should i move to mac?

I currently own a dell xps 17" 4gb ram 1tb hard drive pretty decent video card as well. i also have sony vegas 10 hd installed to edit (or try to) my footage. I'm finding it pretty difficult to use. Making a basic video with it is pretty simple but anything more is a bit of a struggle. Whilst searching for help on the net tutorial videos etc, i'm noticing everyones talking about final cut pro x and there seems to be endless support for that software and its getting v.good reviews from what i can se as well.

Should i go with the flow and cut my losses sell my dell and go for a mac? (would only be a 15") as there pretty expensive.

I understand getting a mac isnt going to turn me into a editing guru but it seems there's a lot more helpfull resources out there for mac users.

Mate go and download EDIUS 30 day trial and install.

Look what I do on my little Asus i5 $1300 laptop.

And if you get a HDMI cable you can send the editing preview window full screen out to a external TV at full resolution while you are editing.

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showt...6&hl=laptop

What's the problem with Vegas 10? Are you using the Pro version? I've been using is for years and am currently using 8c and 10e. Vegas Pro 11 is still buggy for many people. The official forum is a great community of very helpful and knowledgable people. There are a few other good Vegas Pro forums around.

In your position I wouldn't switch to a Mac. I would download and compare trial versions of Vegas Pro, Premiere Pro and Edius. FCPx is still new and limited on features. Apple turned their back on existing FCP users and lost a lot of them, in particular to Adobe. But FCPx may grow into a fuller solution.

You are talking about buying a laptop, right? The nice thing about buying a MBP is that if you don't find solace in the Apple kingdom, you can change your laptop into a Windows one (either using virtualization or bootcamp). However, for modern video codecs, you have to consider this: there is a lot of reading/decoding/writing which require fast hard drives (and as many as possible) and multicore/multithread capabilities with lots of RAM. I learned the hard way (see this thread for a report on my learning experience) that just buying one of the most powerful iMac is NOT enough for smooth editing of AVCHD footage (at least with Premiere Pro. I did not bother to try FCP X...yet).

You could say: I'll just upgrade as needed. The REAL problem with Macs is that this is not really an option. They build their product so that this is close to impossible for the none tech savvy person, and even then, there are severe limitations. As a case study, I will not bother trying to add a HD into my iMac for fear of ruining it and the fastest external HDs I can currently use are Firewire 800 ones, as USB 3 is not supported by Macs and Thunderbolt drives are close to non-existent at this point or ridiculously priced.

The bottom line is that I need to transcode my AVCHD footage to be able to use Premiere. I chose Premiere over FCP X because of the claims by Adobe that it could edit AVCHD natively on Macs. Again, it may be able to, but you need the mother beast from Apple to that (if that). My understanding is that background rendering/transcoding in FCP X is precisely there to compensate for that requirement to transcode before editing. I would call it a cheap trick. But again, I haven't tried it (waiting for version 2 or 3 :-).

In summary, if you buy a MBP, I'd recommend you make sure you find somebody who can assure you they have managed to edit complex timelines and footage of the kind you are planning to handle on the SAME exact hardware you are planning to buy.

My 2 cts.

Thanks for replying guys.

I have a copy of vegas 10 movie studio HD platinum. I will check out the forums you mentioned. maybe i should upgrade, im not sure but maybe platinum has all the functions i need i just dont know how to use it. i want to be able to do some quality colour correction and post white balance.

uwxplorer, so are you saying if i get a macpro i can legitimately install windows and use any windows programmes? This leads me on to my main problem. My dell doesn't have a 1394 port so i have to carry a old sony vaio with me just to transfer the footage to it so i can store it on a hard drive and then upload it to my dell... Not fun carrying 2 laptops around with all my scuba/video equip.

Wagsy, did your Asus come with a express port for 1394 compatibility, i presume your editing HDV and not standard definition so you are not using a usb express port adapter?

Apple seem to be the only company to integrate a 1394 port into all there products. But as unxplorer says there limited and also come at a high premium. i've been having a look today and its incredible the amount of power you can get in a laptop now at a very reasonable price, there seems to be a endless list of upgrades available, the only problem is most have removed there 1394 port... Anyone got any suggestions on a laptop that would suit?

uwxplorer, so are you saying if i get a macpro i can legitimately install windows and use any windows programmes? This leads me on to my main problem. My dell doesn't have a 1394 port so i have to carry a old sony vaio with me just to transfer the footage to it so i can store it on a hard drive and then upload it to my dell... Not fun carrying 2 laptops around with all my scuba/video equip.

I have never used the FW (1394) port on my MBP and I haven't installed Windows on my iMac, but it should behave just fine on the Windows side (USB 2 for instance works fine and I am downloading my Datamask and Cobra dive computer data on the Windows side of my MBP for lack of equivalent software for Mac). You need to have a legit license of Windows though!

As far as price are concerned, I did not find that there was such a large price differential between equivalently spec'ed machines. And Macs are usually much nicer! The only hurdle, again, is limited upgradability (when it is at all possible). In particular, for Premiere, the absence of NVidia GPU on the iMac prevents from taking advantage of some of the performance of Premiere (and AE). Be sure you think twice before investing in a Mac Pro (not MBP, which is the laptop. Mac Pros are the tower desktop Apple computers), if this is what you are leaning towards. They are old by current standards and there is no indication that Apple will continue this product line in the future (at least there is much debate about the opposite).

I have never used the FW (1394) port on my MBP and I haven't installed Windows on my iMac, but it should behave just fine on the Windows side (USB 2 for instance works fine and I am downloading my Datamask and Cobra dive computer data on the Windows side of my MBP for lack of equivalent software for Mac). You need to have a legit license of Windows though!

As far as price are concerned, I did not find that there was such a large price differential between equivalently spec'ed machines. And Macs are usually much nicer! The only hurdle, again, is limited upgradability (when it is at all possible). In particular, for Premiere, the absence of NVidia GPU on the iMac prevents from taking advantage of some of the performance of Premiere (and AE). Be sure you think twice before investing in a Mac Pro (not MBP, which is the laptop. Mac Pros are the tower desktop Apple computers), if this is what you are leaning towards. They are old by current standards and there is no indication that Apple will continue this product line in the future (at least there is much debate about the opposite).

Sorry i didnt make that clear, im looking a laptop- so that might be a mac book pro. need to find a suitable windows laptop to compare it with first though before i make my decision... all i want is a laptop i can edit HDV footage on. Either at home or on a trip.

Hi, I use a Express card that has a 1934 firewall port.

Going from PC to Mac just for FCX is a bit excessive. However, switching has advantages. Mac OSX has integrated solutions for many things. The OS is very nice to work within. The design speaks for itself. It's only when you start getting into specialized utlization that it fails!

Lenovos and Dells etc will always outspec Apple MBP. The mobile workstations from Dell and Lenovo are editing machines for many shoots. I recently saw a friend with a 15" Dell workstation scrub 4k .r3d without sweating, using eSATA drives on CS5.5. 32GB Ram and 4GB VRAM makes up for a lot of ugly design and crappy OS GUI. If I were trying to do that with a MBP, I'd have to go to the 17" so I can use the Expresscard 34 for eSATA since Thunderbolt has so few actual peripherals available.

I suggest you just get an expresscard 34 for 1394a/b and use that with your machine.

Going from PC to Mac just for FCX is a bit excessive. However, switching has advantages. Mac OSX has integrated solutions for many things. The OS is very nice to work within. The design speaks for itself. It's only when you start getting into specialized utlization that it fails!

 

Lenovos and Dells etc will always outspec Apple MBP. The mobile workstations from Dell and Lenovo are editing machines for many shoots. I recently saw a friend with a 15" Dell workstation scrub 4k .r3d without sweating, using eSATA drives on CS5.5. 32GB Ram and 4GB VRAM makes up for a lot of ugly design and crappy OS GUI. If I were trying to do that with a MBP, I'd have to go to the 17" so I can use the Expresscard 34 for eSATA since Thunderbolt has so few actual peripherals available.

 

I suggest you just get an expresscard 34 for 1394a/b and use that with your machine.

Wagsy, does that plug into a express port or is it an external card connected by a adapter?

Thanks for your input Drew... i would just get a express card except its impossible with a dell unfortunately. I wouldnt be changing to a mac just for the software, i want/need a new laptop so i dont have to carry 2 around. looking at custom build Sony- 8gb ram, quad i7, 500gb hdd (i have 4tb in external) and a geforceGT 540 2GB and most importantly i.link £1200

It's a little card I slide into the side of the latop like this.

The only hurdle, again, is limited upgradability (when it is at all possible).

They aren't as limited as you might think. Other World Computing is a fantastic source for Mac upgrades and you can pretty much upgrade anything you can on a Windows PC.

I bought a MacBook Pro around 12 months ago (my first ever Mac). It came with 4GB RAM and a 320GB HDD (the smallest I could get). I immediately replaced the 4GB RAM with 8GB and the 320GB HDD with a 500GB HDD at much less than what Apple would have charged to provide the MBP with 8GB and 500GB. I have since replaced the optical drive (which I was rarely using) with a 750GB drive to beef up my storage capabilities.

I you really wanted to beef up the speed, you could replace the primary drive with an SSD and have a standard HDD in the second bay.

Of course, that's if you want to go down the Mac route. I'm very happy with my decision and much prefer the Mac over Windows (although I do have some minor gripes).

They aren't as limited as you might think.

This is a route which is unfortunately not open to me (no eSATA extension, for instance), owner of a 21.5" iMac i7. And you still cannot choose your graphic card.

I have also upgraded my MBP (2006!) with a 500 GB disk, but since it is not natively supported, I suspect it is a reason why my battery life is abyssmal.

Your paying for a gated community sense of security and beauty, I guess.

I have also upgraded my MBP (2006!) with a 500 GB disk, but since it is not natively supported, I suspect it is a reason why my battery life is abyssmal.

I can't explain why you had problems but I know loads of people that have upgraded their MBPs and have had no issues at all. They have also been very pleased with the results.

Obviously, you need to ensure that the replacement parts are compatible, and that is the great value from OWC - the let you know exactly which parts can be used with which machine.

...all i want is a laptop i can edit HDV footage on. Either at home or on a trip.

Take a look at the Dell Precision laptops. I've been editing HDV on my Precision M6300 17" laptop for nearly 3 years. It's super reliable, and with Vegas Pro I never need to transcode. I just smoothly edit native HDV .m2t files captured with HDVSplit. The current Precision models may have dropped the 1394 socket, but on the plus side you can get up to 3 hard drives into them. With 1TB 2.5" drives around now, this means you can do away with taking an external drive with you. In the studio I sometimes hang an external 24" monitor off its DVI socket for preview, and keep my timeline on the laptop's screen.

Push on with Vegas 10 movie studio HD platinum. It may well do everything you need. Be cautious with Vegas Pro 11 until they improve it's stability.

The Dell Precision M4600 has 1394a connectors. I'm VERY tempted by it because it is faster than my 12 core Mac Pro for anything that doesn't use hyperthreading of the 24 cores. Much of the waiting is still on the bus so higher ghz processors will be competitive to 24 core at lower ghz.

For my own tastes, I feel Mac OS (even Lion) is a significantly better OS in terms of every day use (from maintenance to writing) because of the intuitive GUI. I encrypt my work data using filevault and other things that are automated in the OS. Windoze has bitlocker but it's such a pain to use. Things like that matter. The Mac OS is easier to interact with because it's a closed system.

There is no doubt though that a Windoze machine has superior specs for the money and will run circles around a MBP for NLE. Adobe CS5.5 is a bit faster in Windoze for quite a few things. The Mac port isn't as optimized as the Windoze original. Which is why it's a good idea to stick with an optimized system.

FCX works well with OpenCL capable macs because it's optimized for Apple machines. It will grow to be more powerful, but I can't wait for something that may or may not happen. Without FCS, my editing workstation now launch in Windoze more often.

Also remember WHEN (not if) you upgrade to a new camera that is AVC/H.264 based, a system which is adequate for HDV will again be anemic. 1080p60 is on its way in so in the next 2-4 years.

As for which NLE, you may wish to read this about MBP and Adobe CS5.5:

http://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/?p=546

It's written by a guy on Adobe's payroll, and Dave Helmly's video is pretty accurate but he doesn't say what kind of drives he's running and it's short playback. YMMV. The point is the MBP isn't a slowpoke, just out of its league with 4+k files.

The big upgrade for X is supposed to be released in Feb. I have a feeling that upgrades will come as quickly as they write the code. The background rendering and acceptance of all different formats is great. You do have to be aware of all the rendering files being built up but it is easy to open the project file and delete all renders when you are done with your sequence and then re-render just the sequence and not the experimental attempts and tries. While I have discovered that some of the color grading I could do in 7, I can not yet do in X, that will come.

Steve

Thanks for all the advice... I'm staying with windows for the time being. I've just ordered my new laptop with a firewire port

its a dell M6600 i7 ,16gb ram and a nvidia 2GB graphics card along with various other bit 'n' bobs...

Cheers.

Hey great to hear.

The first thing once you get it is to de crap it all.

Uninstall all the rubbish off it that Dell will have on it.

Then update and tweek Win7 and uninstall Nortons if it comes with it.

Nortons is a bloated virus now days it should be banned. :-)

In fact I had to un install it of two laptops in the last week and it took me three goes and three reboots to get rid of it and even then there were files still left.

There others you can use that are much better.

It usually takes me a day to setup - tweek a new system and install all my software.

Set up a partition and never save anything anywhere to your C:drive, put your email store file on that second partition.

Basically when it boots up nothing should be running in the background except maybe a fire wall and or virus protection which should be turn off for editing.

Once you get it all set up, use Win 7 to make a mirror image of the C: drive, put it on that second partition and then make a recovery boot CD to bring back that image in case of any problem any time in the field etc and you will have a piece of mind system which will fly.

That's why people buy Mac's because PCs have way to many variables, the trick is to get them set up correct right from the start and then you are laughing.

Look at me, still on an old cheap Win 7 2008 built 2.4 Quad desktop system here but do all my native HD editing and authoring, Lightroom 3, Illustrator and Photoshop CS5 across 3 x 22 inch LCD screens no problems.

Hey great to hear.

 

The first thing once you get it is to de crap it all.

Uninstall all the rubbish off it that Dell will have on it.

Then update and tweek Win7 and uninstall Nortons if it comes with it.

Nortons is a bloated virus now days it should be banned. :-)

In fact I had to un install it of two laptops in the last week and it took me three goes and three reboots to get rid of it and even then there were files still left.

There others you can use that are much better.

 

It usually takes me a day to setup - tweek a new system and install all my software.

Set up a partition and never save anything anywhere to your C:drive, put your email store file on that second partition.

Basically when it boots up nothing should be running in the background except maybe a fire wall and or virus protection which should be turn off for editing.

Once you get it all set up, use Win 7 to make a mirror image of the C: drive, put it on that second partition and then make a recovery boot CD to bring back that image in case of any problem any time in the field etc and you will have a piece of mind system which will fly.

That's why people buy Mac's because PCs have way to many variables, the trick is to get them set up correct right from the start and then you are laughing.

Look at me, still on an old cheap Win 7 2008 built 2.4 Quad desktop system here but do all my native HD editing and authoring, Lightroom 3, Illustrator and Photoshop CS5 across 3 x 22 inch LCD screens no problems.

Thanks for the advice Wagsy i will refer to this when i set it up (in two days hopefully).