i've always done DV editing on my G4 450, and i love it. recently at work, we needed to do some light editing (i.e. iMovie) of various sources (LD's, VHS, 1/2"), and transfer to DVD to archive, so my boss asked me my opinions, and to spec out a machine. first, i spec-ed out a G4 iMac 800. my boss didn't think that was 'fast' enough. he wanted the fastest mac, so I spec-ed out a dual gig G4 with superdrive, and said we should get a canopus ADVC-100 analog/firewire convertor. to make a long story short, i am now using a generic, pieced together 1.8gHz Pentium 4 with the canopus ADVC-100, all of which cost '1/2 as much, and almost twice as fast' as the mac.
but i guess 'using' this setup is stretching the truth. i can't get this thing to work consistently. i'm using XP with Pinnacle Studio DV software (cheesy, home movie software, no where near as usable as iMovie). when we got the computer, i spent a week trying to figure out why our 80 gb hd was only formatting as 10 gb. when i finally got it to format to 80 gb, XP didn't like the drive, and said i had none. after i got that fixed, i loaded up the software, ran the software, but always dropped 300+ frames on capture. then machine crashed. re-install XP. machine worked, but there is a 10 second lag between pressing the 'capture' button, and the video actually being captured. program crashed. had to reinstall program.
my boss thought that our ADVC-100 was buggy, so he asked me to take it home to see if it worked on my mac. worked flawlessly with iMovie and FCP. no lag, no dropped frames, nothing.
so here i am, trying to work with the machine. here i am, having to reboot after rendering/compressing a few files. one good thing i can say about this setup is that it's fast. it renders files in no time...it's faster than my 450 (but i've never used a dual gig, so don't know how render times are with newer G4's).
so what am i saying here? you can do DV editing on a PC, if you want to put up with crap: stuff may not work right off the bat, you may need certain software patches, drivers may need updating, software isn't that great. what i really like about doing DV on my mac in X (even with my lowly G4 450 running iMovie) is the fact that IT WORKS! no hardware drivers to update, no rebooting, just plug it in. i don't have to mess with any settings, or tweak the OS. this stuff just works. i'm really frustrated at work, i spent the last 2 1/2 weeks trying to debug a computer so it could perform just like my G4 at home.
you can do DV editing on the PC, for less money, but you may be paying with wasted time in the end. with iMovie or FCP on X, you know it's going to work with the hardware, it's the same damn company! sure, PC's are cheaper, but as other people have stated, when you buy a mac, you're not just buying cool looking hardware, or a cool looking OS, you're buying the whole experience...something that just works, and makes you more productive.
okay, sorry for the rant, and sorry if i didn't answer any questions you had, but this topic just set me off. (sigh) now i'm off to do some crappy editing on my generic-cased P4...
tr
<small>[ 07-29-2002, 11:54 AM: Message edited by: tr ]</small>
Top