Premiere system purchasing advice, Mac Vs. PC.

[Neil Myers]

My worry for you is that you are not familiar with the PC. Personally, I prefer the PC, but I have been using Wintel forever. I have also use Macs from time to time.

But the learning curve on how to use a PC for someone who has never used one seems like a lot to pile on someone’s plate. Premiere on the Mac runs great (we have several in our company).

If you do decide on a PC the things I would focus on are:

– Fast processor with lots of cores.
– Lots of RAM (12GB min, 24GB is better)
– Fast RAID system. Focus on how you are attaching. Internal, at bus speed? eSATA? Etc. All of that can make a huge difference.
– nVidia CUDA. I am not convinced this is as useful as the marketing says, but it is not expensive to make sure you have it.

I would be happy to send the spec we are using. Send me an email at neilm at connectmarketing.com.

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

[Jeff Pulera]

Neil,

Just curious – your signature line lists CS4, so are you actually using CS5, and if not, how do you know if Nvidia makes a big difference or not?

When I switch Mercury Playback to software only mode, I see a big difference in performance.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Neil Myers]

Sorry, I had not updated my signature for a while. I do use CS5.

The reason I say it doesn’t make much difference is that it doesn’t for me. I was hoping that was the bottleneck in my system that if I removed would allow smooth playback in the timeline, but it didn’t do that (for me).

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS5 Master Suite, 3DS

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

One other factor to add to this equation is that you can build much more powerful PP systems on windows then Mac. If you want a real powerhouse, Windows is the only option.

Wait 6 months and you can have Thunderbolt too, most likely.

[Neil Myers]

How so? Several of the editors in our company have screaming high-end, 8-core Mac systems that seem very, very fast. In what ways are you finding Windows systems can beat Mac?

I am not challenging your statement, I am wanted to better understand.

In which metrics are you finding Windows is unbeatable?

Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS5 Master Suite, 3DS

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

I figured you’d ask.

First, the GPU selection. Assuming no other bottlenecks, The Nvidia GTX580 absolutely beats the pants off the Quadro 4000 in PP and costs less then half as much.

Mac Pro’s have never carried the highest bracket of Processors. The current Mac Pro offers the Xeon X5670 as the highest end option. At the time of the refresh there were two faster Xeons available. Now there are four.

RAM. This is easy. You want 288GB of ram? It’ll cost you but you can get it. Realistically, 72GB can be had for $800, (less, if you have a MB with 18 ram slots.) Apple charges $3500 for that. (actually, $3500 for only 64GB)

PCIe slots. With Intel’s next chipset, having 4 or more 16x slots will be common. If DiVinci can make the multi GPU thing work properly on windows the possibilities could be amazing.

You get the idea.

I use a MacBook Pro for my every day computing and a Windows Monster to edit on. I’m very happy with the setup. I love my Mac, and I’ll probably replace it with another one, but with DiVinci coming to Windows I have zero interest in using a Mac for my professional work.

[Tim Kolb]

Mac Pros don’t have enough PCIe slots for my system…Fibre Channel, Video I/O, 2 dual-head display cards (4 displays)…I can’t wedge what I need into a Mac. I switched from Macs after a decade of using them through the 90s…

The bottom line is that if you have an established system builder or integrator set up a system…it may even rival the pricing of a similar Mac…but it will also rival its stability in my experience.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Matthew Woods]

Hi folks,

Both our editor and I are primarily mac people. I’m the motion graphics / interactive programmer in the company, but I’m also the more techie person in the office so I usually end up purchasing and setting up the machines as well. I’m comfortable installing hard drives, memory, and PCI cards in machines. I never buy them directly from Apple. I’ve never built a PC from scratch though. I am somewhat comfortable with windows. I have to install museum installations on Windows all the time. Our editor used to own a windows computer at home, but is a mac convert.

My biggest concern with windows is maintenance. We don’t have a full time IT guy. Back when we had PCs as the office machines we had a freelance guy that came in to maintain them. When they got a virus it wasted a lot of both my time, and our producers whose machines were down. I dread a virus on an edit suite. I curse at all the drivers I have to track down when I am trying to reinstall windows on a pc. It still seems like you really have to know what you are doing, and baby the system a lot to keep Windows running at peek efficiency. My personal theory, is that the reason IT guys don’t like macs is that if they caught on, it would put many of them out of business.

My biggest concern with mac, is their trend towards prosumerism. We do very high res res programs, with lots of layers. We need a lot of power. We have been waiting for a mac pro refresh, but its been a year and a half since the last update, and the latest rumors on the apple rumor sites are saying that Apple may be ditching the mac pro line as unprofitable. I would normally discount this rumor but what they did to Final Cut Pro X has me worried.

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Steve Brame]

A virus doesn’t just happen. It is introduced by very specific activities that should not be done on a system as vital as an editing machine.

Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions

[Tim Kolb]

…and to pile on to Steve’s response…I run McAfee antivirus onall my machines and really don’t run into virus problems. My daughter’s laptop is always an issue, but she ignores my advice about visiting these various pirate TV show websites, which are created by…pirates.

A professional edit workstation shouldn’t double as a personal machine…simple as that. I’ve been using Windows since about the second drop of OSX, and I’ve had very little problem with viruses…in fact I can’t remember having a virus on an editing machine.

Drivers are another issue. Admittedly, with the wide variety of peripherals and component combinations, you can get drivers that conflict or have some weird interaction. However, an edit machine shouldn’t be constantly tweaked and updated once it’s working well either…so it’s a matter of management.

Apple is not immune from updates of one thing that break another thing. In fact, when it happens in Windows, the idea that the hardware, the OS and the application are all made by different companies all working separately is the culprit…when Apple does an OS or QT upgrade that messes up FCP, there really is no excuse is there? Yet it has happened…

I am independent…I’m not an IT guy by any stretch…and I’ve used Windows for nearly a decade. AE render times were one of te deciding factors for me back when I switched as 32 it Windows machines just torched 64 bit Macs…now with everyone on Intel, it comes down to Apple’s willingness to keep up with Intel’s advancements, which I think they’ve been doing more with the iMacs than with the Mac Pros…

If you have a professional integrator build the system, you’ll pay more, but you’ll have that support that you want to have as a security blanket (and it’s something I value as well…I have a 4+ year old system built by BOXX that I can still call for support on and they simply call up the build number and assist me).

The system builders I mentioned in the previous post work similarly, I’m sure.

This concept of “building” a Windows machine is what scares everyone, and frankly it would scare me too. I’ve never built a machine myself, I wouldn’t have a clue what combinations on motherboard, CPU, power supply, etc would be harmonious…professional system integrators have done this homework and that’s why they’ll typically have specific component combinations that they deal with…they know the components, they can support and ‘tweak’ the components to where the system performs properly, the cases they use have been tested for temperature control, etc, etc, etc…

…which are the factors that do raise the purchase price, but that also raise the system’s ability to “just run” everyday…just like a Mac.

As late as last year, I listened to a well-known FCP teacher tell me that students “just don’t get the whole A/B thing in Premiere’s timeline” when the last time he would have seen that would have been prior to 2003…it’s outdated information. Much of the Windows dread that Mac users have is also a product of another era.

It would be like me saying that I can’t use FCP because it doesn’t have audio level meters…that was true in version 1.0, but it has nothing to do with recent reality.

I made the switch from Mac to Windows in 2001-2003. It wasn’t nearly as wacky as I was afraid it would be (and at that time, the speed dividend was substantial)…and Windows 7 is in a different category than Windows 2000 Pro/XP Pro.

You wouldn’t want to waste your time to build your own Mac…why would you build your own Windows machine?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor