MAC or PC?

[Eric Monroe]

I suppose it depends on the type of work you do. I just did the opposite. I have a Quad core PC with a 10k velociraptor C-drive, 2 TB raid zero setup for scratches and media, 8 GB of RAM, 1 GB graph card, running on WIN-7 64 bit. I switched over to a 13″ Macbook pro and the newest FCP…..and i am getting WAY better performance. FCP runs VERY smooth….I have been a PPro editor for about 5 years or so now, editing a many different systems, at work, and also with my own business, all have been above average machines, and still give the same result….mediocre, glitchy performance. PPro has alot of strong points, I will not bash it, but for what I am doing (long-form multicam stage productions) the mac and FCP have been an absolute God-send. I run Hitachi G-Raid (portable raid-0 harddrives) via FW800 for my scratches/media. Long as you have those, you are set.

My PC is now in my living room, hooked to a bigscreen TV and used for watching movies, and playing COD Modern Warfare 2.

[Vince Becquiot]

I think Eric makes some good points. Although, again, it’s all about your budget. First, do you absolutely need to edit on a laptop? If not, I certainly would recommend a solid PC tower, you can’t beat the bang for your bucks on a nice i7 DIY, or stick with well known brands, Dell, HP.

If you absolutely need a laptop, my recommendation is still a Macbook Pro (and this mainly is about service and reliability, not horsepower).

I have read many times however that win 7 runs faster on a Macbook pro that it does on many Pcs with higher hardware specs. It could be all bogus as I am not an engineer, but I can tell you that our i7s MBP are running very smoothly with CS5 and external SATA RAID.

And of course, you get the FCP option.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Eric Monroe]

Marco,

I dont know why I didnt think of this before….I run PPro CS4 on my 13″ Macbook Pro. It doesn’t run slow. It is not nearly as stable/reliable as FCP but it doesn’t run slow by any means…..in fact I can stream 3 tracks of 1920×1080 ProRes 422 video that are 45-60 min. each in duration in the multicam editor without any trouble. The key is the Hitachi external Raid-0 drives.

2 questions:

1. how are your scratch disks setup, and on what drive?

2. what type of footage are you editing? AVCHD, DV, HDV?

Also what are the specs on your Mac laptop? If you have an Intel-based Macbook pro you should be all set.

The specs on my macbook are as follows:

Purchased June of 2009
Macbook Pro 13″
2.26 Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB 1067 mhz DDR3 RAM (upgraded from the 2GB that came factory – Crucial.com for $64)
Nvidia 9400M Integrated graphics card (no separate video memory)
Seagate Momentus 7200rpm 2.5″ 500GB (C: drive – running OS & Applications ONLY – $130 Best Buy)
Hitachi 1TB G-Raid external Raid-0 drive ($199 B&H Photo.com)

Cheers

Eric

[Marco Malaca]

Sorry forgot to add the details:

I am currently using the late 2008 MBP unibody with 4 gigs or RAM.
My scratch Disk is a Lacie 1T connected via firewire 800.
I am currently using premiere pro CS5.
most of my footages are from canon DLSRs (5D and 7D).

i switched from FCP to Premiere pro CS5 because of the native support for DSLRs.

I need a new desktop for my video editing needs. My choice is to get an imac or a PC desktop.

thanks!

[Joe Marler]

I don’t think GPU acceleration is available for your Mac config. If you use any effects, that’s a huge difference. On Macs the only officially supported card for GPU acceleration is the expensive Quadro FX 4800. On PCs you can use many different cards.

I love the Mac OS interface, but if you spend most of your time within CS5 the app appears mostly the same between Windows 7 and Mac.

At the lower end of the desktop range the price difference between Mac and PC is less. But at the upper end typical of video editing the price differential is substantial.

I’d suggest pricing a quad-core i7-based PC with a 10k rpm boot drive and RAID 0 data drive, a lower-end nVidia card supported for GPU acceleration, then price the equivalent features/hardware (inc’l GPU acceleration) on a Mac. If the difference is too much to afford the Mac, get the PC.

PCs are widely available from various vendors with factory support for overclocking. So that’s another consideration — you aren’t limited to the stock CPU frequency.