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."

Comments

Biased or not...

[salvius]

Regardless of the author's bias, I have found this to be true. My dad has a small editing video business with many partners. One of them just got the new PC workstation box and it smoked the Macs in pretty much anything. Macs still might be easier to use and less prone to headaching, but if raw speed is what you need (and that is often what you need when deadlines are looming), then the PC wins.

Re:Biased or not...

[DebianDog]

Umm that is funny because I bought a Mac because it was faster with MPEG encoding and rendering than my PC.

I can actually start an MPEG encode on my PC (800 Mhz), SSH to my mac(533 Mhz), SCP the file over there, encode it and SCP it back before windows is even 1/2 done.

Re:Video editing on Linux

[ncc74656]

Pretty soon they ought to be doing comparisons involving Linux too, not just Mac and Windows. Kino is beginning to seriously kick ass. It's now adequate for all my home video purposes (transferring camcorder video, editing and titling, making SVCDs).

I've considered giving Linux a shot at video editing, but haven't found an MPEG-2 encoder yet (which would be needed for making SVCDs). I've tried getting TMPGEnc working under Wine, but have been less than successful. A quick check of the Kino website indicates some level of MPEG-2 support...any ideas as to how it compares to TMPGEnc for speed and quality?

Avisynth has also been useful for various NLE and filtering tasks...is something similar available for Linux?

Reality check

[Rui del-Negro]

> benchmark using Adobe AfterEffects, but that app does
> not use both processors on the Mac,

So you're claiming it's unfair because somehow it uses both processors on the single-processor PC...?

> and is not Altivec optimized,
> but AE is optimized for Intel.

Is it? Then why was the dual Mac equally crushed by the Athlon, in the previous test? Let me remind you the Athlon does not support SSE2, so it has no Altivec equivalent.

> He further 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.

So you're saying a single-processor Mac performs better than a dual-processor Mac? Now I'm definitely confused. He pitches a Mac with two processors against a PC with one processor and you say that's biased towards the PC...?

I agree that it wasn't fair. Personally I think he should have used a dual- or quad-Xeon, instead of a single-CPU "consumer" Pentium 4.

> He used codecs that are also optimized
> poorly on the Mac,

Could you please make it clear what codecs you're talking about?

> I suggested he do the benches with a program
> that is equally optimized for both platforms,
> like Cleaner 6 or Shake.

Cleaner is about the slowest, crappiest encoder ever created (this applies to both the PC and Mac version). Shake (as you well know) is no longer being sold for the PC. And neither of those programs is in the same market as After Effects. If you want an alternative in a close (though higher-end) segment, you have Discreet's Combustion 2.

Personally, I would have liked to see a comparison of 3D rendering, too. Since 3DS MAX doesn't run on Macs, they could use Lightwave, for example. BTW, you can see tons of Lightwave benchmarks here.

> In response to my polite letter,

If your letter was anything like your post above, then, it wasn't "polite", it was "deranged".

> why would anyone believe this idiot?

Hm... tough one... I got it! Because it's true...? Because anyone can get the files he used and run his or her own benchmarks? Because Photoshop is the most important image editing program in the market (including the Mac market)?

I have something very important to say: My GeForce2 MX is the fastest graphics card in the world. People who benchamrk cards using Quake III or AutoCAD are biased because those programs are not properly optimized for my GeForce2 MX. If anyone tells you that ATI's AiW 9700 Pro or nVidia's GeForce4 Ti4600 are faster than (or in any way superior to) my GF2 MX, they are either idiots, or liars, or both.

Thats is what you sound like.

RMN
~~~

Re:speed...

[Auckerman]

"True but I'm pretty sure the functionality of Mac Photoshop and PC Photoshop are the same or extremely close. So I don't know if it matters in this argument."

Well, if PS was an island of use, that would be true. Problem is, most people need to import files, maintain databases of images, and generally make applications interact. On any given day, I have PS 7, DW MX, iPhoto, Freehand, Navigator, IE 5, and RDC (to test pages on the crappy PC at my desk, no monitor) open at the same time. It's just easier on a Mac. Qualities you can't put in a chart, and I'm sure if I were a usability expert, I could explain in a thesis, but they still matter.

This also neglects the fact that the article was about Video Editing. FCP wins in ease of use and cost for a NLE app. That's Mac only.