View Full Version : AVID mac vs pc
michellelord
13-06-2005, 02:06 PM
hey everyone,
am about to upgrade my edit suite. (yeh i've been saying this for ages, but am now finally taking the plunge :)
I will be using AVID xpress Pro.
I am very keen on running this from dual 2 G5 Mac
However, one of the guys from edit solutions here in perth says
"Unless you are a real mac addict, you will find you will get a better performance, price and feature set with the PC."
i have been wanting a mac for YEARS (!!!) and after reading the avid specs for xpress pro felt that i could run avid well from mac. But now am a bit unsure......
so here I am, asking the formidible question....
PC or MAC
Id love to know if anyone has had any probs with avid on either system.
cheers
mish
Avid develop their software first for PC, then roll out a Mac version - often months later. So if you want the latest software, buy a PC.
PC Avids are faster and more reliable than Macs. They also network better. So if you want the best computer, buy a PC.
Hewlett Packard customer support is outstanding they will usually get to you fast and if they can't fix it they'll replace it. Mac support is pretty rotten - you usually have to send the computer away to get it fixed. So if you want the best tech support, buy a PC.
We have 13 HP's networked to LANshare & local drives, which have run continuously for 3 years without missing a beat - I hope I don't regret making that assertion! Based on our experience, I would advise you to buy a PC.
Mind you, I do love Macs and have 2 ibooks & a pbook - as you can see!
daz
michellelord
13-06-2005, 05:23 PM
cheers daz,
anyone wanna stick up for avid on macs??!!!!!
:p
mish
E_Tedeschi
13-06-2005, 10:17 PM
mish,
I was wrestling with the PC vs Mac issue just before Christmas. It was a tough call to make, but I eventually decided to go Mac. *gasp*
Actually, the choice for me was a little more tricky, because not only was I choosing Mac or PC, but Avid or FCP. I chose FCP. *double gasp*
I bought a dual 2ghz G5 - it's a very sexy piece of gear in every sense. Personally, I have found it outperforms just about every NLE box I have worked on in most respects.
My rationale came down to this: I buy an Avid PC, I'm stuck with Xpress Pro. I buy an Apple with FCP production suite, not only is it cheaper, let's me do more out of the box, but if FCP doesn't work for me, I have the safety option of buying Avid to run on the Mac for a minimal cost by comparison.
What sealed it for me was all the stuff around the NLE - Motion, DVD Studio Pro etc... light years ahead (it seemed to me) than any of the bundled stuff coming with Avid's package. I am doing a lot more After Effects work on this new machine as it makes short work of renders, and Motion really takes it to the next level. If you're not doing much more than cutting, then a lot of this doesn't apply.
To finish up (I know I'm going on a touch!!), in response to Daz's comment on getting the latest software sooner - not always a good thing. Avid is always pushing the latest software updates down our throat at Channel 9 (running a Unity with 9 x MC Adrenaline HP seats in Lifestyle Post), and every time the latest update is installed, it causes more headaches than anything else. Perhaps the lag between PC and Mac update releases may help to reduce the number of bugs...?
Anyhow, mish, that's my two cents (and then some!). Hope it helps.
e.
Michelle, I've built my own Avid Pro HD. I strongly recommend that you go the PC path, not the Mac. I strongly second Daz's comments about latest versions of the software - I don't believe the HD version of the Mac is out there yet, although I must admit I haven't checked in the last month.
And I strongly recommend that you go the HD path. With ProHD you get Marquee as your titler which alone is almost worth the price, plus the ability to handle DVcam, DVC Pro 25, 50, and 100. It is definitely worth it.
Also be aware that if you go down the Mac path, Apple are terminating the Power PC line of processors - the G3, G4, and G5 series - and moving to Intel. If you buy a G5 now you may very well be left with an orphan.
michellelord
14-06-2005, 02:06 PM
cheers everyone,
it certainly is a tricky situation,
e - I was orginally going to go for FCP, then thought I should really stick with avid, as we use it at work (im at ch9 news over here)
JWRL - I discovered that bit of info yesterday regarding the powerpc processors change to intel over the next year or so;
definately food for thought for me.
cheers again!
The BBC are investigating whether or not to move some of their major programme strands to "Value for Money" Final Cut Pro edit rooms. The rational is that someone in the Beeb has worked out that FCP rooms can be rented out for £450pw, as opposed to the normal £850 that we get for our Avid rooms.
In one sense I suppose this is a bit scary. Getting a decent rate for the room means the room can be decent. Large, light, airy, windows, dimmers, decoration, sound proofing, good quality desk, proper pix and sound monitors, properly engineered patching and switching, laptops, printers, library and runner service...the list goes on and none of it is cheap. Having cheaper edit kit doesn't knock the cost of the room down much at all, so really the only way to achieve that sort of rate would be to halve the room size and go prefab on the fittings!
I got into the facility business purely through selfishness: I was tired of working in tiny rooms in the production office, on crap kit with no support. I would hate for those bad old days to come back again.
I know for a fact that some Production Managers are wary of "Value for Money". Will it work? Will FCP be able to manage the rushes on programmes that have 600 tapes? Will they be able to find the right editors who can operate this kit? Or will they have to bail halfway through a show, making it even more expensive.
Apparently Apple have done a job selling this concept to the Beeb: lots of meetings, demos, slideshows, showreels, testimonials, lunches (no doubt!). People are being tempted. The Beeb are serious about slashing costs as the axe has come down hard from the very top.
In another sense perhaps this may be a blessing. Perhaps no more offline/online, just working with images straight out of the camera which would then be tarted up in a mini online? Perhaps if the room is cheaper, that much cheaper, the schedules could expand a little? There is no indication as yet that editors wages will be affected.
15 years ago when Avid/Lightworks hit the scene for real, film editing changed enormously. Is Value for Money and Final Cut Pro about to change it again?
For myself, I know of some productions and facilities who have gone down this route with some success. I know of others who have thrown in the towel because there were too many problems. I will stick with my Avids, but I will definitely have a look at the latest FCP!
Daz, the situation here is rather similar. There are a lot of FCP systems out there. I've cut a feature on one - fortunately unreleased and never likely to be.
Material management is poor to non-existant, although I haven't worked with FCP 5 - it may be better. They're OK for commercial and corporate work. I don't think I would like to do a regular series on FCP as it currently stands. It's much touted RT video seems only to work on the simplest of Fx. I recently took over a project started by someone else where they'd adopted a page turn to move between program sections. Everytime the page turn was applied there was a visible displacement.
However FCP seems to be taking over the market world wide. Apple sales staff are obviously very good at what they do.
But this is an edited extract of an item placed on the Avid Xpro forum today, and I quote:
"I had a chance today to do a quick piece on a friend's computer on Vegas 6 ... and I had to take back every bad thing I ever said about Sony, and Vegas for that matter.
This thing is no toy anymore....
With Vegas 6, there's there's no waiting, it's here. ... HD, HDV, uncompressed SD. Full-screen monitoring via DVI on secondary monitor ... BlackmagicDesign compatibility, nested layers, scroll everything, compositing modes, VST plugins, track mattes. I mean this ... thing costs well under a grand."
Michelle, maybe you should check this out.
Yes, I have heard that the rendering is still a nightmare.
Also when I last used it, the thing that really REALLY bugged me was that if you cut a scene, then cut that scene into an assembly of scenes, you could no longer see the individual shots within your scenes. Does anyone know if that's still the case?
E_Tedeschi
14-06-2005, 07:58 PM
Daz,
I am sad to report that this is still the case with FCP. It bugs me, too. It's one of the things I really like about working on Avid.
"Realtime" is OK, but nothing to write home about - what do you mean about rendering being a nightmare?
e.
The need to have to render loads of FX in order to get full frame rate and resolution playback. The way I've seen it is that it drops frames and res if it can't achieve playback on FX.
Avid used to suffer terribly from this - rendering dissolves and even audio mixes was necessary. These days even the Xpress systems have a lot of that happen in real time, without dropping frames. Depends on your CPU, of course.
E_Tedeschi
14-06-2005, 08:12 PM
Yeah, CPU is the key. I generally don't have too many dramas with FX renders - it seems to only become an issue when you stack on several. Plus FCP also indicates "preferred" fx, or ones that the CPU will do in realtime so that you can use what's appropriate. Of course, nothing beats a little bit of HW acceleration (mojo etc...!).
e.
"if you cut a scene, then cut that scene into an assembly of scenes, you could no longer see the individual shots within your scenes. Does anyone know if that's still the case?"
If you hold the apple key and then drag the nested sequence into the new sequence all your cuts will transfer into the new sequence.
Mish, from what I hear Avid is better on a PC. But I only really know PC people who use it, so I can't really qualify if that's true or not. I'd still vote for FCP, but you know that :P
I believe that the issue with the Avid vs FCP situation is that Avid are understandably locked into protecting their high-end user base and so while they have the tools available to take on FCP they can't afford to do it.
On the other hand FCP has become a "Mac seller" for Apple. People are buying Macintosh computers just to get FCP. Yes, it does bring all the problems of a developing product, but their sales turnover allow sufficient development funds to overcome this.
Of course FCP is a threat to Avid. I'll bet they're now kicking themselves that they didn't buy it when it was on offer. Adobe see it as such a serious threat that they withdrew Premiere from the Apple market. It will be interesting to see what happens with AE now that Apple are taking that on, too.
I'm not willing as a general rule to make predictions on future trends - I can remember the prediction in the early days of computing that there would only be room in the world for six computers. However I believe that if Avid can't address this situation promptly, within five years they will be largely a spent force.
Maybe the Pinnacle takeover will help them. However they have given as their reason that the acquisition will allow them to target sections in the high end of the market that they aren't currently reaching.
E_Tedeschi
15-06-2005, 01:52 PM
JWRL, if you mean Motion is taking on AE, I'm not sure there's a big threat there.
Motion's compositing tools seem fairly primitive compared to AE, they have a long long way to go there!
rachelw
15-06-2005, 02:09 PM
FCP realtime is a bit pptht. AS for the rendering, I don't have too much trouble with my system insofar as the rendering is concerned. I am running a digitalvoodoo flexicard. However sometimes when you make changes the render file associated with that clip will come back to haunt you for a stray frame here and there, sometimes you need to actually reinsert the clip - it's annoying and shouldn't happen.
Also because of it's tendency to render everything under the sun, and re-render when you make changes, you wind up with a massive cache of render files. the Media manager is crap at handling this. I usually go in manually and delete them. It can be a real pain.
My advice is to go the PC, I had to go with G5 and FCP at work for bugetary reasons, that was before life got hip and cheap and you could get a DS for nuttin - PC has a lot of advantages, and I've personally discovered a multitude of system instabilities and bugs existant in the new G5s. there's less power to the usb hubs so external equipment on your system can cause instability and crashes, there's not enough firewire ports to really make anybody happy. It's really really crashy if you are an intense user. I've got a raid array, backup firewire drive and a server attached to mine. It's weird how jam-packed it is just with that setup.
I actually have an easier time using the same software at home on my g4 laptop. G5 is the new mac classique.
FCP is lame compared to avid but unless you are a very savvy user you'll probably be alright, however theres some great functions in avid that FCP designers just haven't quite been able to duplicate.
The other problem - and this is related to the 'can fcp manage rushes from 600 reels issue- is that fcp gets antsy once you start working with a large project. A colleague once told me that your project bin is kind of weird, that basically every item of media associated to your project can be in separate bins, but that all of the media is accessible even if that bin is not open, causing your system to run harder once your project gets bigger. I actually offload my media onto a server which I can disconnect if needed; but why should you have to??? I have cut a doco from a few hundered tapes in fcp and I have to say towards the end it was doing weird things, flasing up frames of different clips on the timeline in odd places, it was just not coping with the amount of material and the length of the project, which was only an hour's duration. It included a mixture of (yuck) dv footage, animation and other imported footage and stills. It was just too much for the poor dear and in the end the doco was trapped in the system incapable of playout. Due to budgetary considerations we couldn't take an edl elsewhere to finish, which is why we cut fcp anyhoo, but really it's poo poo.
I looked at vegas once, it seemed a bit simple but usable. I wouldn't touch it because I'm a bit funny about investing in something that I don't instantly like the looks of.
I know pc don't have nice chassis like macs but really the mac is a curious and frustrating beast.
They are darn cute though. I really just want to have one of each. Someday. Sigh....
Rachel, your comments about weird stability issues match my experience on the one feature film that I cut on FCP. I was reluctant to cite this as an issue because it was a while ago - around version 2.5, I think - and things could have changed. It's sad that apparently they haven't.
I've also found that with multiple disc drives unless you're very careful with FCP rendered seems to go into all sorts of arbitrary locations, making quite hard to control.
I second the USB port issue. I had a serious problem on a G4 which was highly unstable - arbitary crashes, freezes, whatever. It turned out to be a faulty USB mouse pulling the port down and bringing the whole computer with it.
Finally, I passed on the comment about Vegas because it was raised by someone claiming to be a dyed-in-the-wool Avid editor. He took the line that for his workflow the audio tools in Vegas were attractive. Given its pedigree I guess that's not too surprising. As the thread which that was part of has developed the attitude of contributors seems to be that Vegas is worth watching, but not necessarily buying just yet. Several were taking up a crossgrade offer that Sony have made, because with that offer they saw it as cheap enough to buy to play with.
Its wierd, because my expeience with Avid has been that it's unstable, crashes several times a day, and loses settings.
I wonder if there is some sort of .. electrical aura... that we all have - some that upset FCP and some that upset Avid? :P
Things I don't like about the Avid are - the way the filters have to be stacked on the timeline. After half a dozen effects I find it hard to tell whats going on where anymore.
The interface - its ugly, and it seems like the windows never fit neatly into whatever number of screens you have. And the keyboard. Looks like it was designed for a Kindy class.
I also don't like the way it handles media - it's hard to tell what's what on the drive, and it's not as simple to pass bits on to other apps or machines.
And the other apps. Not fun and not anywhere near as useful as Soundtrack, Motion, Livetype, Garageband and the DVD apps.
And the way it crashes. Sometimes before the project even opens.
And the Avid-L community vs the FCPUG community.
The Mac suite makes me want to play. The Avid suite feels like a long hard slog ahead.
BUT. The two are very similar really. It's not like you can't use one if you use the other, and in the end I think it comes down to what kind of electricity your body generates. Viva that difference :) Probably noen of us could remotely afford any of this gear if there was a NLE monopoly.
Your Avid shouldn't crash...see a doctor!
Jude, I can only second Daz's comment. You're dealing with a faulty machine there, which needs maintenance. It seems to me that you need to check at least one of your hard drives on that system. It sounds like it could be failing.
And the same to all of you who say that Macs are screwy. :) All the macs I care for are fine. Stable, never miss a beat, don't do weird things with media. But the Avid - which is maintained by station engineers, is not.
*shrug* It's chemistry I tell ye.
I'm not saying Macs are screwy. I love 'em!
My point was that Avid is a more sophisticated and reliable tool for film editing than FCP. Stands to reason, after at least 10 years more research and tens if not hundreds of thousands more users world wide.
If you lock yourself into one platform and one application on that platform you may very well miss out on useful tools, Jude. I have used and continue to use FCP, Avid (from DV to MC), Premiere, Lightworks, and Pinnacle Liquid Edition and both PC and Mac platforms. I hope that it continues that way.
That said, there is a known and well documented fault condition that can occur with a G4 USB mouse which can bring the entire system down. I just cited that case because it happened to me, which was how I found out about it. The only other crash that I have had in the last two years was due to a hard disc failure also on a Mac, and that lost me a week's work.
In the past I have also done software development on both Mac and PC platforms, and I can tell you Jude, that there is no such thing as a totally stable computer. Prices of memory, processors, and disc drives are all being aggressively pushed down, and that will inevitably bring higher incidence of faults - on whatever computer platform that you choose.
And I don't care who is doing the maintenance on your Avid system, it is faulty. The fact that your settings are being continually trashed means either the disc that they are being saved to is dodgy, or something else is overwriting them. Either way there is still a fault.
Sorry - what I meant is that if you have the sort of problems that people are saying are faults with FCP it's likely that there is something wrong with the computer, just like there is something wrong with the Avid system I know (not in the biblical sense.. )
It seems that if something goes wrong on an FCP (or premiere, or casablanca or whatever) system everyone starts going .. oh well, crappy software... not as good as Avid.. but if something goes wrong on an Avid its .. there's something wrong with the system. What I'm saying is - if you have weirdness, it's likely there's something wrong with the computer.
I agree that the Avid must be faulty. Not much I can do about it, though.
E_Tedeschi
22-06-2005, 11:46 PM
Jude - after today, I am very tempted to say to Michelle:
BUY A PC!
It's two days before a VERY tight deadline, and after a very late night working on the Mac, Enzo enters the edit suite very early in the morning to get a headstart. He presses the power button to boot the Mac, hears the familiar Apple startup sound and then.... nothing. Trying not to panic, he powers down the G5, and starts it again - nothing.
AAAARRGH!!
This is the third Mac that has done this to me this year. They seem to spontaneously decide to not boot (and always right before a major deadline, I might add). I figured - every computer manufacturer/system integrator produces a dud unit now and then - but after three different Macs (and a lot of Mac user forums on the web that echo my nightmare), I'm starting to worry.
Half a day later, and everything was recovered - no major data loss (only time!), and it seems to have somehow originated from a corrupt FCP project file.
In all my years using PC NLEs, I have never had one die as spontaneously r without warning as these G5s.
If this happens again, I may have to turn against my newfound MacFriend!
Jude said:
"I agree that the Avid must be faulty. Not much I can do about it, though."
Get it fixed!
Enzo said:
"In all my years using PC NLEs, I have never had one die as spontaneously r without warning as these G5s"
I have seen and heard quite a few complaints about G5 reliability. Fancy having to liquid cool the chips! No wonder Mac are dumping IBM and moving to INTEL for their processors. Not to mention the fact that we should have had a G5 or equivalent Powerbook by now. Very disappointing.
File corruption is the bane of our digital existence. I am so paranoid I back up every project 3 different ways at the end of each day. I also have 3 sets of all media files: LANshare, SCSI and firewire. If triple redundancy is good enough for NASA, its good enough for me!
P.S. The LAN is mirrored, so I guess that makes 4. Excellent!
Daz, do you back media or just projects? I've always been a great believer in the law of diminshing returns in this respect. I regard my original tapes as being backups anyway, so I just back up any artwork plus of course the project files.
I figure that if I lose media a batch digitise or import will fix that usually faster than a restore.
Daz said
"Get it fixed!"
It's not under my control. But it died a few days ago, so they were forced to do something about it. It's never been good since it was installed brand new six months ago, so I think the fact that it imploded was probably the best thing for it.
Originally posted by JWRL
Daz, do you back media or just projects?<snip> I regard my original tapes as being backups anyway<snip>
I figure that if I lose media a batch digitise or import will fix that usually faster than a restore.
I do back up media. I'm working on long form docos, often over 4-6 months. The amount of media runs to thousands of mediafiles - I think 7 thousand on my last job "Geldof in Africa". Redigitising would be a pain, as the rushes were HD and using the deck is expensive. Not to mention hundreds of rough commentaries done on microphone. By his Geldofness, who is not readily available for retakes! Also archive material on VHS, no timecode. Graphics imported willy nilly from sources all over the shop. You get the idea.
These media are not easily recaptured. For the sake of a few hundred squids I can simply drag the media onto a firewire drive and rest easy. Could probably automate that if I was more computer literate.
Years ago I was working at a place that had a Unity crash. 10 cutting rooms had a couple of weeks off while the house redigitised all the rushes, then several more frustrating days of putting the above mentioned in manually. Total cost in lost time was about £25k. I thought to myself: that will never happen to me!
Originally posted by Jude
It's never been good since it was installed brand new six months ago.
Sounds like a lemon.
Then again, my Adrenaline was pretty tetchy when I first got it. Worst offence was a delay of a few seconds between pressing play and the thing rolling into action. The wire benders were all over it, but couldn't find anywthing wrong. I was about to heave it out the window when we discovered a failing drive in a four way stripe. Replaced the drive and it was as good as gold.
There's another one downstairs that has a similar problem, but the guy using it just puts up with it.
Moral of the story: if the kit is not working properly, insist on getting it sorted. Your time is too precious to waste on kit that is not working properly.
Postscript: I once pulled an entire documentary series out of a facility that had bad equipment and was not providing adequate technical support. It can be done...mind you, I never get invited to their Christmas parties anymore!
Reference the backup issue: Whew! What a monster! With a similar project I'd probably do the same - and then lose sleep over whether I had enough backups anyway!
That's right...a monster in every way. Then finished on Friday, a few clicks later and all that data is gone. Spooky, isn't it?
Originally posted by Daz
Then finished on Friday, a few clicks later and all that data is gone. Spooky, isn't it?
Ack. I hate the part where you delete a whole project at the end of a job. I'm always paranoid that I've missed something in the archiving process and the client is going to walk back in the door needing changes the minute after it's all gone.
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