All You Mac Video Wizards - Best Video Mac Vote

[Sqye]

Help.

I'm a PC guy.

I'm trying to help a friend select a professional video production/ editing machine for commercial grade work.

They have a bunch of serious projects with deadlines.

They already have an arsenal of large external USB drives.

They're hoping to stay south of 3k - 3.5k for the new machine.

I'm checking out all the Mac forums, reading all the data available at all the Apple resources online I can think of.

But I also figured I'd go to the source here at Gearslutz.

I know some of you guys are video producers & editors, as well.

So I'd love your help regarding the best video machines available.

Currently, we're thinking G5 w/ Final Cut Pro and After Effects, etc.

We're assuming dual processor, SATA drives, minimum 2 gb RAM.

We need to establish:

1. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE OS
2. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE SOFTWARE
3. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE HARDWARE, INCLUDING

a. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE RAM TYPE
b. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE DRIVES
c. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE BUS
D. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE VIDEO CARD

4. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE TECH SUPPORT

Are there any companies, including Apple, that offer machines optimized for video production, or video machine packages bundled w/ FC Pro, AE, etc.?

I know all this stuff is subjective, but I figured I'd probabaly get some reliably consistent data and feedbakc from you slutz

Thanks, in advance - you guys are the best.

[terminal3]

Originally Posted by Sqye

So I'd love your help regarding the best video machines available.

Currently, we're thinking G5 w/ Final Cut Pro and After Effects, etc.

We're assuming dual processor, SATA drives, minimum 2 gb RAM.

We need to establish:

1. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE OS
2. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE SOFTWARE
3. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE HARDWARE, INCLUDING

a. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE RAM TYPE
b. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE DRIVES
c. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE BUS
D. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE VIDEO CARD

4. BEST/ MOST RELIABLE TECH SUPPORT

Are there any companies, including Apple, that offer machines optimized for video production, or video machine packages bundled w/ FC Pro, AE, etc.?

1. It'll have to be OSX if you're going Apple - and if they're buying new it'll be Tiger (10.4.x) - no real choice there.

2. Final Cut Pro is the cheapest way to get into the basic edit. Avid is probably used in more post-houses still, but there are an increasing number using FCP, and it's perfectly possible to create pro-grade output with FCP.

3a. Apple memory is expensive - go with Crucial, the price isn't the all-out cheapest but the RAM is guaranteed and I've never had problems with it.

3b. USB drives are (generally) no good for video. Firewire will be the bare minimum for external drives, and that will handle full-res DV/DVCAM and also HDV. If they want to do any kind of SD editing (betacam, digibeta, dvcpro50 etc) they're going to have to look at getting some kind of RAID array. Firewire 800-interface drives can be RAID 0'd but I've never personally done it and therefore cannot vouch for the reliability. There are apparently some good external SATA-RAID enclosures that use a SATA PCI interface. I've also never worked with these, either, my experience has always been with Xserve systems for SD material.

3c. Not sure what you mean by 'bus.' The system bus on a G5 is fixed...

3D. The video card itself isn't as important for basic editing, but could come into play with really high-res graphics work. I would recommend simply ordering the best card possible with the stock system, although I know one of the cards recently on offer took up two PCI slots which is kind of not good, because of what I'm about to write:

To do SD work they'll need to get another expansion I/O card like a Decklink or a Kona card, which will be an additional expense and requires a slot of course - if you have two slots taken up by the basic video card, and if you need the SATA PCI car for the RAID array, then you can see that we're quickly running out of slots.

A hugely overlooked (and possibly very expensive) part of the whole process is the ingest and monitoring: obviously, good audio monitoring is essential, but there are plenty of threads on that. Two DVI monitors will make the editing process much easier, but to produce proper work ideally they will need a nice broadcast monitor as well. Not terribly cheap. They will also need decks for ingest.. if they're producing a lot of stuff and going through 100 tapes a week they can expect to wear out their camcorder heads pretty quick if they're simply using the camera playback to ingest.

Anyway, one can easily put together a nice system for DV/DVCAM/HDV work for the budget you describe, but it will be significantly more difficult to put together a system capable of uncompressed SD-or-higher editing within that figure.

Tech support: you can pay Apple for a video service contract. Can't remember the price. I've never had occassion to call upon Apple service and support for anything more than an iBook hard drive replacement one time, so I also can't comment on whether they're good or bad. Third-party vendors may also do the same, and I'm sure there are turnkey solutions as you suggest... I know here in the UK many vendors will do custom build systems for video..

Anyway, those are my most basic thoughts... as you say, it can be subjective, it does depend on what they have to achieve format-wise and we all know what it means to cut corners around here...

Cheers & good luck!

[jdunn]

I'm not an expert, and the above post pretty much covers it, but anyway.....

Firewire is the de facto standard interface for digital video these days. But for storage you may do well with the PCI card->external SATA raid setup that I'm using. Actually, I'm only running one drive in the 2-drive enclosure, but it's made to use 2 drives in a RAID configuration.

Here's a link.

OWC/Seritek link

Depending which G5 model you get, they have a PCI-X card too I think. Or is that gone already? For drives, the Western Digital Raptor 10,000 rpm SATA drive is what I'm using, but some people like the Maxtor 7,200 rpm w/ 16 MB cache.

I would maybe go with the cheapest dual G5 model currently being sold. It will give you plenty of power while leaving room in your budget for peripherals. The Apple monitors are good, but I think you can find something of similar quality for cheaper. View Sonic is usually good, and La Cie has some new LCDs out. For video editing, I think one of the most important specs you want to look at in monitors is the delay time in ms. 25-35 ms delay time is common and probably acceptable, but if you see a monitor w/ much less delay time, that may be a good choice.

[Geert van den Berg]

Final Cut Pro or Avid Express Pro and the fastest machine you can buy!

[Sqye]

Thanks so much for your detailed advice and feedback, terminal3 and jdunn. I knew I could count on detailed advice from some proper gearslutz. You guys are the best