24p documentary: FCP or Vegas? Mac or PC?.

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DVX Users,

I posted this same question in the Vegas NLE section, but wanted to do so here also. I have happily used Vegas 4.0 for a documentary series Im producing for almost 6 months now, but as my PC is aging into its twilight years, I'm contemplating purchasing a mac G5 and switching to FCP4. I need true broadcast quality for my program, and I'm wondering what the advantage of FCP4, with a new mac G5, would be compared to my Vegas 4.0 NLE on my "souped up" old 1.5 GHZ Hewlett Packard with new 256mb AGP video card with dual monitor capability, SDRAM expanded to 512mb, with an external hard drive of 120gb? Based on what I seem to read and hear, would a Mac G5 truly be that much better? I know one obvious difference is the speed of the mac G5 with its 64 bit and dual processors, but is that all? No offense to mac users, but for $4500 I can wait a few more hours while my rendering completes on my old pc and go have a few beers if that is the only real difference. Im sure there is more to the story here.. thats why Im throwing this out there for anyone to reply.... thanks-

Mike
 
Re: 24p documentary: FCP or Vegas? Mac or PC?.

Mike-

I'm using the dual 2ghz G5 with 2 gigs of ram. It's an amaaaazing machine. Sure, there may be some PC's faster, but for me, this is my tool of choice. I won't go into the mac vs pc thing. It's tired. What you should do, (if you can), is find a G5 with Final Cut on it, and play play play. Maybe CompUSA or somewhere that has macs. Or an apple store if you live near one. I think you'll find a substantial difference between your HP and the high-end G5. Then again, you may just love Vegas and the PC side and decide to pick up one of those smokin Alienware PC's (nice nice as well). Give FCP a shot though, it's a very powerful tool.
 
Re: 24p documentary: FCP or Vegas? Mac or PC?.

Ditto to Kai. I used to think the G5's were the fastest thing out there, but got my butt kicked in a debate here by someone and found out that there are some screamin' 64-bit PC's out there. So, it all comes down to personal choice.

My personal choice is the Mac. I love working with the Unix (a throwback to my job), It's rock-solid. No hardware or software conflicts for me. And FCP is awesome. Very professional. There have been several major motion pictures edited on FCP (Cold Mountain was the latest big one I think), so its professionalism is unquestioned in my mind.

The G5's are awesome. Plus with macs you get a nice little community thing goin' kinda like we got here with the DVX. I'm sure the Sony VX2000 users look at us like PC users look at Mac users.

HTH,
Chico
 
Re: 24p documentary: FCP or Vegas? Mac or PC?.

I'm also using a G5 1.8 dual w/4gigs of ram with Final Cut and could not be happier. There's no doubt faster and fancier combo's but this just works.
 
Re: 24p documentary: FCP or Vegas? Mac or PC?.

Thanks everyone! Its good to know both kinds of software and systems have their strengths and followers. Ill probably stick with Vegas for now- maybe upgrade to 5.0. However, I will take the advice and use FCP- I need to edit a project shot in 50 mbps and Im unable to use Vegas for that- (another issue posted on the Vegas forum), and FCP can accomodate 50 mbps. After that, I should have a really good idea how the two compare, and will share my knowledge readily with anyone interested.
 
Re: 24p documentary: FCP or Vegas? Mac or PC?.

Mike,

That question seems to comes up time and time again.   It is cool that you are thinking hard about this decision and taking your time.   I have some thoughts on the whole Vegas vs. FCP thing, but before I start, just let me say that I've been using Macs and PCs in professional edit suites for over 10 years, but have only ever owned Macs at home.    I have never used Vegas for a complete project, but have "played around" on it at a friend's.   Now for the sales pitch:

Just remember that Apple spends mega-bucks on research and development to serve the film & TV industry - and they listen carefully to feedback.   They are always ahead of the pack with the new software or cool toys that everyone wants - and they support/integrate the latest technologies first (like their cooperative alliance with Panasonic.)   Just look at all of the new FCP stuff they released this weekend at NAB!  

When you own a mac, you really feel taken care of...you'll never get a support guy blaming your motherboard manufacturer for an incompatablility with his software.   They make it all, so they know it all works together. (along with the awesome integration of quicktime and iLife products into the whole operating system - the "Once you go mac...you'll never go back!" approach.)

Ultimately, Apple makes good software so that they can sell more hardware.  I think that is evident in the high R&D vs. low retail price of their software, and they are a unique computer company for that reason.
Sonic Foundry (I guess Sony now) is a great software company, but everything is still dependent on Windows and compatible hardware, and I sure wouldn't want to get a virus right when the client is showing up to view the rough cut!

One last note...  Don't bother comparing gHz speeds when shopping for Macs vs. PC.   The best way to compare speeds in a practical software vs software work environment.   Workflow speed is what is important.   At the end of the day, what system will you depend on to meet your deadline?

Tim


Interesting note: I do still sometimes work on an Avid MC8000 v5.5 running on a 33Mhz Macintosh Quadra 950 - yes 33Mhz! - and it works just as well as it did in 1993 when we cut a feature film, and hundreds of commercials.   I can't say as much for the Avid 1000, v11 running on Windows 2000, IBM CPU, that I used at the CBC recently.   It was contastly crashing/locking up - and generally doing things that made no sense.   I'll stop my rant now before I say something I'll regret.  ::)
 
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