The results are in...PC vs. MAC

[Bill Ravens]

Digital Video has run a performance comparison test, much in the manner that we were contemplating, here. In this comparison test, they put an equivalent PC(Athlon) and MAC up against each other while running the same video stream thru AE. Check the results here:


http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/Htm/DVEditHomeSet1.htm

[Ken Tanaka]

Looks like the PC beat the Mac in the AE 5.5 tests...by quite a margin. I'm not surprised.

[Joe Redifer]

I think they said they used OS X? Is AE even available for OS X? Anyway, of course the PC is going to win. OS X is horrendously slow!

[Ken Tanaka]

Yes, AE 5.5 is a native OS 10 app. Despite Steve Jobs' proclamations Macs are still several steps behind PC's in performance and will likely remain so for the indefinite future. Nevertheless, I've no intentions of switching to using my PC's for video and graphics jobs.

[Chris Hurd]

Personally I wouldn't put much stock in that report (especially since Charlie White wrote it, as I seldom agree with anything he says), and I would never definitively tell anyone to choose a PC over a Mac for non-linear DV editing. Speed isn't everything. It all depends on what a person wants to do and how they want to work... some folks are cut out as Mac people, and some folks are cut out as PC people. The real trick is in steering new people without experience in editing on either platform to the one which is best for them.

Huddle up, boys, that's our job!

;-)

[Bill Ravens]

You got it, Chris. Perhaps not so obvious in this report is the reputation for reliability and dependability that Macs have. Maybe there should be a SANDRA metric called "Being there when a deadline is looming".

[John Klein]

I generally still use OS9 and pictureviewer works fine. I think in 10, they just use QT. What's easier than that? It's built right along the OS.

[Ken Tanaka]

There is a version of ImageViewer in OS X and it's pretty good. Double-click on a jpg or gif and see if it automatically comes up. If not, poke around in your Utilities or Applications folder; it may need to be activated through initial explicit invocation.

[Vic Owen]

One thing to keep in mind about OS-10 is that it's still in its infancy. I've started using it, and while I miss the warm, snuggly feel of OS-9, X is the future. I'm amazed it works as well as it does for these early releases. Apple will get the speed up in time--I think that at present, they're working out the bugs, rather than just going for maximum smoke. MAC users will typically give up a little absolute speed for elegance.

[Ken Tanaka]

Vic,

Re: "I'm amazed it works as well as it does for these early releases.", I absolutely agree. If someone would have told me 5 yrs. ago that Apple would switch to a full blown Unix platform (underneath the most non-technical user base in the compputer industry) I would have recommended that they seek help. They've not only done that but they've also introduced a pretty good new gui. I've had, shall we say, a "relationship" with various incarnations of Unix since the mid-1980's. Looking at the book "Mac OSX Unleashed" I am stunned to see just how full-bodied OSX's underlying Unix implementation really is.

In terms of performance, I don't find OS-X distractingly sluggish whatsoever. It does, however, still need some tightening.

[Adrian Douglas]

From what I've seen of it Ken it looks great. If there's one thing I hate more than programming it's VI and Command Line Unix. It's nice to have something with Unix power/stability and a user friendly GUI. It's one of the reasons I'm switching to Mac for my video/graphics stuff

[K. Forman]

Mac vs PC? The only time I ever used a Mac, was in College getting my degree in Computer Graphics. They were using mostly G3's, at home I had a 486 DX 100 PC with 64 Meg of ram.

We were deep into 3D animation, another one of those "Mac preffered graphics fields". Our final project was 60 seconds of animation, and were given 3 weeks to finish it. Several students quickly grabbed any empty machine to use for rendering, while doing the modeling on their's.

My machine would take close to 6 hours to render a 10 second segment, only to crash in the last 5 seconds and lose everything. With less than a week left before the assignment was due, I took 3 days off, and finished the project at home on my PC. I got a C due to 3 missed days, but the PC came through.

Since then, I have called them "Crash 'N Toss", and will never use one again. Prejudiced? Damn straight!

[Martin Munthe]

When it comes down to video editing head to head (Mac vs. PC) the battle stands between the Final Cut Pro NLE on Macs and Adobe Premiere on PCs. Avid Xpress DV disqualifies since it can only do DV.

Final Cut Pro started as the next ganaration Premiere app written by the original Premiere team. PC folks are still stuck with an old fashioned, generation one, typical ninetees multimedia app like Premiere. I can't believe how stupid the Wintel market is that has all that savvy 2000+ digital video hardware (like VideoPump) but can not deliver a decent 2000+ NLE for pros under 10K...

Interface, Unix core, product design and FCP is what makes me stick to Macs. I have to since I'm importing EDL's, exporting Key Code, onlining to digibeta and offlining 1:20 Mjpeg A with the same amount of disk space as Offline RT (Photo Jpeg) but with maintained quality compareable to DV.

[Ken Tanaka]

Adrian,
Your mention of the "vi" editor just gave me temporary symptoms similar to those found in recurring malaria patients; fever, sweats, incoherency. Sitting at an amber-phosphor Wyse dumb terminal stumbling through arcane keyboard commands to navigate through vi...eewww...where's my quinine water!!

I have to lay down now.

[Adrian Douglas]

The only thing I hate more than VB programming is VI. At least my experience with it was on a black and white screen. I haven't touched an amber monitor since the days of

10 Start
20 Print "I hate VI"
30 Goto 20
40 End

Can't even remember if that's right