Avid Xpress DV 3 on PC or Mac? THAT is the question!

[Jeff Donald]

Are you running After Effects, Pro Tools, Photoshop and Vegas Video at the same time? Read the article on Apple's site about "Full Frontal" and the work flow. Speed is in the total package not just how fast this transistion or that filter renders. I have yet to see a PC run AVID, and all the rest without having to quit one program, open another then go back to AVID and open it and wait for the timeline to load. Your system may be able to do it, but it sounds pretty custom built to me. i don't think the majority of the people on here are looking for hi-end, professionally integrated NLE's. I may be wrong.

The original post was AVID on PC or Mac and probably not FCP. My intent is to point out to beginning editors the advantages of an off the self Mac with FCP. Did either Chris or Bill start editing with their rather custom NLE's? I'm guessing but i imagine you worked your way up to your current systems. given the choice between AVID on PC or Mac I'd pick the Mac because of the better work flow in OS X. But ultimatly I'd pick FCP because it's the future of editing. In my opinion.

Jeff

[Bill Ravens]

Here's a link to a pretty "scary" article. Apparently, Apple is considering the X86 platform for future growth. The Motorola chip used on the G4 is out of room for growth....
http://www.viahardware.com/x86apple.shtm

BTW, with VV3 I don't need to run AE at the same time as my NLE. VV3 has built in compositing. I do run Photoshop 6 at the same time tho', as well as TMPGENc for transcoding to DVD.

[Chris Hurd]

For Jeff and others...

I'll be the first to admit than an out-of-the-box Mac is a better editing solution than any out-of-the-box PC. The thing is, when you're talking about beginners, a lot of them are either on a Mac or on a PC with *no desire* to switch platforms. And we all know that the PC for some reason has a larger market share over the Mac in terms of normal, everyday computer users. I can verify this myself at the tradeshows... I always ask, "are you Mac or PC" and the fat majority is PC.

So I agree about extolling the obvious virtues of Macs over plain-jane PC's but it must be remembered that many people are either unwilling or unable to change horses midstream and switch to a new platform. Therefore, PC-based DV editing must not be overlooked.

My NLE is indeed a high-end (relative to the prosumer DV world) professionally built system. I believe in matching costs between acquisition and editing. My camera set-up is close to $5K therefore my editing system is about $5K. Just like with all other gear I've owned, I did work my way up to it and researched it carefully.

At the time (mid 1998), Canopus was the *only* way you could reliably edit on a PC. That's changed now, of course, but the advantages are still significant.

Rather than trying to steer newbies toward one platform or another, I would much rather present a thorough examination of the pro's and con's associated with each platform, their various OS's and various NLE hardware and software. It would be important to note both the advantages and *disadvantages* of each. I'm all for anybody who is happy with their system, but occasionally some folks tend to cheerlead their particular tools while ignoring some obvious limitations (nobody here is doing that, of course).

So I guess it would be great if a core sampling of our community members here might be interested in working together on a buyer's guide to NLE systems, *evenly balanced* between Mac and PC. Anybody?

[Jeff Donald]

You can sign me up, I'd be happy to help any way I can.

Jeff

[Bill Ravens]

sure, be glad to help any way I can.

...Bill

[Rhett Allen]

I personally own a Dual 1Ghz Pentium3 and a Dual 500 G4. Both are running a multi processor aware OS (Win2K Pro and OS X, also 9.2). Terran Cleaner 5 is multi threaded on both platforms but in real world tests, where I took the exact footage and compressed it with the exact settings (mpeg1 NTSC) on both computers. The Mac is always TWICE as fast as the PC and sometimes even faster. The machines both have 1 GIG of RAM and 7200 RPM drives. I wish it weren't so because I would like to have SOMETHING to do with that PC besides take up space.
I also have a Media 100 with iFinish for the PC. The break out box is THE BEST! The encoding is realtime, it has deck control and lots of bells and whistles that are wonderful but...(you knew it was coming) the program is a stability nightmare at best, the captured clips are worthless for anything BUT iFinish and the workflow just doesn't have anywhere near the ease or customization that FCP does.
So with that in mind I choose to use FCP3. It's the SOFTWARE that should decide the HARDWARE. With the new Athlon Processors I would love to build a killer system but I just hate Windows so much I don't know what to do. I believe the reason Cleaner is so much faster on the Mac is because of this (at least that is what Terran has told me) the Windows OS doesn't use the extra processors in any efficient manner. Don't believe me, launch the task manager while you are running a Dual aware app and you will see that not only is it barely using the onboard memory (compared to virtual memory) it is barely using the processors in any even capacity.
If anybody knows of some configuration hacks or work arounds I would LOVE to hear about them...PLEASE. But in defense of my Mac, I just take it out of the box, plug it in and go to work.

[Bill Ravens]

rhett121....

this is the kind of story that just makes me want to go right out and get a mac....LOL. jtdonald is right, too....these days I can build up a system that works right away, but, it took me a few years to learn how to tweak win 2k. Turn-key reliability AND performance...doh!!!

You're right, SMP on the PC is poorly done. The latest XEONS with hyperthreading are supposed to fix this "problem".

Anybody out there in computerland using LINUX?....just kidding

[Rhett Allen]

I am serious about looking for tweaks. It took me 2 weeks just to get the machine stable with my software installed. From the numbers I have seen on the DUAL Athlon XP's, I would wet my pants to have one but what I dare say is...could it run MAC OSX? Why oh why can't it be? I really love FCP but there is something to be said for building your very own CUSTOM rig for whatever amount of money you want to spend. I would love to have a nice Milled Aluminum case with 4 USB, 4Firewire, gigabit nic, 2 Wildcat Graphics Cards, a CD burner and a DVD/CD-RW burner (on seperate IDE channels) and a single 40Gig boot drive and a 4 disk (ATA133 IBMGXP120) striped Array with about 4Gig of Rambus RAM and a DUAL or QUAD AthlonXP setup. All inside one case. I'll pay for it but what the heck OS am I gonna run? I want something that can keep up with my hyper-active imagination and work habits, but doesn't require me to become a PROGRAMMER (no offense to programmers). I have even looked into buying an SGI or SUN but where is the software support?
Notice I haven't bought a Dual1Ghz Mac yet? I am keeping an eye out for what is next. In the mean time I'll live with what I have and spend my disposable income elswhere (like my new Roland Fantom).
I am obviously a MAC fan (atic) but the only thing keeping me there is the OS, especially with OS X.

Ya, where are the Linux people? I've never even tried it out but I would be willing to if I could get some apps on it.

[Jeff Donald]

Hi,

The Darwin kernel of OS X is unix and you can run Linux on OS X. Any application written for Unix or Linux can run under OS X. There are lots of applications but I don't know of any for video editing.

Jeff