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Avid – Mac or PC?
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Couple of quick notes:
1) One reason why the platform war is over for Avid customers is that you can run it on both a Mac and a PC…or both. I used Avids so often on both platforms, even in the same project, that I kept forgetting where I was.
2) Avid began as a Mac-only company in 1987, and shipped its first product in 1989, the Mac-only Avid Film Composer. Film Composer changed the film business so completely that it was awarded an Oscar in 1998 – while it was still a Mac-only product from a company whose tools (including Pro Tools) were only available on Mac.
This was of course before Macromedia developed Key Grip, eventually named Final Cut – on a PC!!!
3) Avid products made their way to PCs when massive waves of creatives using PCs kept banging on the door, trying to give Avid big bags of money. You hear about this now because — who knew? — there really are massive waves of creatives using PCs.
Not that there was no bet-hedging for Avid (and Adobe, whose products were also originally Mac-only) in moving to the PC. I’m just saying that, for a publicly traded company, there is no comfort without money. Neither Avid nor Adobe would have done it in a million years if there were no waves of PC-using creatives with big bags of money. And once they saw the money was there, they would have made the move regardless of what Apple did.
4) All of which is to echo the advice above – use whichever OS you like. Or both. 🙂
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Well, if you are thinking about getting a laptop and a workstation, you could also choose one to be Mac and the other PC. Really doesn’t matter, you can painlessly take stuff back and forth.
My studio has a PC-MC and a PC-Symphony on Unity, my laptop is a MacBook Pro. The PC’s are all Vista, and if you plan on doing any longform, LEAVE XP, and go for Vista Biz 64-bit with 8GB of RAM. Frees up a LOT of RAM for the application.
My MacBook has 3 partitions, one for Leopard (to run MC), one for Snow Leopard (for email and fun), one Bootcamp partition for Win Vista Biz 64bit.
On all PC’s (and the Bootcamp partition) I have installed MediaFour’s MacDrive, and on all Macs I have installed Paragon NFTS-for-Mac. That way, you can use Mac and PC drives, without ever having to think about it.
The upside on the Mac side is that you get to install some great helper apps (like the FCS bundle). The upside on the PC is that you have some other great tools there (TMPGEnc, MetaFuze, Nero come to mind).
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And beware that new Macs come with Snow Leopard installed, which has not yet been qualified by Avid (yet). See https://community.avid.com/forums/p/76313/426540.aspx#426540 for details, since some folks are making it work.
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If you haven’t been on a Mac in a while check out this report.
Avid and FCP Preditor
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Anything worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
– Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield -
Hi All,
Well now that you’ve helped me make a platform decision (Mac over PC) now I find myself asking, “Mac O/S or bootcamp Windows on my Mac???”
Or is that the same argument?
Sorry to keep flogging this dead horse but I’ve recently been speaking to the Technical Director of a very prestigious Avid training centre/production house who’s led me to believe that PC version of Avid MC is more stable.
Sony HVR-Z5, Avid Media Composer v3
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I just bought a very slightly used 8-core 2.66 ghz Mac with 10.5.7 on it and Avid told me today that I can upgrpde to Snow Leopard with this configuration and Media Composer version 4.0.4 while running Quicktime 7.6.4. I plan on installing it tomorrow and seeing what happens. Jerry in Miami
Jerry in Miami
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Good news, I’m looking forward to hearing about your experience.
When you say Avid told you, what do you mean exactly. Is Snow Leopard support official?
Sony HVR-Z5, Avid Media Composer v3
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Avid Media Composer 4.0.4 is officially supported on Snow Leopard.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
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