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-   -   pc or mac (https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/open-dv-discussion/28803-pc-mac.html)

Ed Liew July 12th, 2004 12:08 PM

pc or mac
 
hi,
i'm new here. pc user mainly for video editing and having stability problem all this while. have been thinking of switching to mac but the cost is just too high, not to mention, a totally new thing to me.
but with the g4 price coming down, i'm thinking whether i should switch. would appreciate any advice, recommendation - pro or con.
thank you.

regards,
ed

Rob Lohman July 12th, 2004 01:54 PM

Ed: I've moved your post to a general forum and activated your
e-mail notification so you know this has happened.

I'm wondering what kind of system, operating system and editing
software you are running now. I had problems myself with Adobe
Premiere a lot in the past. I switched to Sony (was Sonic Foundry)
Vegas and never looked back.

FCP on Mac is brilliant from what I've been told and seen myself.
But I do agree it all tends to be a bit more expensive all together.

Keep in mind that if you do switch that you are able to run
everything you want. So you need to get similar programs to
what you are running now. Editing, office tools, effects
applications etc.

Mike Moncrief July 12th, 2004 03:53 PM

Hello,

I have to second what Rob says.. I recently began using Sony Vegas.. And have not looked back.. It is stable, and fairly easy to get up to speed.. I am an editor for 10 plus years, and this is one really nice piece of software.. They have a trial version on their website.. Give it a try..

Mike M.

Jeff Donald July 12th, 2004 04:17 PM

The schools I teach at (photography and video production) use Macs. Many of the students are unsure of the Macs at first because they are not what they're familiar with. However, after the first week or two, the vast majority are thrilled with the OS and the entire experience of working on Macs. The interface and work flow are very intuitive and facilitate an efficient workflow. Apple provides world class software, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD and iPhoto, with every Mac. Final Cut Express is on sale (you will need to look into the fine print) for $99. Microsoft Office 2004 is available for Mac, so if that's what your familiar with, it's available.

Apple also has a generous educational discount on hardware and software purchased through the Apple Education Store. Apple also has generous discounts on discontinued and refurbished products.

I use Final Cut Pro HD and find it the best editing solution for me. I've used Avid, Premiere and FCP for editing. Several of my students are exploring Vegas and seem satisfied with the experience to date.

Dave Perry July 12th, 2004 06:04 PM

Having used both PCs and Macs, I'll have to side with the Mac. Agreed, the INITIAL cost is a little more in some cases, but the overall expenses are lower, in my experience. I use Macs at home and at work. As a matter of fact my boss is a PC guy who recently invested in a Mac set up and is very thrilled about it. He has much more experience in the business (20+ years) but was impressed with my knowledge of FCP and Macs so he hired me (I'm also a decent editor:) ).

I've found the Mac to be extremely stable and well built. I'm truly amazed at how well they work. When I used a PC I thought Plug and Play meant installing software, rebooting, then installing hardware, then finding out what other hardware conflicts with the newly istalled hardware,etc. When I got my first Mac, I discovered that Plug and Play meant, plug in the hardware, then use it! Amazing.

I no longer have to worry about viruses or system crashes. Granted and app my crash from time to time but just the app in use crashes, not the entire system.

I now work at the computer with out worrying about the computer getting in the way of my work. I still deal with most clients that have PCs and often have to wait for them to fix their system while we are talking about the job at hand. I had a web client one time spend almost 2 hours out of the 3 hours we met, trying to get his IT guy to figure out why we couldn't see their web site. I had to charge him for the time. In this instance, using a Mac would have definitely been cheaper.

Go for the Mac.

David Phillips July 13th, 2004 12:34 AM

When we first started it was with Cinestream on PC.
It took over a year to realise that we were wasting our time , nothing seemed to work properly and there were so many issues.

We've been with FCP and G4 for three years and we've never had a single problem. It does everything asked of it.
WE still use PCs but only for word processing and internet etc.

Dont rely on talking to people. Try it out first-hand.

Rob Lohman July 13th, 2004 01:44 AM

I would like to comment on some much said issues with PC's.
I'm not trying to get a Mac vs. PC thing going here and if that
would to happen this thread WILL be closed. Personally I am
a PC guy (which automatically happened with my line of work,
which isn't video / movies etc.). I also think the Mac is great.
Use what works best for you and your company.
Quote:

When I used a PC I thought Plug and Play meant installing software, rebooting, then installing hardware, then finding out what other hardware conflicts with the newly istalled hardware,etc. When I got my first Mac, I discovered that Plug and Play meant, plug in the hardware, then use it! Amazing.
This is certainly true for older Windows versions and older
hardware, but not today. Yes sometimes you need drivers (as
does a Mac), but it rarely means rebooting anymore or having
conflicts. I can't remember when I had a hardware conflict over
the last 3 years with using Windows 2000 professional and
Windows XP.
Quote:

Granted and app my crash from time to time but just the app in use crashes, not the entire system.
With the latest Windows systems this DOES NOT happen anymore
either. Windows 2000 / XP does NOT crash when an application
does. This has been gone for years now. The only thing that can
bring down the system is a driver that messes up. But this is true
for every OS since drivers need low-level acess.
Quote:

I had a web client one time spend almost 2 hours out of the 3 hours we met, trying to get his IT guy to figure out why we couldn't see their web site.
With all due respect it sounds like this IT guy did not know what
he was doing. Ofcourse problems can arise and they are usually
much more involved with hardware/network/routing issues than
the PC or Mac platform. If you have an IT tech setup your network,
computers and everything else in a professional and secure
manner you should not have such problems. Especially for 2 hours.

Just to add some credit to my claims. I have been doing professional
programming for over 5 years with pretty large projects. I have
also done network design for our company's hosting facility and
internal LAN. I've also installed and configured dozens of servers
and other professionally used equipment.

Again, choose whatever works best for you. See what kind of
money you have to invest and test it out before you buy it. If
you've never worked with a Mac I suggest you do. The same
goes with a PC. Again in my experience most people who are
having (major) problems are either running an outdated OS
(like Windows 9x or ME) or a buggy NLE like Premiere (which it
always seems to have been).

Just some thoughts....

Dan Uneken July 13th, 2004 02:01 AM

MAC pro:
- ease of use
- stable
- great standard software (iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto (so-so btw) etc.)

Contra:
- more difficult to get support, fewer people know about Macs (here in Spain) I had major problems configuring a ADSL modem: had to take it to a friend who has a PC..
- price
- less software available. NLE = FC, and that's it, for instance.
- (for me) harder to understand the architecture of the system. I can't "fix" anything myself if needed (seldom)
- no flight simulator (this IS serious!)

For me: the pro's still outweigh the contras big time.

Glenn Chan July 13th, 2004 07:53 AM

Some other pros of using a mac:
1- You don't have to worry about viruses, adware (programs that push ads onto you), or spyware (programs that spy on you). There are many PC users out there who have unstable/slow systems because of those kinds of programs.

2- Easy to use. Generally I find the Mac interface easy to use as you don't have to go into ten different sub-menus that all look different.

There are also less annoying things about Macs. Generally programs don't try to hijack your system (i.e. Real Player) and you don't have 10 gazillion splash screens on startup, or Windows bugging you about taking a useless "tour of XP".

A Mac is generally easier to maintain and needs less maintainance. On a Windows machine you should do all sorts of stuff if you keep it networked (download critical updates, update virus and adware definitions, blah blah blah).

Final Cut, Avid, Combustion, After Effects, and all sorts of other great programs are on the Mac platform too so for video editing I don't see the software selection being too limited. Final Cut is one hell of a NLE.

But then again, I am using a PC and running Vegas on it. You should try the demo for it and download the shortcuts key list in the Vegas forum to help you get started. Premiere Pro and Avid are also some NLEs you may want to check out.

*For mac help, try the 2-pop and lafcpug.org forums. They're pretty good for troubleshooting FCP issues.

Ed Liew July 13th, 2004 07:53 PM

thank you for all feedback.
i'm working with a diy system running on window xp. i have a canopus dvrex installed, editing with premiere 6. i also use vegas 4 for my editing work but not very good at it.
i have been having quite alot of sleepless night meeting datelines editing on this system - system crash, missing files or corrupted and so on. i like vegas but the rendering part is of another. it take forever to render.
at the moment i'm looking at the power mac g4 1.25. how stable is this with video editing. i'm not sure how many realtime layer it can give me and what the rendering speed is.

regards,
ed

Jeff Donald July 13th, 2004 08:09 PM

Rob, I've never had a driver crash a Mac. Corrupt files rarely will cause a crash of the system but usually only the app quits. I have students running XP Pro and getting an external FireWire drive to be recognized is not plug and play most of the time. Sometimes the drive needs to be powered up and then the cable to be plugged in, others want to start up when the system starts up, other times the drive wants to be started after the system.

Glenn Chan July 13th, 2004 11:24 PM

Quote:

at the moment i'm looking at the power mac g4 1.25. how stable is this with video editing. i'm not sure how many realtime layer it can give me and what the rendering speed is.
I presume you're going with the dual processor version, which is roughly 70% faster at Final Cut. The dual processor G5 is a leap in performance over the G4, but obviously pricier (you can go the refurb route for a computer just as good as a lower price).

I believe Final Cut can do 2 layers of real-time out through firewire. BUT, these layers are only for certain filters, the most common being cross dissolve, color correction, and a few of the motion controls. Other filters will take longer unfortunately.

DVD encoding I don't know about, but Cleaner is pretty slow on Mac. You'd probably use Compressor, which I have zero experience with. I believe it'll take you overnight to render 2-pass VBR for 2 hours. The PC side is generally better for encoding- lots of good PC encoders out there (like TMPGENC, $99).

Quote:

i like vegas but the rendering part is of another. it take forever to render.
Have you tried rendering at good quality and not using the median filter? If you have a Pentium 2.4-3.4ghz then you probably don't need to render much (scale the preview down).

Based on limited experience (I don't push Final Cut much), Vegas seems to be slightly faster than Final Cut. This is comparing a Pentium 3.0ghz"C" to a dual 1.25ghz G4. Opening projects and generating waveforms is faster in Vegas (Vegas handles waveforms much better).

Audio tools and color correction are nicer in Vegas. With color correction in Vegas you can do some crazy stuff that'll really bump your rendering times.

2- Has anyone here tried Edition? Apparently, it's *insane* for its real-time abilities. You get a layer for every 600mhz of CPU clock speed (presumably Pentium), and even more layers from video card acceleration. Also, it has background rendering so the program renders away while you are cutting. Those two things should make Edition insanely fast.

Don't know how powerful Edition, how good the workflow is, and how stable it is though.

Rob Lohman July 14th, 2004 03:35 AM

Jeff: count yourself lucky. I'm betting driver crashes have
occurred with Macs, especially in the past. They are less and
less happening on Windows as well because driver developers
just do their jobs better and Windows is much more strict on
how drivers should and can be developed.

Firewire harddisks do tend to need a driver installation indeed,
but I have had no problems here on any of my systems. I'm
sorry to hear you have. I still think something else must be wrong
in this case.

I'm not trying to say XP is more stable than a Mac or anything.
It's just that it is nowhere near as bad as it used to be. I'm
running dozens of servers and computers without any problems
at all.

Again, go with what works for you. I can't go down the Mac
path because it is a too heafty investment for me and I need
to work with PC's everyday for my job. Would I want to work
with a Mac? I don't know. I'm not sure everything I want to do
is available for it. I definitely think it is a great platform and I
saw awesome things about FCP HD and DVD SP at IBC over
the years.

To each his or her own!

Dylan Couper July 14th, 2004 05:45 PM

I'm mostly staying out of this, but it seems like Mac users are more apt to defend their systems than PC users. Most of the answers here are from Mac people, despite that they only make up about 5% of computer owners.

The fact that PCs own 95% of the market should say something, regardless of what Mac people will have you believe about PCs being unreliable, slow, and whatever else.

I have two PCs, each running XP Pro. One I edit on (w. Vegas), the other I web surf on. Both were professionaly built. In the last two years, my edit box has locked up one time. One. My web surfing box, despite many virus attacks (which I could have prevented with a $30 firewall) has probably had less than 10 lock-ups. Never had a serious problem with either, except for a burned out CD-drive, which I fixed by replacting it, which took me about 6 minutes.

I've used Macs in the past, but none within the last 4 years, so I can't comment on how they are now.
Just wanted to defend my site.
Oh, I bought both PCs for less than what one Mac would have cost me. PCs are considerably cheaper, both in the short and long run.

Graeme Nattress July 14th, 2004 07:23 PM

Only in general do macs make up a small percentage of users, but in the video, design and print fields the numbers are much higher - but hey, what's that got to do with anything.

There's so many things going against the mac that it's a wonder why we bother - there must be something in it though, or why would we make do with less software, old games and high prices??

Seriously, the mac of today is not the mac of old.

Currently, the only non-unix based operating system for general use is Microsoft's - they are now out on a non-standard limb of their own.

Current PC's are not the PC's of old, where Win 95 and 98 were pretty dreadful when it came to stability. XP has done a lot to correct that, but you're still at the whim of many manufacturers giving both choice, and incompatibilities, which is why it's vital to get a system that you know works, not just cobble something together.

And although macs used to be a bit expensive, they're not any more when you look at what you get for your money with the new G5s, so I doubt the current status of your TCO statement, especially after being a tech incharge of a uni design dept of macs, and watching the higher number of equivelent staff needed to manage a less number of pcs in the same dept. Saying that, if you're a person at home with your own computer, you've got to be able to look after it yourself, no matter what type it is, and your own skills come into play here, and your own abilities.

For video work with a mac, I'd say you have to like FCP - and use it for it's good points and work around it's negatives. You have to draw up a list that lists it against it's pc competition, which at this point is Vegas, which from what I saw at NAB was mature, stable and full featured. I'd say use them both, and then buy a system to run it on, wether you pick FCP or Vegas. That, to me, would be the sensible way to do things. I'm not up enough on Vegas to list pros and cons on that over or under FCP, but from what I've seen it is also most excellent and worthy of consideration, with a similar philosophy to FCP. I'm not too impressed with the avid or adobe offerings, based upon crashy buggy demos at NAB, and that premiere pro is very new, and avid very old, if you know what I mean.

So, in esscence, it's an easy decision - pick the app you like, and buy the best quality machine to run it on.

Graeme


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