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Mac vs. PC: Digital Video Editing Comparison
mnemonic writes "DigitalVideoEditing.com has posted its third Mac vs. PC comparison, dealing with performance in After Effects and Photoshop, graphics applications one might expect the Mac to be significantly faster in. It should be noted that the author, Charlie White, is a long-time PC supporter and disliker of Macs, though, as he shows, this preference is for as legitimate reasons as the ones devoted Mac users cite to disparage PC's. Ace's Hardware has another comparison that goes further in depth into the specifics of the G4, P4 and Athlon processors. As when comparing any two pieces of hardware, it's important to think not only of the relationship between performance and specification, but performance and price."
A slower tool of higher quality can still get the job done faster.
Of course, "of higher quality" is rather subjective.
Apple's first advantage is OS X. It's UNIX, which means that it blows Windows out of the water, performance-wise. Plus, it has the amazing Aqua interface, which makes things easy to use, and Mac hardware was built for video editing, with Firewire ports on every machine sold as well as tight integration with OS X.
People doing video editing on x86 will have to use Windows. There simply isn't any kind of video editing software available for Linux that is even remotely affordable. And the ones that are available for Windows are crap. Meanwhile, I have been using Final Cut Pro on Macs for more than a year, and I have to say that it is quite clear why it is the professional industry standard editing software for digital video. It's simply the most powerful, versatile, and easy to use video editing suite I've ever seen.
I pity the people stuck with PCs to do their video editing. I've tried it on my Pentium III before, and it is slow as all hell. Pity, too, but you really do get what you pay for.
--sdem
That's not fair at all! Comparing a dual processor mac to a mere single processor PC. Of course the PC still creamed the Mac, but come on, it's a Mac! I'd like to see a little fairness here and compare two dual systems and see how the mac stands up (ie. falls down).
Agreed, in many cases raw performance is better on the Wintel side these days, yet the tools and usability question is still open. The best solution, for me, is to have and use both - my Macs are just plain more productive, but when I need to go to render, or compress an MPEG-2, or warm my apartment, nothing beats the performance:cost ratio of a homebuilt PC.
It would be nice to have a "real" comparison of the two architectures. I'm talking about leveling the playing field by using the same video card/drives/etc since Macs share these things now with pcs. At those price levels (high end to high end), someone wouldn't think twice about spending another $100 for a faster video card or hd.
Also, the use of some more "real world" benchmarks, actually, not using benchmarks. Load up a 12MB image and do some manipulation, do some real 3d modeling, manipulate a real video file, etc. I'm sure that the pc would still win out, but at least we'd have a much better idea of what the two systems are capable of vs a couple of mentions of "the Mac".
The PowerPC albatross is crippleware for Apple's future. Maybe they will move to AMD's Hammer, maybe not. But we'd all be better off if Apple shrank the size of their business by getting out of hardware and focusing on software. I'd rather buy OSX for my beige box than waste it on Apple's overpriced nonsense. Apple can acheive much higher margins with software alone than they can with the current realities of the commodity PC market.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Before you tell me i'm wrong, take a stroll through any of the big (or small) production and post-production shops in the world, and marvel at the fact that, with the exception of secretarial workstations, every machine in the office is some sort of macintosh, or else a highly specialized box like an SGI running Inferno or Fire. The Macintosh platform, and the software written for it, is a far better choice than ANY PC-based setup as far as dealing with video.
Even prosumer and amateur customers will find better support from the Apple end of things. Final Cut Pro and iMovie work far better than any PC equivalent. If you are a speed junkie, sure, get a PC, and then you can brag about how your benchmarks are higher than your mac-using friends. But don't be at all surprised when your actual output and workflow suffers because you aren't using the best tools for the job.
of course macs are slower than pc's. they're comparing a 1GHz with 3GHz
the reason you use macs for video and graphics (at least here in manhattan) is that most of the pros use them for that.
if you need help with something, there are a bunch of people with similar mac setups you can call. If you use a PC you're on your own
I work for a video special effects software company (link in my profile). Our customer base is split about 50/50 between PCs and Macs.
It has been the case for about 5 years or so that you could do the same work on a PC for significantly less money (in hardware costs) than with a Mac.
That said, mosst folks are diehard platform fanatics (regardless of the I-Switch campaign), especially Mac users (boy, religious fanatics could take some lessons) and tend to stick with what they know best.
I must say that the market has been leaning toward Apple as of late, but really becuase of Final Cut Pro. Though I myself am a PC guy, I have to hand it to Apple, not for clever ad campaigns, but becuase they designed an excellent NLE (non linear editing). There is nothing under $1000 on a PC that can do the same (sorry Premiere users). We've found a number of high end users that had a few $10000+ Avid licenses moving to a single Avid and replacing others with FCP work stations. Avid has responded with DV Xpress, which is just over $1300 or so.
I guess my point is that for most users, the platform doesn't matter as much in terms of raw speed, but in terms of the software tools available for it. Aplle has the upper hand right now.
:P
By now, it's well known that the PC is a lot faster than the Mac when it comes to just about anything - PCs overtook Macs around the time of the P3 800.
What people should be asking is not price/performance, but why customers will still fork out over $3000 for a Mac that is slower than a much cheaper PC. The answer is in the usability.
First, the Mac looks good - which is important - hell PCs look downright square when placed next to a Mac.
Next, it has a great GUI - what's key here is that it's a great FUNCTIONAL GUI, unlike even WinXP where though it might look good, things are still buried under layers of menus and dialog boxes.
Third, it has a consistent interface - the basic layout has never changed. Contrast that with Windows where the settings that matter generally tend to jump around.
Fourth, it's simple to use, basically because of all 3 reasons above.
Now this may seem like an Operating system comparison, but check this out : to most people, PC = Windows. So you compare two pieces of hardware, you're comparing the OS whatever and Windows whatever.
So to get back to the point, it's not about the speed. PCs have long been faster than Macs and if a new Mac comes out with a processor than changes that you can be sure you'll hear about it. Till then, I say old news.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
The real bias here, as usual, is editorial. A fearsome amount of people are ignorant of the inherent advantages of the MacOS- speed isn't one of them these days, but that's not a problem in my line of work.
:)
I do professional video editing, compositing, and dvd mastering for a living. I use MacOS- having recently switched over from 9.1 to 10.2 on a G4/733. Painlessly, I might add. Video handles a hell of a lot smoother under X than it does under 9, hands down- I wouldn't go back. And I sure as hell wouldn't go to windows, for three main reasons- two of which directly pertain to this article.
The first big thing is maintenance: if my mac blows up, I can fix it. I've been running video production here for three years and have never once had to reinstall an OS or worry about a virus.
The second big thing is Useability, which relates to the third item indirectly. I could give a RATS ASS about how the P4 can spank the pants off of a G4- to me, that speed is completely negated by the atrocious Windows interface (which only seems to be getting worse). This argument does, essentially, boil down to Mac and Windows - Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop have not been ported to Linux.
Also as part of useability is applications- Media 100 DOES make PC boards, but Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro- the latter of which I depend on to do my job- are not available for the PC. And won't be. I'm sure there are DVD authoring packages for Windows, but the odds of them being useable- let alone on a par with DVDSP- are slim.
The third big thing is Quicktime. You can't fuck with it. It's system level, backwards compatible (to an extent), amazingly powerful once you plug in the license key, and exists outside of the applications- you can run any version of After Effects with any version of Quicktime. It also exists outside of the OS, though it's a big component of it. I suppose the equivalent might be the hooks and calls that developers for Windows can use to invoke various bits of IE.
Quicktime on the PC is generally considered to suck, and I can certainly see why- I love Quicktime, and the way it handles on the PC is one less reason to bother with the platform. Windows Media codecs are a pain in the ass to deal with, and very rarely cross platform. I could write a book about the issues with both platforms and the state of video software in general, but sufficed to say, there are more issues with doing video Right on Windows than there are doing video Right on Macintosh. Hell- if you have a DVCam, you can use any shipping Macintosh as a video editing station right out of the box.
Sure, you can technically do video work on a PC. I'd rather use a platform that's designed with such things in mind than one that added the functionality in order to appeal to marketshare.
I am sure we would all appreciate it.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Motorola's lack of delivery was for several reasons. The first were internal problems in the company. They really made numerous bad decisions and lost a lot of markets that they had owned. This led to financial issues which limited how much R&D they did. (Or so I am told) The other problem was that this was Apple's dark ages and a lot of people seriously questioned Apple's long term viability. Why apply resources into producing good chips that may never get used? Better markets were embedded systems and both IBM and Motorola seemed to push their chips in that direction.
At the same time AMD was producing good chips for the x86 leading to heightened competition. Intel had to improve and improve quickly to keep its edge. This led to some fantastic improvements in terms of price/performance on the PC side even while the Mac side was languishing.
Now things are changing. AMD has more or less conceded the desktop to Intel. They'll still make excellent chips but there won't be the degree of competition that we've seen the past 4 years or so. At the same time Apple has bounced back with OSX and IBM will be delivering the 970 chip which they claim is competitive with top P4 chips. The problem is that the 970 is coming out second half of 2003. What will happend to Apple in the meantime? No one is quite sure.
If Apple can produce better software then they can probably hold on to become competitive with XP based systems again. (I think that in the portable computer market they already are competitive, largely because of the way the PowerPC works in terms of power and heat.)
Apple has been on a buying spree the past year of high end video systems. Presumably they'll be emphasizing OSX versions of that software. So they absolutely need the 970 sooner than later. Further the 970 can multi-process better than the Intel chips. (I can't speed for the AMD MP chips) If Apple can deliver 970 systems on time with a batch of well written high end graphics and video software, then they have a shot at reclaiming this market niche.
stacked the deck by running the benches on dual processors, where a fair test would have benched a single-proc app on single-proc macs and PCs
How would removing a processor on the Mac board improve the results? The only reason you would want to run a signle-proc app is to defeat the "hyper-threaded" Intel processor. If you mean single process, it still wouldn't make a difference as the programs are almost certainly multi-threaded. However, if you meant a single-threaded app, this seems like a rediculous (and clearly biased) requirement to me as nearly all modern GUI programs are multi-threaded.
Even if AE was running with one processor on the Mac, it was also running on a one-processor PC, just an apparently (significantly) better processor. If Cleaner 6 or Shake were tested, I very much doubt that there would have been a significant difference in the results.
I have re-read your post and found that you may have meant single-processor when you wrote "single-proc". In that case, there is no such program. A program is either single-threaded or multi-threaded and has no control over whether it runs on one or more processors.
This was a (poorly executed) benchmark of graphics and effects software, not editing. Really, processor speed has little effect on editing efficiency. I know plenty of people editing features on old Media Composers running on 9500's and such. They don't care so much about processing speed -- you don't do much rendering when you're editing medium or long-form projects. What you care about is the quality of the software.
On the low end, there's nothing on the PC even remotely like Final Cut Pro, which is why the Mac pretty much owns the low end editing market. The high end is mostly still owned (though not as throughoughly as before) by Avid, which is cross-platform. Of course Final Cut is rapidly moving into the high end as well.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
"Before you tell me i'm wrong, take a stroll through any of the big (or small) production and post-production shops in the world, and marvel at the fact that, with the exception of secretarial workstations, every machine in the office is some sort of macintosh, or else a highly specialized box like an SGI running Inferno[discreet.com] or Fire[discreet.com]."
That's really not an indication of definitive superiority of the Mac over PC. It means that the big production houses got a good deal on a ton of the machines, as opposed to worrying about the benchmarks. I've worked in 1 TV studio, visisted another, and talked with a few places that do animation and digital video. PC is their primary hardware, by far.
The truth of the matter is that when you get a Mac, you don't really get more than what you'd get with a PC. Firewire (and I can personally attest to this) works great on a PC with Windows 2000 installed. And yes, I do DV work. I don't have stability or maintenance issues. I have more software. I have more plugin support for apps such as After Effects or Lightwave. And I have access to nearly all the hardware that's out there.
Studios that use these machines have similar feelings, but they need to be well supported. They can't afford to hire a team of sysadmins to keep a 100 computer network working. Any big studios are going to have to heavily consider who their vendor is, even if it means a cut in per-machine performance. If Apple comes up and says "it can do what you need it to do, we can fit within your budget, and we'll make sure to keep you running because you're a valued customer" , that is a more valuable proposition than "we're 1.5 times as fast as Mac."
I'm as big a Mac zealot as the next, and I will readily agree that you can get faster PCs for the same price as a Mac (or less). But quite frankly, I couldn't give a rats ass how fast it is in brute performance.
I use Macs because I feel more productive and creative, and tends to be less of a hassle. As a programmer, it has everything I need without the unnecessary junk. With MacOS X, I can get under the hood if I want to, or ignore it if I don't want to deal with it.
If you ask me, it's more like comparing the nutritional value of your favorite food. A salad might be better for you than a slice of pizza, but if you like pizza, you like pizza. If you like PCs, you like PCs. I like Macs, and I don't care if they're slower, more expensive, etc.
I think people who are hung up in this whole OS war thing need to grow up and realize that people have different preferences and opinions. Even when it comes to computers.
---
Open Source Shirts
What the hell were you running? eMachines? Compaq?
Seriously, those problems on a PC are a myth, provided you get the right hardware/OS. If you scrap together a no-name brand pc with Windows 98, then you can expect things like that to happen. Put together a machine with reputable components and an OS like Windows 2000, and you ain't gonna have those problems. I can tell you that right now from experience. I rely on my machines (yes, machines plural) to do rendering, video editing, ect. I can't afford down-time like you described.
Honestly, if those problems existed, I would be a Mac user.
I'm a film student at the moment, and at this point I've used most of the options out there-- my school's friendly like that. For what it's worth, here's some opinions.
;)
You've basically got three choices in software when it comes to editing-- Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and Avid. Anybody that tells you that combining Photoshop and After Effects will suffice is apparently only interested in color correcting some darn pretty titles.
First off: Adobe Premiere. I've used it on both PCs and Macs, and it's the suite to which most "prosumers" will probably have access. Guess what? It sucks. Plain and simple. Sorry.
It will allow you to cut and paste and do your standard basic functions, but guess what: so does iMovie. It is the buggiest program that Adobe releases. It seems the only guaranteed feature of Premiere is that it will crash two minutes before it's done rendering, and corrupt your video files.
On some projects I've spent more time repeating steps due to crashes than it took to shoot the thing in the first place. Don't make the same mistake of using it.
Second: Avid. Probably out of most everybody's hands, because of cost, although it is the professional choice. Approximately 95% of television work and 80% of film features are edited on Avid, IIRC, but it's pricey to get the full hardware suite. They offer several levels of product-- Avid Xpress is the simplest, and will still run you $10,000. It's the only one I've used. It goes up to Avid Symphony, which is basically the same package, but with better hardware, more features, more possible video and audio tracks, etc.
My complaint with Avid is that it's not very user-friendly. Their dialogs tend to be tiny icons with no explanatory text. If you're going into the field, it's a system worth knowing, but the learning curve is high.
(Incidentally, Avid has just released a stand-alone software program to compete with Premiere and Final Cut, called Avid Xpress DV. Haven't used it, but it's apparently very similar to the rest of its family. So beware.)
And then there's Final Cut Pro. It's only available for the Mac. This is unfortunate, because IMHO, it's by far the best program out there. Easy to use, a wide array of features, moderate learning curve but decidely worth the hassle. Get yourself hooked up with a dual-1.25GHz G4 machine, and you can render scenes in less time than it takes to make a sandwich. This thing has color correction, titling, and just about anything else I've needed so far, within the framework of one program. No jumping around. Stable. Simply beautiful.
The final verdict? For the cost of the basic Avid, you could buy yourself two top-of-the-line Final Cut Mac workstations. Going from Premiere to FCP is a revelation, and I'd recommend it to anybody interested in the field. At home I'm a PC guy, and I've still got to say the Mac is the way to go.
Just be sure to buy yourself a two-button mouse, then you're all set.
if the file you want to work on is locked down by Digital Restrictions Managment in Windows XP. Every time.
(this used to be "a Mac Plus is faster than (windows computer X) if the video card and the parallel port on the Windows machine are having an IRQ conflict")
However, now that it only took 10 years to get rid of IRQ and DMA conflicts, its nice to see that a new conflict - user vs. Microsoft - is the new conflict... which is much more powerful.... at least IRQ conflicts could eventually be worked out.
Privacy, lack of DRM, simple to manage server software and open standards are why i use Mac OS X... speed is like 5th down my give-a-shit list.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Yes, Windows machines render faster then Macs. I work in multimedia and I've known this for quite some time. Good 'ol Charlie is wasting his time writing a 4 page essay in order to prove something that thousands of folks already know.
Charlie really doesn't seem to go into depth about why MacOS, a platform that has been at least 6 month behind in processing speed for 4 years, is still so damn popular in the multimedia industry. Not only does MacOS provide users with a more superior windowing scheme and better usability, there is a lot of system software (midi manager, color sync, quartz) and Apple developed multimedia software (FinalCut, Shake, etc) that simply makes MacOS much more desirable.
Honestly, who cares if filters render a third faster on my Athlons, who cares is my machine only has a bajillion MHz and not a bajillion and 2. Having the fastest PC on the block really isn't that important. Hell most print shops, music studios, etc -still- have 3 or 4 year old Mac workstations. Are they slow? of course they are. Nevertheless, they are still extremely functional.
It's rare that I ever find old Windows PCs in multimedia production environments.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
He's not trying to do a thorough platform test, he's saying (IMHO) that if you do this all day long, here is what will do it fastest.
I believe his benchmarks, I have no problem that my brand new $3k G4 didn't win, and I noticed that there are pro-Mac and con-Mac articles on the site. I'm not about to drop my Mac for it, but if I were paying hundreds of people to use Premier and AE, and I needed new hardware, I would certainly be looking at those Dells.
Of course, for what I do, I found the Macs to be superior, or I wouldn't have bought them. They are the first Apple machines I have owned since an Apple IIe. I am delighted with them, and they serve well.
However, zealous platform issues aside, time is money, and corporate people who only use a small suite of apps (like 3DS or LightWave or Premier or Final Cut) should go with what will make them the most profit, the fastest. If I can produce a commercial in 30 days using a Mac, and in 30 days using a PC (since there's more involved than machine speed, you know), then I should go with what is cheapest. $600 across 30 machines is a LOT of money. Save $18k? If there are no other reasons to decide on a platform than that, I'll follow the money.
Of course, for me, I wanted the Macs. I only bought 2 however, not 30. (I also wanted a few apps that were apple only)
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
How can he "Do the math" on Dual PowerPC 970 systems exactly?, aceshardware tested a Powermac with a pair of PowerPC 7455s in it, that's like testing a dual P3-500 Katmai system and using the results as an extrapolation base for the performance of a dual 2.2Ghz P4 Xeon system...
In other words, not very useful.
You have a pretty broad definition of competetive.
You've got a G4 system that cost almost 20% more than a machine that smokes it by almost 100% in some tests. How is that competetive?
We all know how Intel prices their fastest chip well above the mainstream chip prices. In a few months, the Hyperthreading 3ghz will be the mainstream chip and cost a good deal less. This will only make the price/performance ratio on the Dual G4 system even more embarassing for Apple.
Now things are changing. AMD has more or less conceded the desktop to Intel
perhaps you should stop getting your news from slashdot headlines... the Desktop is AMDs bread and butter.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Tell me, then, what is the difference (besides the way the menus and title bars look) between Photoshop 7 on OS X and Photoshop 7 on Windows? Do the brushes behave differently? Do layers stack in a different order? Does the cursor go left when you move the pen (or the mouse) to the right? Do the pixels smell different?
Please provide clear examples (facts), for everyone's education.
RMN
~~~
Sure they exist, but have you had much hands on experience with them? Adobe Premeire is limited on either platform. Avid's support and integration with the Macintosh platform is far superior to anything based under Windows, even with the recent release of ExpressDV (which is promising but still buggy). Final Cut Pro really seems to be gaining ground in the professional market, to the point that many of the big rental houses and shops are taking big strides toward ditching Avid and using FCP instead.
However, this is getting fairly far from my original point, which was that benchmarks obtained using non-video-specific applications (and I maintain that AE is a graphics app, not a video app) are ersatz at best when comparing digtial video editing systems. Furthermore, i'm not entirely certain that benchmarks are at all a reliable measure of one system's actual performance over another. Much of the good comparisons i've heard and seen are awfully subjective, but most professional editors I know work on a mac. Not necessarily because that's what they were trained on, but because they work better.