OS for video editing

[Theiananator]

I am planing on doing a lot of video editing. Any suggestions for OS? Any advantages/disadvantages among the different platforms for video editing?

 

[Megatomic]

Well, which hardware platform are you planning on using?

 

[Theiananator]

I would probably end up using a P4 with @ around 2.8ghz with hyper threading

 

[Megatomic]

XP Pro is about your only option in this case. XP Home Edition would work as well but if you ever plan to join that PC to a domain you'll be out of luck if you use HE rather than Pro.

 

[DnetMHZ]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
XP Pro is about your only option in this case. XP Home Edition would work as well but if you ever plan to join that PC to a domain you'll be out of luck if you use HE rather than Pro.

What about *NIX/BSD?

 

[Megatomic]

What software package are you going to use to edit video in *nix/BSD? I am seriously asking...

 

[DnetMHZ]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
What software package are you going to use to edit video in *nix/BSD? I am seriously asking...

There are many video editing apps for *nix including Kino, Cinelerra, many others.

Most of which are FREE. Try to find me a free video editing program for windows other than movie maker.

I'm assuming that the OP is not a professional with the budget to purchase packages such as Adobe Premiere which cost several hundred dollars.

 

[Megatomic]

I've heard of neither of those packages to be honest. It would be nice if the OP would return and tell us if this is going to be a professional studio box or a amateur freeware box.

 

[DnetMHZ]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
I've heard of neither of those packages to be honest. It would be nice if the OP would return and tell us if this is going to be a professional studio box or a amateur freeware box.

Those are just 2 packages I came up with after a quick search, but I just wanted to expand the scope of this thread to include free software. I agree that the OP should state wether he was looking for windows only software or other.

DnetMHZ

 

[addragyn]

OS X

-gets out of the way
-industry standard
-excellent software
-no virurs/spyware concerns

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
I've heard of neither of those packages to be honest. It would be nice if the OP would return and tell us if this is going to be a professional studio box or a amateur freeware box.

Unix/Linux is fairly common in the high end. But the software your going to find is going to be priced WAY WAY out of your leage unless your doing it professionally.

I am talking movie studios high end.

A decent Linux app would be Shake. It's made by Apple and retails for around 5000 dollars. (however you get the OS X version for 2000 dollars less. Hmm... Cost difference between whitebox linux vs PowerG5? )

We are talking about lots of in-studio applications and programmers. When it comes to custom applications and developement Linux kick's Windows rear-end. You use Linux for doing render farms for CGI effects, which is pretty much standard stuff.

For a long time you would use SGI Irix boxes, but those are slowly getting replaced by Linux boxes.

For example here is a review of Discreet Smoke 6 for Linux and Irix systems. For the Linux system you get a turn-key solution with a IBM Intellipro workstation.

Retail price: $68,000+

And Linux has decent support form other companies too. For instance here is a series of plugins for the Linux/Irix Smoke systems that you can pick up for a nice $6000.

And that's not even considured a very expensive system! And people b1tch about Mac Power G5 prices. Stuff like that makes Adobe Premiere look like MS Paint.

Frankly Linux is a much better OS for this sort of thing then Windows, from a technical standpoint. HOWEVER you are correct in thinking that it is quite useless for the Prosumer segment of the population. For most stuff that you will use for video editing and such Windows has a much broader support for lower-end software and hardware and is probably more easier for the average person to be productive with.

Here is about Cinelerra or Kino, I'll explain them to you.

Kino and Cinelarra are both freeware applications designed for video editing.

Kino is designed to be a normal everyday DV editor for the average person, it is ment to be analogous to the no-cost crap that you'd get bundled along with stuff when you buy something like a Sony Handycam. It's designed to be user freindly and fairly easy to setup and get decent results.

Now Cineralla is completely different beast. It's not designed to be user friendly. It's not designed to be nice to use or easy to setup. In fact it's probably a unholy pain in the rear-end bastard of a thing to setup if your not familar with Linux and the developers like it like that because it cuts down on the riff-raff, they have a weird attitude.. What it is designed to do is produce professional-level results.

For example the recommended hardware:

RECOMMENDED FRONT END SYSTEM

Now Cinelerra is by no means a lightweight program. You'll need something slightly less sexy than a handheld organizer to run it most effectively.

Dual 2.4Ghz Opteron
4GB RAM.
200 GB storage for movie files.
Gigabit ethernet

RECOMMENDED RENDERFARM NODE:

Single 2.4Ghz Athlon
512MB RAM
Flash hard drive
100MB ethernet

You'd have a few render machines setup in a rendar farm ideally, with nice high speed interconnects.

Cinelerra

DV Linux

Cinelerra + Linux would provide the most bang for the buck, but probably the most headaches. This would be my choice since I am much more comfortable with Linux then Windows. It also has the nice advantage of having some actually REALY decent audio production software aviable for it for free.

For example ardour. And there is work going toward a framework for musical plugins and you can even run some vst plugins via Wine (like what you use in Cubase). And there is work at making a freeware plugin system called ladspa. linux audio homepage


That being said, I would NEVER recommend Linux to anybody for this sort of thing (at least not for another couple more years), unless they already had Linux experiance. It would take a lot of time and a lot of effort for a person to translate their Windows knowledge over to Linux. I would recommend it, though, if you want to play around with it. Stuff like Cinelerra will produce good results once you get it up and running. And anyways Linux doesn't have anything much over OS X. OS X is pretty freaking nice for this sort of stuff.


The BEST OS for this sort of thing and for amature/prosumer/professional results is probably going to be OS X. It's commonly used, lots of support, lots of software aviable.

The next best OS is probably going to be Windows XP. It has the same things going for it as OS X, but it's not Unix and you have to deal with the normal everyday crap that comes with the WinXP desktop experiance. (virus scanners for instance.)

Linux is ok. I like it, but it's not their yet for this sort of thing. It's probably worth it to you to check out Cinellera if you think has something to offer. It's free. Linux is free. So it's a win-win situation, if you have the time.

 

[Theiananator]

I actually am using Premiere Pro right now.

 

[Megatomic]

drag, thanks for enlightening me. I had no idea... I did know about SGI but I had thought it was all custom applications used on that platform.

And I asked what hardware platform the OP was going to be using because I too thought that OS X and Final Cut Pro would be best for a "low cost" professional studio system. But with a P4 I had believed that WinXP Pro and Premiere would be the best route. Now I'm not quite so sure.

ps - I love reading drag's posts.

 

[drag]

But with a P4 I had believed that WinXP Pro and Premiere would be the best route. Now I'm not quite so sure.

Since he already is using Premiere and he is using x86, probably WinXP Pro would be the best for him.

 

[hopejr]

A program that's used by lots of the professionals e.g. major cable stations, Universal Studios i think (and is a bit cheaper than Final Cut Pro IIRC), is Avid. It runs on both Windows and OS X, and is quite powerful. However, you'd be looking at about $1200 AUD for it. I'd prolly go with Final Cut Express as it's much cheaper, and I have a Mac already.
But, like drag said, already with an PC and Premiere (ooh, 1.5 is nice i heard), XP Pro would work out for the best as an OS (hmm, me recommending Windows??? first time I've done that for a while). Have a look at Avid, or something like that (if you want to pay money).

Edit: just realised this was talking about OS's solely. oops. I reckon OS X is the better one, but again, drag is prolly right, because of what you've already got

 

[Megatomic]

Avid is really cool, I got on their mailing list somehow and I've been drooling over an Avid Mojo for some time now. If only I could justify it to myself (much less my wife).

 

[hopejr]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
Avid is really cool, I got on their mailing list somehow and I've been drooling over an Avid Mojo for some time now. If only I could justify it to myself (much less my wife).

My parents are getting it (that's why I know about it hehe), and I think they're getting the Avid Mojo too. It's such a cool program. I saw a demo disk about it the other week and the power it has. It even scales itself to the hardware it's being run on too (great on laptops believe it or not). 5 streams coming in simultaneously, real-time editing, really easy to use, etc.

 

[drag]

Found a couple more interesting bits.
this guy sells IBM intellepro workstations setup with Cinelerra and a custom Linux OS. Says is potentially capable of editing 1080p HD video in real-time.(with renderfarms most likely) Also has linux clusters as renderfarms that can be used with a wide veriaty of Windows/Mac/Linux applications.
listing of commercial apps for Linux.
MainActor V5 for Linux and Windows. Free demos for Windows, Suse 9.1 and Mandrake. $200 dollar retail, license works for both Linux and Windows versions.

also a interview with Cinelerra creators