AVID Xpress Pro or Premiere Pro? Also, a few more questions

[Glenn Chan]

For the boot drive storagereview.com says that Hitachi drives (SATA) are the best.

For video editing I don't know. storagereview says that transfer rates are the most important for video editing and that Maxtor drives have the highest transfer rates (I didn't double check the second point). However, they have been wrong before. Promax last time I checked recommends IBM PATA drives for video editing but that information is a little dated now that SATA drives and new models are out.

For video editing it seems to me that it doesn't really matter which brand you choose. With Vegas the difference in rendering time between drives is very small. Maybe someone with a RAID with no important data can do a more definitive test on this, but a Maxtor 80GB versus an old Quantum drive is 2% faster with Vegas. see http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...highlight=RAID
You won't notice the difference.

[Darren Houle]

Randy,

You said "With all the quirks of installing & uninstalling stuff on your pc with avid on it, would a 'gaming/editing with avid' machine be out of the question. It seems like the more I research avid, the more I'm learning that an avid system really needs to be dedicated to solely to its own purpose. Is this a correct assumption?"

Just to clarify... I didn't mention them but I also have games installed too. Running an Avid system with lots of other software is certainly possible, and you don't *have* to run it on a stand alone box, that's just the best way to avoid headaches and limit the amount of time you spend tracking down bugs. For instance, there's a MS "critical" update (that Windows could potentially install automatically) that fixes some silly exploit in web page drop-down boxes on Windows XP Pro... it will toast your Avid install. Simply uninstalling the MS update will put Avid back in a happy place, but I spent an hour tracking down the weirdness. Other software like games and utilities don't seem to cause as many problems as MS updates do, but every once in a while you'll see some small bit of random violence.

Glen

You said "Granted I've never worked with Avid but I've heard it's not very intuitive. Much larger learning curve. Vegas is has a simple, clean, inerface with little to no learing curve. Plus it definatly has the most bang for the buck with all of it's ablities.
Plus who want's to put a grand or two into a computer to "DEVOTE" just to an NLE!"

Never seen Vegas but Avid isn't hard. The things that are difficult to learn are the more sophisticated pieces... and those are the tools that give it so much power. Basic import, editing and export are a snap. Avid was the first NLE I ever touched and I learned enough in a couple hours to do several short projects right away. I then played with Premiere (installed it side-by-side on the Avid system :-) and thought "Wow... why won't the capture utility work? Why did it just lock up like that? Why is the monitor window freaked out? Why did that large import just lock up the software?" Avid does has advanced features I'm still learning... but I'm the kind of person that likes that. Just when I think the software might be limited I run across another utility or key combo that does what I need :-)

And again, you don't *have* to "DEVOTE" a system to Avid, but if you are more than just a part time hobbiest you'll want a fast, clean system that you know won't let you down when a deadline is approaching, so... I'd be happy to put just about any NLE (Avid or whatever) on a semi-dedicated system if it meant it was going to provide fewer headaches over time.

Thanks!
Darren

[Glen Elliott]

I don't know....I don't see how having games installed on the same machine would cause ANY problems. Heck you could even have a dedicated HD just for games. I have like 6 or 7 games intalled on my OS drive along with all my "productive" apps and I still get 60 mb/s read/write times on my OS drive. Plus I have all my media I use in my NLE tucked on a separate HD. This is what computers are made for- multitasking. When I say multitasking I'm not talking about running many apps at once but rather referring to the computers inate ability to run all different types programs and be funtional in many ways. I'd like to hear a convincing argument otherwise. How EXACTLY would having games installed on the same machine, slow down or hinder an NLE?

[Glen Elliott]

<<<-- Originally posted by Glenn Chan : For the boot drive storagereview.com says that Hitachi drives (SATA) are the best.

For video editing I don't know. storagereview says that transfer rates are the most important for video editing and that Maxtor drives have the highest transfer rates (I didn't double check the second point). However, they have been wrong before. Promax last time I checked recommends IBM PATA drives for video editing but that information is a little dated now that SATA drives and new models are out.

For video editing it seems to me that it doesn't really matter which brand you choose. With Vegas the difference in rendering time between drives is very small. Maybe someone with a RAID with no important data can do a more definitive test on this, but a Maxtor 80GB versus an old Quantum drive is 2% faster with Vegas. see http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...highlight=RAID
You won't notice the difference. -->>>

I can totaly understand why it wouldn't make much of a difference. Very rarely is your HD access times the bottleneck in NLE performance. You would have to have one absymaly slow HD for that to occur. For example- write speed. Do you honestly think you can encode out faster than a HD can write?....Even an mediocre one. I'd think the single biggest bottleneck in NLE performance would be CPU speed and ram. Any *modern* hd is more than sufficient.

[Richard Alvarez]

My understanding of coflicts with games and nles, is in loading drivers. Some graphics cards are not compatible with some NLE's... there are different areas of allocating resources. It happens.

[Zack Birlew]

I don't think I'll be having many graphics card issues, as I use a Matrox Parhelia 256mb =). So far, I have collected this much info:

1. Do NOT use Magic Bullet for theatrical release.
2. Get DV transfer from DVFilmmaker.com
3. AVID can't do 5.1 sound
4. Premiere sucks
5. No FRAME MODE
6. AVID has issues with constant software/hardware upgrades

Ok. I'm gonna go AVID. But what should I do for 5.1 surround mixing? Also, if I do get a film transfer, will I only get one copy or will I get like three? What if I need more copies of the movie?

[Randy Reyes]

Wow! I've never really took the time to look at a Matrox Parhelia. Hey Jack, how does it perform in video, games, and if applicable 3d animation (like 3d Max, Maya, etc)? Do you think it outperforms Ati & Nvidia in these groups?

[Richard Alvarez]

Jack,

When you order a print from a lab, you get just that - "A" print. If you need more than one, you must order and pay for them.

One print should be enough, remember, the lab keeps the negative in storage. Ship the print around to festivals, if it gets damaged or worn out, order another.

Yes, it's expensive. figure 50 to 75 thousand dollars, depending on variables.

Depending on your project, it might actually be cost effective to SHOOT in film, transfer to video, ship the video around, and THEN CONFORM the negative and PRINT THE FILM when someone wants it.

Take a long hard look at the cost of BUYING all your digital equipment AND transfering to film vs. renting the film equipment and shooting in film. If what you want to do is own your own digital equipment, become a digital video producer..well and good. If what you want to do is "Make a film" that "looks like film" and sells, so you can make another one... well think about shooting film.

Not a rant, just an observation. We shoot both video and film. We are about to shoot a short film in 35mm. With the film grant and some carefull budgeting, we will have a thirty minute short that will look awesome.

[Zack Birlew]

Well Randy, the Matrox Parhelia is a decent card and will play games (like Jedi Knight 2, Quake 3, Unreal 2, ect.) nicely, but it depends on the game really. If you're going to go with the Parhelia then definitely get the 256mb version! As far as 3D stuff goes, I personally see that the Matrox Parhelia has a superior image quality to my Radeon 9700 Pro in all things (games, internet, ect.) and I would most certainly recommend the Parhelia over an nVidia or ATI solution when doing 3D stuff. You see, the Parhelia was MADE for image quality, performance was secondary (even though it runs at respectful fps rates in every game). When all is said and done, the Parhelia is the core part to my content creation PC.

About the film, so if I were to shoot in film, what would I have to do? How much would a film camera cost? How much would film stock cost? How much would the film editing hardware cost?

If I went with film, I would have to do so much more, but you're right, shooting in film would probably cost about the same in the end as it would shooting in DV. So if you can answer those questions then I can get to making a decision.