Before I even think to begin to start this plea for advice. I am not a MAC or PC fanatic. I have used both. They both have issues. Half the time when I'm at work, I have to restart my mac because it crashes during a render on a simple SD video edit, so no preaching about the stability of MAC over PC. IT won't work. They are both good and they both suck. BUT... As an old fan of Adobe Premier, I find Final Cut to be a nice tool for editing. I have a Sony VAIO lap top at home and I just installed Avid Express on it, which does a good job well and good, but I just bought a camera that shoots and compresses in Quicktime H264, which plays nicer with Final Cut than it does with Avid (obviously, since they are both from Apple). So I thought to maybe sell my VAIO and get a MAC book with Final Cut pro, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea. The VAIO talks really nice with my PS3 (for obvious reasons also), and I'm not even sure if I can set my MAC up as a server for my PS3 and 360 the way I do with my PC (I'm especially worried about my 360 because of the Arch Enemies thing). So on one hand, I love the FC software, and on the other hand, my Sony now has a competent editing software and plays nicer with the PS3. So anyone who has edited longer on a mac, can you give me any "non bias" recommendations on reasons why I should buy one, or even confirm that the MAC still works with the PS3 and 360 as a media server, etc etc. I like both companies, MS and APPLE, so putting down one or the other doesn't hurt my feelings (unless you are quoting those BS apple commercials to a person who reboots his mac every day because I breathed on it). Please help... I feel like editing at home again.... Oh, one more PLUS for MAC... I can take work home with me...BIG PLUS.
I doubt you can stream from a MAC to the 360 but maybe there is some middleware in existence that can help you with that. Or, maybe you could set up a dual-boot MAC and have Windows installed so you can have the best (and worst) of both worlds. Since MACs started using Intel processors I believe that setting them up with Windows is much easier now than it used to be. How is that good? If you mean "telecommute" then I guess it's a good thing, but if you mean "work after hours" we gotta have a sit down.
Well, sometimes we do fun projects at work, and when 3PM rolls around I kinda wish I could continue, since my Mojo is peaking. I'm really fond of my VAIO, but god damn Vista sucks my balls. I miss XP.
I'm spoiled at work. I have a MacBook with Final Cut 6 on it and a desktop with Premiere Pro CS3 with a Matrox RT.X2 capture system. We've come to a point where the interfaces are almost identical, whether it's FC, Premiere, or Avid. Personally, I lean more towards Premiere. FC is good, but when it comes to exporting it leans a lot towards the .MOV side of things. FC also tends to have problems importing .mpg and .avi files into the project bin unless you've got certain codecs installed, whereas I've never had a problem working with any video file with Premiere Pro (yet). That and Pro will export to almost any video format under the sun. Hope that helps.
connect360, works like a charm. lets me stream my whole itunes library and movies folder direct to my 360. LET THE FLAME WARS BEGIN!
What I also noticed is that FC does not like image sequences, not to mention, you can't lock or select multiple tracks at the same time. And unlike Premier, you can't lasso and copy multiple keyframes. I just love FC's timeline options (Paste Attributes, etc etc.) I am so torn. I'm thinking I want to keep my VAIO, but I am not sure.
Premiere and Premiere Pro have started incorporating a lot of those timeline options including the different Paste Attribute options (which I agree, is VERY handy). And Adobe's gotten a lot better with their use and customization of hot keys, which is something I always liked about Final Cut.
Yeah, Avid spoiled me to death on shortcuts. It was a pain getting used to new ones on Final Cut (and I didn't want to change them, because I realized that maybe they were more versatile). It's nice to see premier doing the same, but I always found premier's shortcuts to be pretty good too. At the end of the day, I wish I could just have both systems, but that would be expensive.
