[Craig Brooks]

I know this wasn’t supposed to a bash, but I guess it’s hard to talk about NLEs without some passion. That being said, here’s my two cents.

1. I make everything from :30 spots to full length docs and I sell my work for a living, so my toolset is important.

2. I’ve tried about every known PC based NLE on the planet including Avid. And after 2 years of pain and expense I switched to the Mac and haven’t looked back.

3. Both platforms have their issues, but Apple draws the creative crowd, ergo, the creative software customers.

4. Adobe came back to the Mac platform for many reasons. Of importance is the recognition that there’s a considerable market share being overlooked. The other is that they didn’t draw the after-market crowd they hoped to pull over to the Windows platform.

5. On a head-to-toe MAC solution, Apple can influence the hardware and software experience to a greater extent than Microsoft. (This also applies to AVID dedicated systems as well.) To me, this is the most important factor in creating a stable environment.

All in all, any system can choke given tons of footage and a lack of adequate resources, but my final take is that Apple has nailed down a pretty decent offering with FCP and their hardware. I also use AE with very few problems. Granted it doesn’t integrate as well as the entire Apple suite, but it gets the job done.

If you think you have it rough, try editing on Linux.

– Play friendly,

-CIAO