1.8 Ghz Athlon MPs (Palomino core, drool), and a gig of registered PC2100 SDRAM. The motherboard even has an onboard SCSI controller, so add a couple of 30 gig SCSI drives and you will have an unstoppable editing machine.--Brian*edit* - Had wrong motherboard name Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fxstudio 0 #24 December 5, 2001 I'd have to agree with this guy, he pretty much said it as like it is. Though I may seem bias cause I work for Apple Computers but I'm not, certain machines perform the task at hand better than others. I try my PC with the firewire card but it's more hassle than it's worth so I give up and go to my G4. Imagine this, you grab a cup of java, sit at your workstation plug in your camera open FCP and start working. That's the workflow on a G4. I have very minimal patience so if something doesn't work in a hurry I move on to something less aggravating. So to sum it up the G4 would be the no brainer. Now to get off topic games rock on the PC with the GeForce 3, but Apple has the GeForce 3 in it's boxes also. Now if we could only get the Game Developers on board. But this is an off topic discussion. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cameramonkey 0 #25 December 6, 2001 If you want to play cheaply and already have a PC, buy a firewire card and drop it into your PC. That will get you started. I used to be gung-ho on the mac side for video and photo editing, but now that I have used a Real Time card in my PC, I wouldnt think of ever going back to software rendering. If you want a good all around machine, go with a fat, juicy PC and a real time card. If all you want is internet, video editing and word processing (no games or off the wall things) go mac. Macs handle video better than PC's. Having said that, if you want a solid hard core video editor, buy a small standalone video editor (like a canopus type system) and skip them all... ;) a dedicated solution like this will blow them ALL out of the water. (and maybe your wallet too)I'd recommend a Matrox RT system for thier price and performance, but cant in good conscience recommend anyone deal with that company. I am still steaming over thier piss-poor customer service.... oh....and the saga continues....For those that saw my post several months ago about not buying matrox products, there is a new twist. (first a little history) They wont even talk to you unless you are using a tested and "approved" hardware solution. If you arent running something they have verified personally as working, they will IMMEDIATELY tell you that the problem you are having lies within the untested equipment and, they cant help you(whether it really does or not). most times its just a configuration issue, and the user figures it out.They are catching alot of heat now because the newest equipment they list is coming up on a year old now. so its either buy old technology, or pray you dont need thier help getting a kink worked out. *sigh* whatever happened to good customer service? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
