PC Company Looking at Mac & Adobe Production Suite

[Devon Lyon]

We are a small production company that primarily uses PCs to edit video on the Adobe software suite. We do have two Mac laptops and have FCP on our newest laptop.

My question is: For those previous PC users who have now switched over to the Intel based Macs AND are using Adobe's Production software (PPro, After Effects, etc.) how is it? I am looking for an honest assesment as to the way the programs run on the new Mac Pro towers. I am NOT looking for comments on whether Premier Pro is good or not (as we will be using both PPro and FCP on the machine).

I would appreciate the thoughts from former PC users. Thank you in advance for your time.

[Brent Ethington]

Devon,

PP3 runs great on the Mac Pro. Having the ability to easily edit on either platform with the 'same' app is a great capability. On the Mac side, just be aware that there are some limitations (e.g., OnLocation is Windows only), and PP3 won't write to tape, nor will it recognize HDV timecodes to split tape captures (as FCP will) - but I'd expect them to be at better parity with the next major release.

Brent

[Devon Lyon]

Brent:

I appreciate the feedback, but am surpised I haven't heard more.

Do you find the stability and reliability on par with the PC versions? The reason I ask is that I find the PPRo 2.0 on our high end machines still has a fair number of "serious error" messages, etc. We were curious if this is improved (1) in the CS3 release and (2) on the Max OS. Thoughts?

[Brent Ethington]

Originally Posted by Devon Lyon

Brent:

I appreciate the feedback, but am surpised I haven't heard more.

Do you find the stability and reliability on par with the PC versions? The reason I ask is that I find the PPRo 2.0 on our high end machines still has a fair number of "serious error" messages, etc. We were curious if this is improved (1) in the CS3 release and (2) on the Max OS. Thoughts?

Devon - I don't know that you'll find moving from the PC to the Mac to necessarily improve overall stability of the app, but you will find that PP3 is much better than PP2. It may just be my perception, but I do find the Mac to be more stable overall (I've pretty much moved over from Windows to the Mac for all my video work).

One thing you can do is to check out Adobe's support forums for Production Studio (http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bbdfa9a/) to get a broader cross-section of feedback on how well the mac is working versus the PC. But again, I think just moving from PP2 to PP3 may help address the issues you're facing now.

Btw - the Mac limitations I mentioned earlier can easily be addressed by capturing on a PC, then moving the files to the Mac - with PP3, you can seamlessly edit across either platform. (there are also some functionality differences you'll want to look into, but I wouldn't expect them to be show stopper issues - e.g., not all transitions, filters, etc., are on both platforms yet). PP3 was their huge undertaking to do the port to the Mac, so I'd expect future releases to bring the two platforms to closer parity.

Brent

[Devon Lyon]

Brent:

Thanks for the link and the information. So, if I start a PPRo CS3 project on a PC and all the assets are in a shared folder on some sort of server I can edit on both the Mac and the PC if need be? That would be great. Do I have that right?

[Brent Ethington]

Originally Posted by Devon Lyon

Brent:

Thanks for the link and the information. So, if I start a PPRo CS3 project on a PC and all the assets are in a shared folder on some sort of server I can edit on both the Mac and the PC if need be? That would be great. Do I have that right?

yes - makes it very flexible.