What to buy for a video editing computer

[E4xtraordinary]

Hi Guys,

I am new on the forum, but i am sure I am going to like it here.

The school is looking to buy a new video editing computer. I have between £1000 & £1500 but surprisingly would not mind spending less!

Is a Mac (Probably an iMac with the new Chip) with final cut express an obvious choice?

I would like something that work quick and well. If I buy a PC would I get better value for money? Which software package should I have? I am looking for something more powerfull than Pinacle Studio, especially better than their latest version 10.x! Hardware wise what would you recommend to render video quickly!

Any advice will be VERY welcome,

Thank you very much,

Emmanuel

[danIT]

Having seen the school i work for buy 50 G5 power macs top of the range, i would recommend that you buy a PC. Nothing particularly wrong with using a mac and would usually recommend a mac but to be honest PC with loads of RAM and Adobe Premier 'you canny' beat it!

[ChrisC]

We've bought a few "media" stations, the only difference between them and our regular stations is the addedd memory and storage, well, they have faster processors.

Agree with Dan though, premier is a very easy to use program, even for people with no video editing experience.

Oh yea, just make sure you have firewire connections on them

Chris

[E4xtraordinary]

Adobe Premiere being £746 I was thinking going with a Mac and final cut which is only £110 and I believe sufficient for our needs... Plus the RAM not being free & a decent video card being quite expensive the money add up quite quickly and may even overrun the mac price for the same performance some people have told me. With the imac, I would already have all this plus a 20 inch screen!

I don't really know what to think, several people I have talked too swear only by Mac, but then it seems it is quite commun from Mac Lovers! I have never tried Mac, but would like to know what the fuss is all about...

Thank you for your help,

Emmanuel

[Dos_Box]

I would wait until August, buy a MAc running Bootcamp and run both the new Mac OS (Jaguar) and Windows together, side by side. After seeing this working at the EduGeek conference I was increadibly impressed. You can also drag and drop between the two OSs' VM style. That way you can use the iLife suite and still have a Windows machine.

[ChrisC]

Is it going to be on a network?

Look at pinnacle studio, is also good, or adobe premier elements (is a little watered down).

Pinnacle studio is going for around £90 for mediasuite.

Pinnacle Studio

Chris

[Alex]

we use these guys:

http://www.planetdv.net/Content/Edit...rkstations.asp

give them a call, see what they advise

[woody]

We have just bought 4 20" Intel iMacs. We are mainly a PC school and i am not a Mac Geek, but as soon as the deputy head said "video editing", I immediately thought "Mmmmm, Apple definately."

The iMac cost £1048 with the standard spec apart from 1gb ram rather than 512mb. This was from Apple themselves. And I must admit, the Apples are great. I have installed Bootcamp on one of them and dual booting in Windows looks easy. I am just waiting to get hold of an XP install disk with service pack 2 on, because my XP disk didn't pick up the partitions correctly.

iMovie is great for quick professional looking videos but you should go for final cut if you want to do more advanced stuff. OR, for middle of the range, you can get Final Cut Express which is probably the one I would go for but beware, Apple haven't recoded it as one of their 'Universal' Applications that will work on the new intel chips yet. Should be pretty soon though.

I have a copy of Final Cut Pro and it is pretty in depth. Pupils would definately need guidance on how to use.

Why go for a PC? If you were on a tight budget that would be a good reason, but if you have 1 - 1.5k then you would be silly to buy anything other than Mac. If you put together a PC with the same spec you get in a mac (and this is including the fantastic quality of screen inbuilt in the iMac) then you would probably be looking at around the same cost as buying a Mac. And with the Mac, you get iLife including iTunes free!

If you have any specific questions about the Mac feel free to ask!

[Norphy]

Originally Posted by E4xtraordinary

Adobe Premiere being £746 I was thinking going with a Mac and final cut which is only £110

Premier is only £746 if you're foolish enough to buy retail. If you buy it on an educational licence, it is £79 + £25 for the disk.

Contact Ramesys for more info.

[danIT]

no point waiting for bootcamp, why buy a mac for windows, although a new develpment, mac will be geared towards mac users.

But dont get me started, this is about video editing and to be honest you should go for whihc ever option either:

Fits your budget (but you want value for money so dont buy a mac) although if you think they are go for it.

Ease of use (also learning curve getting use to new operating system if not previously used things as basic as closing and opening an application)

its all donw to personal prefrence, we spent £1500 on each power mac, and im convinced because weve done it that we can build similar machines i.e. Windows based for £800 or maybe less?

just how much video editing are u going to be doing, and how do you wish to out put it.

have to agree piannacle is rubbish!

[Dos_Box]

Dan, we in Lancashire are seriously looking at Macs as the iLife suite has far more funcionallity than Windows everwill and allows pupils to use a simple, interoparable suite than any of it's Windows counterparts. If you have never taken a long look at the iLife suite then I suggest you do. For schools it is a dream come true and covers many subject areas with its capabilites.

[danIT]

like i said not really getting into the debate,

i have seriously looked at ilife especially after we spent £150,000 around 6 months ago on macs. mac software such as ilife are great packages since they come bundled with new macs, agree that this is way better than a windows machine. Although we have seen nothing new from microsoft in a while.

For our needs,

Music - you would probably say garageband, you can plug an electric guitar staright in theres no setup and its "plug and play" to coin a phrase. but its not what a secondary school looking to introduce music technology at GCSE and As/a2 level need. They need cubase and reason higher end products. We have a number of music tech's and teachers who/have had professional experience and they agree that garageband is limited. Primary level its great as in intro product. Using samples and USB keyboards to create simple melodies. easily picked up.

Art - iphoto? not really a product for use within schools, a good product lots of pro's, but to be honest we went with photoshop and also bought macromedia studio 8 - a personal favourite of mine. Again high end products which cost a fair bob or two but are ideal for our school.

Drama - havent really got much out of them so far bit of DVD creating, already had pinnacle for windows anyway which they ocntinue to use alongside media studies. For instance we have a sony camcorder for recording performances and such like but they record direct to DVD lovely if you dont have a mac. Mac doesnt recognise them at all, but slip it into a PC and away you go stright into premier/pinnacle even movie maker and away you go.

Im not trying to knock mac products or mac's in general, i have an ibook at home and i love it its my main computer! I will admit imovie and Idvd are cracking programs and if you do knock out a fair bit of video to DVD go for it, although we do keep alot of our movie media on hard disk rather than DVD disk (lacie drive for instance).

Im also sure iweb will be great for some people, the clean design and easy intergration with all things apple i like alot.

but hey....who am i to judge each solution suits a different user, just dont let the sleak sexy design or mac's and there software sway you in anyway!
There are plenty of Mac haters out there and i have to say im not one of those. (honest!!)

spend £1500 on a mac and watch everyone go "WOW can we have one of those in our office" then ask them to empty the recycle bin.

[danIT]

http://www.xvsxp.com/finalscore/index.php

check the scores for what u need your mac for?

[indie]

I have just set up 8 Mac Mini's with 23" HD Monitors dual booting to XP. And in a matter of hours wowed the 3 teachers who had used the room. They were amazed at having the Mac functionality and XP on one box.

Yes it's slightly more expensive but for most users, Garage Band, iMovie and iDVD are all you need to get great media work from kids.

[woody]

@ danIT,

Emmanuel's question was this: We want a computer to do video editing on. Should it be a Mac or a PC?

He didn't mention wanting to do music or art or web stuff. Just plain old Video Editing (if there is such a thing!) So for that SPECIFIC purpose, I recommend buying a Mac since it is also in Emmaniel's budget for a SINGLE computer. Therefore, garageband iphoto etc are not under discussion really, although these do intergrate into imovie.

However, if Emmanuel bought a Mac and wanted to expand it's use, then all of the software you mentioned for the PC is also available on the Mac. ie. Cubase, Photoshop, Macromedia Studio, etc etc. Oh and you can get MS Office of course.