Advice for a new NLE System

Hello. I have a VX2000. I am in the market for a new digital NLE system. I am deciding between getting a Mac system with Final Cut Pro, or a PC platform with Adobe Premiere 6.0 and Windows XP.

What are the pros and cons of each system? Thanks.

hi combat video..even though the mac USE to have the upper hand with video editing, the PC`s timehas come. Ide highly suggest the pc for several reasons

1. the number of users who can offer technical supprt if needed is far greater with a pc

2. the pc is open to more options as far as add in software than the mac

3. the pc platform offers more realtime options than the mac (storm, raptor rt, matrox 2500, etc)

feel free to call my office and discuss any question u have about the editing machines, or post your ? here and ide be glad to help
John

[Ken Tanaka]

I think if you use the "Search" function you'll find plenty of remarks about both platforms on recent threads.

[Adrian Douglas]

To sum it up briefly,

Yes, PC's have far more hardware options, but one of the drawbacks is they don't all work togeather. If you decide to go the PC route, have a person or company experienced in building NLE systems do it for you, other wise you'll be forever under the hood trying to get it to work properly. However it can be a cheap and easy way to get into editing. There are a number of members on the board who can build you such a system

Mac's and FCP has started to become a kind of defacto standard, they good thing about them is they are fast, reliable and the software(FCP) is written especially for the platform. However, they do cost more, you'll have to learn a new OS(if already familar with windows) and you can't configure them as easily as you can with windows. They have the benefit of being true plug and play, ie, you take it out of the box, plug in your camera and start editing. If that's what you want, go with the MAC.

[Ken Tanaka]

One additional note on Adrian's remarks...

If you go the PC route plan on dedicating the PC to your NLE. That is, don't install games (especially games) or other apps that can potentially gum-up your set-up.

[Adrian Douglas]

Ken is absolutely right on that little oversight., sorry. When I was at college, I did everything from one PC. Assignments, 3D graphics, Director Projects, Video, Web Sites, you name it and I always had problems with my DV500.

Now it's set up in a box that is just for editing, the only programs are Premiere, Photoshop and After Effects. It works really well now, except that Premiere is still a little shaky.

The main thing to remember is to ensure that your components are all compatable with each other, something an experienced NLE builder will do.

In the end it comes down to what you are comfortable with, and how much money you want to spend. For a low budget entry level NLE a PC is a good option. They don't suck arse, they just need to be dedicated to the task.

[Bill Ravens]

Well, I really hesitate to wade into another one of these discussions, but, I'm feeling testy this AM, so here goes. I do all my NLE tasks on a dual CPU AMD PC. (How's that for acronym's). I am just beginning to learn Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video 3, which I find a fascinating and highly adaptable program capable of some very advanced features. VV3 is both a compositing program and a NLE, so you don't have to buy two of the Adobe curse, premier and After Effects, and feel like you were taken to the cleaners. Unlike premier, which is nothing but a huge pain in the a**, VV 3 has been a pleasure to use. I built my own system from the case up, using AMD CPU's because there's absolutely nothing on the market that can touch them for speed in processing video. The VV3 is dual processor aware, and it's oh so nice to get those renders to tape done almost RT. VV3 alows RT previewing. My system, which is rock stable right from the moment I turned it on consists of a TYAN s2460 MP mobo, 2 Athlon 1.2 GHz CPU's, an ADC Pyro firewire card, a plextor CD-RW, and a Pioneer A03 DVD-r mounted in a Pyro Firewire drive kit. I'm running Windoze 2000...stay away from XP, it's still too raw. Wait for a service pack release before trying XP. Oh, one more thing, the biggest gotcha in building your system is getting a compatible video card. I'm using an ATi Radeon 8500DV. This card has fantastic image capabilities, allows analog capture if you need to, and is rock stable with the TYAN mobo. I almost forgot...you need a dedicated video hard drive that has a pretty good data rate. I'm using a Western Digital WD1000BB(100 Gig at 7200 RPM, 2 meg buffer, ATA100) and this is the fastest drive I've ever found short of a SCSI drive which you don't need unless you're doing uncompressed video playback.

Sorry to have been so long winded, but, hopefully this may help. For my money, nothing can touch a custom built system, not even MAC and FCP. The available 3rd party software will boggle your mind. Programs like TMPGEnc and VirtualDub are indispensable for video work....and you can't get them on a MAC.

So, there you have it. Just thought I'd put on my white hat and take a few shots at those MAC desperadoes who posted above.

[Guy Pringle]

While you're at it, check out Avid's Xpress DV 3, it is already out on Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 and will soon be released on Mac.