[driven]

How does the current PC offerings compare to the Mac for video editing/DVD authoring? (It's been a while since I looked and I've recently been asked about this topic.)

ULEAD looks like they have quite a few (potentially overlapping) offerings for movie editing and DVD authoring. Have any of you used these products? (Ulead)

Thanks in advance.

[vmarks]

The Ulead DVD authoring program is a good one. It's the cheapest out there at about $299.

The Sonic MyDVD or DVDit used to be about $500 and was horrible. They've since redesigned it and it looks to be better, but I won't use it - the earlier versions have just left such an awful experience with me.

As for editing, IntroDV and Adamation's Personal Studio are about the best for easy iMovie type editing. Of course, some people use MS's MovieMaker, but Personal Studio is way better.

The Ulead editing program and EditDV are such that unless there's a real budget crunch, you may as well use premiere or avid xpressDV. If you're going to have to put forth the effort to learn a tough program, you may as well learn one that has proven itself over time and has a lot of maturity.

[driven]

Thank you for the reply.

I agree with you about the pricing. Have you looked at Ulead's low price offering? (Ulead MovieStudio) <-- or something like that. It's like $89 ...

(Or is it worth the paper that makes up the box?)

[juanvaldes]

MS movie maker is now in beta 2 (I think) and it now has iMovie parity.

link to techtv review

[driven]

Originally posted by juanvaldes:
MS movie maker is now in beta 2 (I think) and it now has iMovie parity.

link to techtv review

juanvaldes,

Thanks for the link to the review. When I first read that you wrote "Windows Movie Maker" I cringed thinking about that horrific little "app". It sounds like they have made vast improvements in this version.

I can't wait to see the final product.

Thanks again.

[juanvaldes]

no prob, yeah I reamember playing around with WMM last year when XP launched. but it does appear they have copied iMovie reather well this time. Lets hope this lights a fire under Apple's ass and we get a new vastly imporved iMovie soon.

[Avon]

I think the PC is no match for the Mac when it comes to video editing.

I FCP is really sweet! And for simple stuff iMovie simply rocks.


I had a hellish experience last week getting a firewire card to work with Adobe premire on the pc. Took more than 10 hours of troubleshooting to get it to work. Turns out the chipset was incompatile. To make things worse, the card (Pinnicle DV 200) was bundled with premire and it was known to NOT be compatible. Go figure. This was even verified by pinnacle. Shame on them.

A Matrox branded card also turned out to be incompatible with premire. Lastly i found that an SIIG card with a VIA chipset worked.

Yeah Premire is much cheaper than FCP, but I dont think it even comes close. I have heard good things about AvidExpress, but its also availible for the mac.

Other things to concider are software packages like DVD Studio Pro that are availible.

Also, stuff like quick time having toast compatibility is really nice. I belive the Mac platform will save you time and money in making movies. From the experience my frined is having setting up an edition station on a Win2000 machine, I cannot recomend it to anyone. Pure hell!

Speed I cannot say is better or worse on a mac for I dont have much pc experience. But I can garantee you that FCP and iMovie are AltiVec enhanced, so you will need a very high end PC to be faster than a high end Mac.

[Avon]

Anyone use any free non linear editing software? There is a new linux app that seems really good. I would like to give it a try. I forget the site, but the screen shots look awesome!

[sleepyrenderer]

For a Windows NLE package that many prefer over FCP, take a look at Vegas Video 3:
Vegas Video 3: Digital Video Editing Hits the Jackpot
Beat Mode Review of Sonic Foundry Vegas Video 3.0a
Vegas Video 3 - Sonic Foundry Ups the Ante

As far as the Windows consumer DVD authoring market is concerned, there are many applications in sub $80 category but the real iDVD equivalent is Sonic's MyDVD. The reason for this is that if you BTO a DVD-RW in a Dell, Sony, Fujitsu and some other systems from various OEMs you get MyDVD Plus 4.0 (just like iDVD when you BTO a Superdrive from Apple). Also when you buy a retail Pioneer, Memorex, HP, etc standalone DVD-RW upgrade for your PC it also comes with a copy of Sonic MyDVD Plus 4.0.

MyDVD 4.0 has many advantages over iDVD like the ability to set chapters; straight source to DVD real-time encoding/burning (a real time saver if your moving VHS tapes to DVD); support for far more drives/drive types, more media types (DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM and CD-R/RW), more output formats (including OpenDVD, CVD, SVCD and VCD) and more source formats; the ability to edit DVDs after you've burned them without having to re-encode (if you used the OpenDVD format); support for letterbox aspect ratio; etc.

For Windows capturing, filtering and encoding obviously VirtualDub is an indispensable tool (and of course it's free).

[driven]

Thank you .... this is all very good information.