I need to find somone that has used both and can give a fair comparison. I can't seem to find anything about PC vs MAC video software, just PC vs MAC. I am curious if the Final Cut Studio is worth the cash, do the other softwares included (Soundtrack, shake, etc) make it all worth while.
What do you use for the other parts of the final product? (music, affects, etc)
Ryan
Started writing this the other day and did not post, sorry, some info others have mentioned (such as Shake mentioned by Jules), and I have edited the response down a bit.
I have used both Premiere (not Edius) and some other video editing software on Mac and PCs, but gravitated to Mac fully for video (and pretty much everything else) awhile ago, so even though I do still run the PCs from time to time, I probably am not familiar enough with all the latest versions to provide you with exactly what you need, but can give some information that may help about Fincal Cut Studio
Final Cut Studio is a great bundle (note that Shake is not part of it, and in fact has been discontinued, though speculation is that it may be revived in the new Final Cut Studio. They price drop to $499 on Shake is a deal - but note it is only the Mac Version at this price, Linux remains at $5,000. It is a great app to have if you can swing it)
DVD SP 4 is a good program, though the new version (4.1 Universal Binary) has some issues, but still a very good program. Soundtrack Pro (easy to edit music for your projects and some advanced editing/looping available) and Motion are very good programs. One of the reasons I stuck with my PCs was for Acid, and Soundtrack Pro replaced that for me. Final Cut Studio also includes LiveType, though I find myself using Motion more.
Compressor 2 has made great strides in its quality, prior versions were less than steller. (As an aside software encoding on the Mac is slower than PCs. When I need to encode things quicker, I launch my PC Emulator and run Cinema Craft (light version) and get between 1.5x to 2x realtime each pass)
but now that I can run a Windows XP and a Linux machine all within MAC OS I am starting to contemplate to MAC route.
You can actually Boot the new MacIntels into Windows, though you can also run emulators.
And the iApps, iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband, iDVD are also great programs, though not the pro stuff, they come with all Macs and are are handy for throwing things together - iPhoto is a great software
On the HDV side many things are real time for editing, though some things do need to get rendered, more for output rather than editing/previewing. (Color Corrrector 3-Way, Secondary Color Correction and Scaling, for instance, can all be applied and previewed in real time) on my Dual G5 2.0 Ghz Tower (this model was discontinued a couple of years ago).
Rendering for final output when editing in HDV does take time depending on what you did to the footage.
Of course like anything it may not be perfect, and a couple of things that Wagsy mentions as being part of Edius, such as mixing various formats in real time [16:9/4:3/DV/HDV], does look cool, but for the most part I do not find things lacking.
The main thing wish was in Final Cut itself as a real time effect is a Color Channel Mixer. And the only reason for this is I recently shot in green water and found this a good tool for the problems with the footage, though the 3 Way Color Corrector also worked, just liked the Channel Mixer a bit more on some of the shots. (There is a plugin for Final Cut that is a real nice Chaneel Mixer, not too expensive, and you can see the changes in real time, but cannot playback the segments in real time, at least on my machine.)
I may actually be downplaying the Final Cut Studio somewhat due to the fact that I admit I am biased towards Macs and do prefer both Macs and the software. To be able to get all the apps for $1299 or so is very well worth it. Even without Shake, there is alot of music, effects, compositing and editing that is included between the apps.
As to resale values, Macs used to retain alot of their value for a long time, but the newer machines not quite as much (in fact some of the older models still command higher prices). They also do not become obsolete as quickly, I have a laptop from 1998 that is fine for word processing, emails and other things. I have an iBook from 2001 that has a 600mhz G3 chip (which was followed by G4, G5 and current Intel chips) which I still take on trips from time to time and others use the iBook daily for various things.
Also the Mac OS is something you will like if you are used to Linux, it is Unix based and you have access to alot of power if you want to use the terminal (no need to use those though if you do not want to.)
