I am thinking about getting a new Mac for video editing. Currently I use Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Encore, Photoshop etc... Now, my PC seems fine, and I cant complain because I can do anything i want to do without any trouble, but some of my peers are telling me that Mac is much better. I always considered it a myth that Macs were better, but I never reallly knew forsure. So, are Macs far superior than the PC at editing? Is it a truely worthy upgrade to go Mac and scrap my PC?
Are Macs *THAT* much better for editing over the PC?
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erikistired
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i would say no. photoshop tends to run better on a mac i guess and artsy people like to be "out there" and "edgy" and "anti-establishment" so they use a mac.
Originally posted by: saltedeggman
but you can't deny the style of Mac's....
i just love how they look, especially the iBook
I sure as hell can. Give me a custom-built case any day.
- M4H
Yes I think your system is MORE than sufficient and better... What I don't understand is why people think macs are faster than PCs even clock for clock... I was running a mac with a 133 MHZ Processor (Power PC), 166MHZ and 200MHZ power pc based and it was SUPER SLOW! I had to wait 3 minutes for a program to fully load and it took about 10 seconds for a response after clicking. I have many Pentum based systems running from 133MHZ and 200MHZ and I got to say they are much faster than the mac. And since mac people claim there is no need to ever format a mac then I am to assume that the macs where running at full potential.
Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Originally posted by: saltedeggman
but you can't deny the style of Mac's....
i just love how they look, especially the iBook
I sure as hell can. Give me a custom-built case any day.
- M4H
we have contrasting taste then...
The difference between Mac and PC is less now than it once was, but the software Apple uses has been heavily tuned for 25 Mbit DV video. From the OS, to the Quicktime media layer, to the applications like Final Cut Pro. One of the digital media magazines did a pro video shootout awhile back. Using similar PCs and Macs they were able to work with many more streams of video on the Mac as they could on the PC. These days 50 Mbit DV and DVCProHD have become common on Mac editing rigs too. As are uncompressed serial digital SD and HD.
These days all you need is a 2 GHz P4 or a 1.4 GHz Athlon and you're good to go for DV video. The pros demand more realtime features and short render times for more advanced effects. They also like their software to have a certain feel. Tablet jesures, for example, are a common feature used in Apple's pro apps... something started back in the SGI days of the Discreet editing and effects packages.
No, you don't need a dual processor Apple G5 running Final Cut Pro HD, with a fibrechannel card streaming 400 MB/sec to and from a 4 TB Xserve RAID. But some pros do. And they can afford it too. Plus it's way cheaper than the AVID and SGI Onyx systems they used to work with. It's also easy for tech support when the same company makes the motherboard, the OS, the RAID box, and the editing software.
But do you need a G5? Nope. Do I? Nope.
These days all you need is a 2 GHz P4 or a 1.4 GHz Athlon and you're good to go for DV video. The pros demand more realtime features and short render times for more advanced effects. They also like their software to have a certain feel. Tablet jesures, for example, are a common feature used in Apple's pro apps... something started back in the SGI days of the Discreet editing and effects packages.
No, you don't need a dual processor Apple G5 running Final Cut Pro HD, with a fibrechannel card streaming 400 MB/sec to and from a 4 TB Xserve RAID. But some pros do. And they can afford it too. Plus it's way cheaper than the AVID and SGI Onyx systems they used to work with. It's also easy for tech support when the same company makes the motherboard, the OS, the RAID box, and the editing software.
But do you need a G5? Nope. Do I? Nope.
I mainly use Windows PCs these days, though I'm liking my PowerBook, the first Mac I've ever owned. I've been a hardware geek for a long time, and I've used a lot of machines over the past 20 years -- PCs, Macs, and Suns. I just have to comment on your post. Perhaps it will help clear things up for both of us.
Your mention of 133 and 166 MHz Macs caught my eye. These were very uncommon speeds on Apple systems back in those days. The original PowerPC 601 ran at 60, 66, 80, 100, and 110 MHz. It was about 40 % more powerful than the original Pentium, clock per clock. But in reality, the two were on par as the 601-based Macs had crippled motherboards with narrow RAM busses and way too much logic glue.
The second batch of high end Macs were those that used the PowerPC 604 at 120, 132, and 150 MHz. These machines were powerhouses with a totally new motherboard architecture and fast RAM. This was also the era of clones and multi-processor Macs. DayStar made a model with 4 processors, it was a Photoshop monster! But back to the CPU... later came the 604e, which was enhanced further. It worked its way up from 180 MHz all the way to 350 MHz in various models. Some motherboards even had 12 DIMM slots, 3 sets of 4 matched/interleaved DIMMs. In college and at work, I was able to use Macs based on the 604 and 604e. The PowerMac 8500, 8600, 9500, 9600 were all very fast machines that were generally significantly faster than our Pentium Pro and PII systems running Win98 and NT4. Photoshop, AfterEffects, Bryce, were all faster on the Macs. A PowerPC 604e @ 350 MHz was a beast back in mid-1997. When the G3 (PPC 750) came out, it wasn't much faster than the 604e, and then the clockspeed updates dropped off for a long time. By then Apple was stuck at 350 MHz and I continued to buy and build PCs for home use. It wasn't until last December that I bought my first Mac, and essentially, used my first Mac since 1998.
From 1995 - 1998, I'd say that the Macs were indeed very powerful. They had OS issues though. One bad extension could take down the whole machine. But the OS was so simple, it only took a few days to figure it all out. Even our most advanced machines had less than 200 items in the system folder (each with a good icon and a long, meaningful name). But still, Mac OS 7.5 - Mac OS 9 were still pretty weak. They could do one thing great for a long period of time, but try to multitask and you could bring down the whole works. It didn't bother us much, though, as we usually ran one app full screen at a time.
There were also low end Macs that totally sucked eggs. PowerMac 4000 series, 5000 series, 6000 series. These were all low-end, consumer/education garbage with the awful PPC 603/603e/603ev processor (high clockspeed, slow performance) and usually a really slow hard drive. It was these machines that often had PC-like clockspeed numbers, like 133 and 166 MHz. The 7200, 7300, and 7500 were also pretty awful. Though the 7600 was the smaller version of the 8500 powerhouse.
I think the argument was more based on the software available for the Mac(Final Cut Pro) vs that available for the PC(Adobe Premiere). From what I've read/heard (and don't quote me coz I've never used either) Final Cut Pro is a lot better than Premiere.
Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Originally posted by: saltedeggman
but you can't deny the style of Mac's....
i just love how they look, especially the iBook
I sure as hell can. Give me a custom-built case any day.
- M4H
He was talking about laptops. The iBooks are a work of art. Actually Apple's laptops are the best on the market. The only problem is that they won't run most of the applications that many people rely on.
The last time I checked, the A64 was the fastest platform available for Photoshop. RAM is very expensive for the Mac, and is the #1 factor in Photoshop performance.
I would go for a Mac in a laptop if they could run CAD. My gf's iBook runs basic applications and iTunes just as fast as my XP Mobile at 2400mhz w/ 1GB of RAM.
Mac's used to be better for Graphics and Music editing. Nowadays you get more punch for your $ in PC's, and they are, at respective prices, better than Mac's. I make a living making music, and haven't used mac's in years.
They do look cool though
They do look cool though
Actually for the software you mentioned above, PCs with Xeons rock, especially with After Effects and Premiere. However, if you throw in Final Cut Pro in the mix, which is rapidly becoming the defacto standard in editing, you have no choice but to use a Mac since that app doesn't run on Windows.
At my highschool, only apple g4 and imac were in my video production class and dells everywhere else on campus. Final Cut Pro was a lot of fun to use until when I saw retail price for that....
Still can't explain the 200MHZ model though. Unfortunately I don't know the model numbers off the top of my head but I can't imagine a mac that is 200MHZ be as slow as running Windows XP on a 486 machine with a 4200RPM drive (it was that bad). The machine ended up crashing or taking so long that I thought I crashed so I rebooted. I have used macs that "seemed relatively fast" but in reality they weren't that fast. My cousin's new Imac was not slow nor fast at opening applications but when running programs it wasn't impressive thats for sure. Also it was interesting to see him run a virtual machine of Windows XP which was very slow which I can under stand since it's emulating PC hardware but it shouldn't have been as slow as it was. It just seems like macs are entirely over priced especially for how much they cost because you can build a pc that cost just as much as a mac but is sooooooooo much better.
When I need to do any kind of productivity work, especially video editing or photoshopping, I go up to school to use the lab of dual-G5s and cinema displays. I've never had such a smooth work experience.
Admittedly I grew up on Macs, but built a PC and have been living on it since about the time OSX came about, so I never got too familiar with the newest Mac OS, but it really has a great feel for multitasking. I can be rendering video in Final Cut (which is worlds better than Premiere after the 30 minutes takes to get acquainted) and creating 2D elements with Photoshop and Illustrator all at the same time, and it never misses a beat. The swiftness with which you can switch between apps and the desktop (you've gotta take advantage of Expose!), transfer files (Macs have always had very robust drag n drop), etc. can't be beat. Without making any comparisons in raw speed, the workflow of OSX on a G5 really is wonderful.
It's hard to describe a lot of the little differences (I love that the 2D API used to draw the windows is based on PDF so ANYTHING can be saved as a PDF) but after you get oriented the system becomes very transparent. The universal menu system is really nice. The behavior of how windows are layered works well. In XP the apps always feel so isolated from each other in a way, you can multitask but choose to do one thing at a time.
However, unless you are going all out for a G5 tower and a nice display (the cinema displays are simply the best monitors I've used) with a good amount of RAM, I don't know how much I can recommend it... and that is a huge investment. I haven't personally used the new iMac G5s so I can't speak on them. Don't do anything less than a G5 though. Personally, I like Windows when I'm running a full screen app (like games) and I can forget about the OS for a while.
Admittedly I grew up on Macs, but built a PC and have been living on it since about the time OSX came about, so I never got too familiar with the newest Mac OS, but it really has a great feel for multitasking. I can be rendering video in Final Cut (which is worlds better than Premiere after the 30 minutes takes to get acquainted) and creating 2D elements with Photoshop and Illustrator all at the same time, and it never misses a beat. The swiftness with which you can switch between apps and the desktop (you've gotta take advantage of Expose!), transfer files (Macs have always had very robust drag n drop), etc. can't be beat. Without making any comparisons in raw speed, the workflow of OSX on a G5 really is wonderful.
It's hard to describe a lot of the little differences (I love that the 2D API used to draw the windows is based on PDF so ANYTHING can be saved as a PDF) but after you get oriented the system becomes very transparent. The universal menu system is really nice. The behavior of how windows are layered works well. In XP the apps always feel so isolated from each other in a way, you can multitask but choose to do one thing at a time.
However, unless you are going all out for a G5 tower and a nice display (the cinema displays are simply the best monitors I've used) with a good amount of RAM, I don't know how much I can recommend it... and that is a huge investment. I haven't personally used the new iMac G5s so I can't speak on them. Don't do anything less than a G5 though. Personally, I like Windows when I'm running a full screen app (like games) and I can forget about the OS for a while.
I sure like final cut pro but that is about all. I haven't tried to edit with windows based stuff yet but im sure it works just as well. I wouldn't waste my money on a Mac, I used the schools Macs.
Malak
Lifer
- Dec 4, 2004
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Actually photoshop tends to run better on AMD/Intel systems according to Maximum PC. They benchmarked the new G5 against the best that AMD and Intel had to offer, and they wooped the mac's ass in all but a couple tests, including winning in photoshop performance.
I can't explain your slow experience either, especially not without knowing more about the hardware specs, OS version, software, RAM, etc.
The slowest 200 MHz Mac would be one that had a 603e or 603ev processor. Those were less than half the performance of a 604e at the same clockspeed. Many motherboards for the 603 also used slower RAM busses too. But even then, it shouldn't be *that* slow, even if it was running Mac OS 9.2.2. My guess is that there were other factors in play. Such as not enough RAM, a very fragmented drive (Mac OS 9.2.2 and earlier could get fragged horribly in as little as 6 months), maybe a major software conflict, or perhaps incorrect memory settings. Because of the way Mac OS 9 and eariler handled memory and multitasking, you had to specify before launch how much RAM each app was to be allocated. The virtual memory / swapping features of the OS were also pretty bad, especially if one or more apps by itself was set to use more RAM than the system had physically. Turn virtual memory up about 50 MB above your physcial RAM, and turn up a few apps to just slightly more RAM than you really have physically, and the Mac will feel like it has crashed. Even the cursor will stutter when you try to move it around. Menus will take 30 seconds to drop down, etc.
From 1995 to 1998, every upper or high end Mac I used in college or at work felt very fast. Like brand new PC fast. Very fun fast. And I was using other new machines at the same time, new PCs and new Sun SPARCstations and Ultra 1s and Ultra2s. The upper and high end Macs had plenty of RAM, fast graphics, and great Pro apps. We all loved them. I had little experience with the low end Macs that end up in high schools, but the ones I did use annoyed the hell out of me. It took a significanty amount of tweaking and plenty of RAM to make those low end Macs run well... but once configured properly, they were still very useful. (Heck, even a 33 MHz 68040 based Mac was able to run Netscape 4 OK). Apple didn't make the adjustment very obvious (no wizards or anything), but Mac OS 9 and earlier were so insanely simple, I suppose they incorrectly assumed that users and administrators would take the time to learn and configure them manually and reimage the whole lab with assimulator.
iMacs have always been "just OK" in performance, though Macs and PCs are getting so fast now that it's no longer such a big factor. The original iMac in December 1998 had a 233 MHz G3 and ATI RageII graphics. It was a dog unless you upgraded the RAM and the VRAM. $200 of memory made it quite useful, but still clocked below even a low end minitower Mac. I lost track of Apples until December 2003. But I was blown away by the newer PowerBooks when I first tried them. Today an iMac G5 is 1.8 GHz, but the FSB is only 533 MHz with FX5200U graphics soldered down and dual channel RAM is optional. The dual 1.8 GHz minitower has an independant 900 MHz FSB for each CPU and requires dual channel RAM. The performance difference is huge. But if I had lots of money, I would probably buy one for a general surfing/email/photos/home-videos machine for the family room. It's still pretty slick, sort of like a little BMW 318i.
I've used Virtual PC on both my PowerBook and on a dual 2.5 GHz G5. It's slow everywhere. But that's emulation. It's not just emulating a complex CPU, it's also emulating all of the PC hardware, all the way down to the BIOS. It's not going to get much better, just look at Bochs for example. On my 1.25 GHz G4 PowerBook, WinNT 4 and Win98 run OK. I'm able to drag and drop my code into Visual C++ to make Windows versions. Menus drop down instantly, MSIE can surf at normal speeds. But it gobbles up RAM. I tried WinXP and it was a slideshow! A slooow slideshow. But I made some adjustments and disabled the Themes service and now it's almost as fast as NT 4 or 98. Still, I avoid VirtualPC. That's why I have real PCs.
As malak correctly pointed out, even Photoshop now runs better on Windows. (In fact, did you know that Adobe recently switch the company over to Windows PC? Their primary platform for all apps is now Windows). With the raw power of the A64 and Intel's hightly tuned compilers for the P4, they're able to get a lot of performance out of fast, inexpensive PC hardware.
So why buy a Mac? Is it a cult? Is it a brain disease? There was a long period of time where Macs were substantially faster than PCs for many AV tasks. But today a cheap PC running Avid Xpress DV is just as good as FinalCutPro for editing a standard definition video for broadcast use.
Well, I bought my Mac out of curiosity. I play with Linux on the side, but I mainly use Windows. The Mac was a neat sort of mix of the two worlds. Plus I like the variety. It's fun to use something that's different in many ways. Plus Apple's fit and finish is impressive. There are little features that I love about Apple hardware. But it's not perfect. For the same money I could have gotten a faster PC notebook. There are some Wintel features I wish my PowerBook had. But I'm still very happy I bought it. I'd do it all over again. Not every task and every tool has to be chosen based soley on raw performance, lowest price, or best price to performance ratio. Sometimes there's an element of style, variety, or maybe even mystery and exploration.
The car analogy is flawed, I realize that. But why would anyone buy a Mercedes-Benz when Toyota/Lexus and Honda are proven to be more reliable? Why would anyone buy a BMW when the same handling and power can be had for half the price elsewhere. How in the heck did DMC manage to sell even 6000 of those overpriced, slow, and ugly Delorean DMC-12 cars??
So why buy a Mac? Is it a cult? Is it a brain disease? There was a long period of time where Macs were substantially faster than PCs for many AV tasks. But today a cheap PC running Avid Xpress DV is just as good as FinalCutPro for editing a standard definition video for broadcast use.
Well, I bought my Mac out of curiosity. I play with Linux on the side, but I mainly use Windows. The Mac was a neat sort of mix of the two worlds. Plus I like the variety. It's fun to use something that's different in many ways. Plus Apple's fit and finish is impressive. There are little features that I love about Apple hardware. But it's not perfect. For the same money I could have gotten a faster PC notebook. There are some Wintel features I wish my PowerBook had. But I'm still very happy I bought it. I'd do it all over again. Not every task and every tool has to be chosen based soley on raw performance, lowest price, or best price to performance ratio. Sometimes there's an element of style, variety, or maybe even mystery and exploration.
The car analogy is flawed, I realize that. But why would anyone buy a Mercedes-Benz when Toyota/Lexus and Honda are proven to be more reliable? Why would anyone buy a BMW when the same handling and power can be had for half the price elsewhere. How in the heck did DMC manage to sell even 6000 of those overpriced, slow, and ugly Delorean DMC-12 cars??
I think this is particularly relevant the more i think about it. I suppose part of the reason I got a mac was the style
0roo0roo
No Lifer
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ed21x
Diamond Member
- Oct 12, 2001
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it's not necessarily the hardware, but more or less the software infrastructure thats already in place and centered around the mac. For example, Quark Xpress runs MUCH faster on a mac than a PC, and so do adobe programs. It is also easier to find a development community based around the mad, that makes it much easier to find plug-ins, fonts, layout tools, etc...
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