Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mac vs. PC: Digital Video Editing Comparison

Posted by michael on from the cut-and-splice dept.

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."

60 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Biased or not... by salvius · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Biased or not... by Binary+Boy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Biased or not... by beens · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I think it's hardly accurate to term this a "Digital Video Comparison" when the apps being compared aren't really video applications, but graphics applications. While PCs sporting top of the line processors may smoke available Macs in raw benchmarks and speed comparisons, the fact is that Digital Video support is much more robust and integrated on the Macintosh platform than it is for PCs.

      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.

    3. Re:Biased or not... by dubiousmike · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

    4. Re:Biased or not... by DebianDog · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:Biased or not... by m_chan · · Score: 5, Informative

      I have spent only a little time using Final Cut Pro on a friend's Mac and though it was immediately and obviously a well-realized product, it was not enough time for me to full opinion. Most of my Mac-using friend who enjoy editing video rave about it, so it must really pass muster.

      If one was interested in a sub $1k NLE, I would endorse the product Vegas Video 3.0 from Sonic Foundry as being an excellent tool for pc users at an incredible price considering its feature set. It is the only reason I have to boot Windows, but it is also my favorite reason for powering any computer I own: it is that much fun.

      The product can be purchased for $300-$400 dollars, and if you are a student, there is a handsomely discounted academic version available. I strongly recommend anyone who hasn't tried it to download the demo and see how good it is, and I am not alone in my opinion.

    6. Re:Biased or not... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "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."

    7. Re:Biased or not... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      PC are far from being the hardware choice for any video or animation studios. UNIX systems, namely SGI, and Macs generally have been the choice of studios with UNIX iron running in the render rooms. Smaller budget studios may be primarily PC based, but major studios don't really fret much about buying expensive UNIX hardware. Personally I have never been in any studio that was a Windows PC primary shop. I was a animation/film major and numerous studios before I decided I was getting burned out and came back to the boring but very cheap to live mid-west.

    8. Re:Biased or not... by MoneyT · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Just out of curiosity, did it happen to mention which computers the linux boxes were? A Sun running linux, a mac running linux and a PC running linux are all linux boxes in my book.

      --
      T Money
      World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
    9. Re:Biased or not... by Dun+Malg · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      Even assuming that most shops do use mostly Macs, this proves nothing regarding the current superiority of one platform over another. With all their employees already trained on Macs, most established studios choose to stick with the platform, incrementally upgrading and hand-me-down-ing their Macs rather than pitching the entire installed base (both hardware and software) and starting over from scratch in order to gain a slight technical performance increase. No, where you have to look to see what is currently the best is in the new start-up studio. When you look there, You see a lot of PCs.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  2. speed... by astrodawg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A slower tool of higher quality can still get the job done faster.

    Of course, "of higher quality" is rather subjective.

    1. Re:speed... by ohboy-sleep · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A slower tool of higher quality can still get the job done faster

      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.

      Now if you're comparing the fasting Microsoft Paint to the slower Adobe Photoshop, then definitely I'd want the slower tool :)

    2. Re:speed... by Rui+del-Negro · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The tools are not the computers; the tools are the programs. Here, they compared the same tools, therefore the "quality" is the same. Of course, some people may prefer other programs, but this is as fair a comparison as you can make (in fact, they probably should have compared it to the fastest PC, instead of the fastest single-processor PC (ex., an Athlon MP, or a quad Xeon).

      It has to be embarrassing for Apple to be systematically beaten by PCs in areas where, traditionally, they had the edge. I think they are right to try to push Macs more as home computers ("look, it's simple, it's pretty, it's fast enough") than as high-end DCC machines. At least until they manage to get better hardware.

      If they're waiting for the new IBM chip, that could be a long time.

      RMN
      ~~~

    3. Re:speed... by Auckerman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "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.

      --

      Burn Hollywood Burn
    4. Re:speed... by qengho · · Score: 3, Funny

      It has to be embarrassing for Apple to be systematically beaten by PCs in areas where, traditionally, they had the edge.

      That's why Apple is changing its marketing campaign.

    5. Re:speed... by Christopher+Bibbs · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Photoshop on PC != Photoshop on the Mac

      There are subtle differences in what you can control minor things that are available (such as a Pantone library was available one version earlier for Mac). Not enough to really stop you from getting the job done on a PC, but enough to kill your boss if they don't buy you a Mac sooner or later.

  3. I wrote to the author about biased benchmarks. by sakusha · · Score: 4, Informative

    I wrote a polite note to the author, and pointed out some flaws in his "benchmarks." He chose to benchmark using Adobe AfterEffects, but that app does not use both processors on the Mac, and is not Altivec optimized, but AE is optimized for Intel. 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. He used codecs that are also optimized poorly on the Mac, and compared the different Mac and PC codecs and declared them equal in speed. This completely biased the benchmarks toward PCs. I suggested he do the benches with a program that is equally optimized for both platforms, like Cleaner 6 or Shake.

    In response to my polite letter, I got a obscenity-laced reply. I decided he was a lunatic, with an axe to grind. I always admonish people not to believe benchmarks from people of companies with such obvious biases. Slashdot readers wouldn't believe Microsoft benchmarks done by companies with a bias towards MS, so why would anyone believe this idiot? It all comes down to the eternal problem in the PC world, consultants like PCs because it guarantees them an income for life, from all the support calls. And this guy's a PeeCee consultant.

    1. Re:I wrote to the author about biased benchmarks. by Phearless+Phred · · Score: 5, Informative
      I'm sorry, but you're just plain wrong. There's an Altivec acceleration plugin for After Effects. It came out right after Altivec did, and sped things up by about 8% or so iirc. Dunno whether that's Apple's fault, Motorola's, or Adobe's. AE is also slightly multithreaded. Certain parts of it (effects like Fast Blur) are multithreaded, and others aren't. In my experience (in dual P3 w2k land), AE will use about 70% of my available CPU power when it's running flat out. So while the Mac probably wasn't running flat out, the extra CPU definitely wasn't just sitting there slowing things down.


      Where on the site did you see which codecs were used? I don't have Christiansen's book, though I imagine that as he's ex-ILM (and probably ex-Rebel Unit if he's an AE user as well, but I'm not 100% on that so don't quote me) that his tutorials probably work equally well on either platform. If I had to guess, I'd say that the output was to either the Animation, Sorensen, or maybe Cinepak codecs, all of which came from Apple. So if they're "not optimized," then that's no one's fault but Apple's. He could have skipped codecs altogether and rendered to uncompressed .SGI sequences or something, but then OOPS! The Mac's Finder would've choked on having more than a few hundred files in one directory.


      So to sum up: there's little, if any bias in the tests used. As someone who's made his living using After Effects on both platforms for a number of years (though primarily on a rock-solid Gateway dual p3 w2k machine), I was very happy to see real-world benchmarks, rather than SPECINTFPUMARK2002 BS.

    2. Re:I wrote to the author about biased benchmarks. by WinterSolstice · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Actually, I agree. I am a huge fan of my Macs (one the model in question, the other a 1GHz powerbook), but the testing he is doing is very valid from a "perception" POV.

      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.
  4. PC's preferred by stilleon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In the world of editing, for me PC's have the upper hand. One reason is AVID, the leader in pro editing, for instance. Even though I run the Matrox DigiSuite, I can read and write their files directly from an NTFS drive. In the pro world all oads lead to AVID and always will (interestingly, their sister company, DigiDesign, is THE pro audio application and it heavily favors the Mac). But when it comes down to it, my problem with the Mac is one that many Apple fans have a problem with too: total power. I mean, when you need to render that long composite you can get more horsepower on PC now, with the 3Mhz P4 ou specing the dual G4 1.25Mhz. In this biz speed is life. Just a thought.

  5. editors: by cosmo7 · · Score: 4, Funny

    is this a way of getting all the trolls in one story?

  6. More indepth comparison by binaryDigit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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".

  7. double-standard by X_Caffeine · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you're going to post some goofball disclaimer like "long-time PC supporter and disliker of Macs," why not at least be consistent and include "would-be towelboy of Steve Jobs" on all the pro-Mac reviews?

    Anyway, I've been following the DVE articles for a while, and my impression is that White is a long-time Mac fan who is looking at objective benchmarks and finding himself somewhat disenchanted.

    --
    // I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
  8. Re:Consider the software too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apple's first advantage is OS X. It's UNIX, which means that it blows Windows out of the water, performance-wise.
    But as shown by the tests, this does not translate into faster video rendering performance.

    Plus, it has the amazing Aqua interface, which makes things easy to use,
    Arguable at best. Adobe does not ship two differently designed interfaces for its different applications, a good one for Mac and a bad one for PC. Aqua just makes the buttons and windows pretty, if the application is built for it.

    and Mac hardware was built for video editing, with Firewire ports on every machine sold as well as tight integration with OS X.
    Firewire cards for PC's are available for PC's that don't have Firewire ports. Firewire has many other applications other than video editing, making it poor support for the statement "Mac hardware was built for video editing".

    People doing video editing on x86 will have to use Windows. 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.
    Ever heard of Combustion, Flame, Retimer etc.? Some of these are Academy Award winning apps available for PC (and some for Mac, though you'll have to deal with slow performance there).

    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.
    Excellent judgement; casual usage of a PC with a 3 year old processor compared to a year's worth of usage on a recent Mac.

  9. community by bhny · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

  10. Why do people even compare PCs and Macs? by carlmenezes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Why do people even compare PCs and Macs? by isorox · · Score: 4, Insightful
      dunno about anyone else, but when I go into windows for video editing, I have 5 icons that I use on my desktop.

      • Photoshop
      • Premiere
      • DVIO (premiere DV capture sucks, drops frames etc. DVIO grabs/plays back without dropping a single frame)
      • Shortcut to "F:\SourceDV"
      • Internet explorer.


      Typical editing process involves clicking a couple of desktop icons once a day. One I'm in premiere, photoshop etc, its the same as a mac.
  11. You're forgetting useability and Quicktime. by solios · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:You're forgetting useability and Quicktime. by RatBastard · · Score: 3, Interesting

      After playing with many Pro/Am video editing and DVD creation tools for Windows I have to say that most of them suck. They either just don't work or they do things so badly as to be unusable. It may be different in the actual professional level.

      I have been giving getting a Mac for this kind of work a serious consideration.

      And I was one of those guys who spouted off "Macs Suck!" for almost ten years. Then one day I grew up.

      --
      Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
  12. Re:Yep... by WatertonMan · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is the problem Apple faces. The 970 will hopefully improve this. Unfortunately the 970 will reportably be speed equivalent to the current top Intel chips but come out 6 - 10 months later. By then Intel will have improved for sure. Presumably Apple will issue dual 970 systems. They purportedly do SMP quite well. We'll see.

    The bigger issue is that in the remaining 10 months before 970 systems come out Apple will be falling further and further behind in the markets they want to reconquer: video and graphics.

  13. Re:Consider the software too by Planesdragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apple's first advantage is OS X. It's UNIX, which means that it blows Windows out of the water, performance-wise.

    No, it doesn't. Not the fact that it's UNIX, that is.

    I've seen Linux--as UNIX is OS X, probably more--crawl on things that Windows _on the same machine_ has no problem with.

    Sure, KDE could be to blame. Being on a higher partition could be to blame--but if UNIX automatically "blew windows out of the water", I should either not notice the difference or actually see a LINUX-slanted improvement.

    'course, OS X _is_ faster than Windows, or at least it seems that way. An UNIX is more stable, and probably IS faster in a few specific or low-overhead (GUI et al) apps (note: I just haven't had the chance to see this firsthand, so I won't claim to know that it is.), but being UNIX doesn't automatically grant you a speed boost over Windows or anything else.

  14. Re:Consider the software too by ncc74656 · · Score: 3, Informative
    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.

    You must have a different definition of "crap" than most people. I've found VirtualDub and Avisynth to be pretty decent. Avisynth, in particular, offers some fairly nifty editing capabilities...one script I've written for it takes two AVIs and overlays them on a third AVI. (It's designed to mimic the appearance of a Win2K desktop running some video-telephony software I wrote...a conversation is captured with the software and converted to a pair of AVIs.) More frequently, I use it to cut the ads out of TV shows captured by my TiVo or my All-In-Wonder and to do inverse 3:2 pulldown. The script then gets loaded into TMPGEnc for compression to SVCD.

    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.

    Unless you're willing to pay through the nose for a pair of the fastest Xeons, you don't want Intel processors for video editing/encoding. OTOH, the dual Athlon MP 2100+ I have at home hauls ass...over 30 fps for two-pass XviD encoding and somewhere around 6 fps for two-pass VBR MPEG-2 encoding with TMPGEnc at its highest-quality settings. The processors and motherboard were under $700 (it was an upgrade from a single 1.0-GHz Athlon) a few months ago; you could more than likely get something even faster for less money now.

    --
    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  15. After Effects performance != quality editing by markv242 · · Score: 5, Informative
    I seriously question the article, not because of the benchmarks, but because of the scope by which the author defines a good editing station.

    Firstly, you simply cannot edit using After Effects. Forget it. Your workflow is so amazingly hindered within the program. I will admit that it is probably the industry standard (for low- to medium-end stations) to do titling, chyron, graphics, etc, but to do day-to-day editing work, it is next to useless.

    That said, the choices for editing software in the Windows environment are horrifically bad compared to the choices for the Mac. Other than the high-end Avid system, the Windows platform has absolutely nothing. Adobe Premiere is an atrocity that passes for software; instability, terrible interface, doesn't play well with others. Vegas Video is marginally better.

    The Mac, on the other hand, has all sorts of quality hardware and software solutions. Take the Media100i system, for example. They just recently have ported the editing system to OS X. I have found that the Media 100 is the best mid-end editing station out there. Broadcast video, hardware codecs, plays well with a Beta SP deck or your firewire deck, etc.

    Additionally, Final Cut Pro is rapidly becoming the standard for low-end stations. The USC film school is switching to an almost all-DV program, and the unofficial word is that students should go out and get FCP if they want to edit. It doesn't offer the speed that a Media100 station offers, but for an all-software solution, it blows the doors off anything Adobe or Sonic Foundry has ever made.

    If these guys are so concerned about a $3500 Dell PC outperforming a $5500 Mac, perhaps they shouldn't be in the video editing business. I would rather spend the extra $2k, then spend an additional ~$5k for a good Medea RAID system, ~$5k for a Media 100 system, and be able to create broadcast video for $15k. (Nb: that is an almost unheard-of low cost of entry to the broadcast arena) Alternatively, if I were on a student's budget, I'd go for the $2500 Mac, a $999 (or cheaper for students, correct?) copy of Final Cut, and be safe in the knowledge that I was using a high-quality, reliable package, rather than spending $2000 on a PC and struggling with Premiere.

  16. why don't you post your letter and his reply... by lyapunov · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am sure we would all appreciate it.

    --

    Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
  17. More to it than hardware speed. by I+Am+The+Owl · · Score: 4, Informative
    Like in most creative pursuits (which most Slashdot users don't seem to be familiar with), the creativity of the user is far more important than how fast the hardware they're using is. Macs just work. I have never once had to deal with hardware failures or flaky drivers screwing things up on my Final Cut Pro workstation.

    The creative process is nothing at all like hacking away at code. Believe me, I've done both. What you computer robots don't seem to understand is that we artists don't want or need to be interrupted by stupid things like taking half a day to get a CD burner running, or desperately trying to get our video card working properly with X-Windows. The Mac allows an uninterrupted, pleasurable working environment that is, above all, easy to use and intuitive, allowing me to execute my concepts more clearly without having some stupid interface get in my way.

    It was never a pain when I was working with ink and paper, and it shouldn't have to be any harder when working in a digital medium. The End.

    --

    --sdem
  18. Re:Nothing new here. by WatertonMan · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The reasons are somewhat complex. Motorola does deserve a lot of blame. However there were also issues between IBM, Motorola and Apple regarding Altivec. The G3 was originally a Motorola chip and then IBM came on and improved it, doing an excellent job. It did not, however, have Altivec. Yet Altivec is used a lot by Apple, epecially as a way to try and tone down the PC/Mac divide. So Apple was stuck with a slowly improving G4 and a never produced G5.

    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.

  19. Yeah, it's true. by dasmegabyte · · Score: 3

    I am a multiplatform user and I usually tout the Apple as the best solution over all. It certainly is for music, graphic manipulation (colour matching is so much better and easier on my little iBook than it is even on my iiyama monitor) and iPhoto's genious for managing thousands and thousands of photos.

    But I refuse to use my mac for movie editing. This has nothing to do with the speed of the processor...my 1 gig Tbird is about on par with my iBook for rendering times. It has everything to do with the speed of the interface.

    I can't take the sluggishness of controls on OSX when video editing. I want instant control, instant jog and shuttle, precise scene sync, and I want it without having to type in timecodes. And even on the big sexy DP macs I just don't get it. Windows 2000, for all its faults, is very responsive and I love it for video editing.

    Of course FCP's cool and nothing matches the simplicity of iMovie, but if you get a really nice software package (premiere and vegas video are jokes, windows xp's movie editor is like a bad pun) the sheer number of options for video on Windows make it awesome.

    --
    Hey freaks: now you're ju
  20. Re:Video editing on Linux by ncc74656 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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?

    --
    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  21. Re:that's not fair! by User+956 · · Score: 5, Informative
    I'd like to see a little fairness here and compare two dual systems and see how the mac stands up (ie. falls down).

    Yeah, to be fair, they should have compared two machines in the same price range:

    $4160 Apple PowerMac G4
    2x 1.25 GHz G4 (166 MHz FSB)
    2 GB DDR RAM (2 GB max)
    120 GB Ultra ATA HD
    Apple DVD-RW Superdrive
    NVidia GeForce4 Ti 128 MB
    AGP4X slot
    (4) 64/33 PCI slots
    Integrated Gb LAN
    Integrated Firewire
    OS X

    $4128 BOXX Technologies 3DBOXX S5i
    2x 2.4 GHz (P4) Xeon (533 MHz FSB) (2x 2.8 GHz available at higher cost)
    2 GB DDR RAM (2 DIMMS free, 12 GB Max)
    120 GB Ultra ATA HD
    DVD+RW/-RW/-CDRW Combo Drive
    NVidia GeForce4 Ti4600 128 MB
    AGP8x Pro slot
    (1) 64/133 PCI-X slot
    (2) 64/100 PCI-X slots
    (2) 32/33 PCI slots
    Integrated Gb LAN
    Integrated USB2
    add-on Firewire
    WinXP Pro

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
  22. Experiance has taught ... by ducomputergeek · · Score: 5, Informative
    me that Mac's have a lower TCO than anyother platform. I'm the tech geek for an architecture firm and we recently went through and replaced most of our Dell's with Macs. While the PC's were arguable faster in some applications, we had a problem with the systems crashing during long rendering periods. We use Autocad and 3D Studio MAX quite a bit, and the company lost a lot of productivity because the Windows boxes would crash four hours into a 10 hour rendering. And these were not cheap DELL's either and most were only 6 months old. When we switched to MAC, we found that productivity rose by 20% because we were not having to go back and rerender scenes as often. Granted the PC's were running off Windows 2000 Pro and not XP. I'm not sure if it would have much of an effect on what we are doing or not.

    The other application is DV editing. We were using Adobe Premiere 6, but it was buggy to say the least. The editing people demanded that we get them Mac's and Final Cut Pro or else. So we bought them Macs switched to Final Cut Pro 3 and the editing guru's seem to be pretty content. Also the editing department, which also does contract work for clients outside the firm, increased their margins by 5% even after the purchase of new equipment. Accounting people were impressed.

    Granted, we only use AE on rare occations, but Photoshop is used on an almost daily basis and most employees that griped at first because we replaced their PC's with MAC's have since quited down and some even like the new systems. Some say that its a bit slower than the PC's, but they have noticed that Photoshop doesn't crash as often and in some havn't had the program crash once. And we purchased mainly the entry level dual 866's with 512GB Ram each.

    So PC's may buy you a few seconds in rendering, but might cost you a few hours in lost productivity.

    --
    "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  23. Wasn't Editing Comparison by flimflam · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!
  24. PC's are faster, so what? by ryochiji · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  25. Re:Consider the software too by ADRenalyn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apple's first advantage is OS X. It's UNIX, which means that it blows Windows out of the water, performance-wise.

    I agree with that comment, for the most part. But not in this application.

    Plus, it has the amazing Aqua interface, which makes things easy to use

    Amazing Aqua Interface? I have been using Macs at home for a number of years, but to say the interface is amazing, and makes things easy to use is completely subjectional. There are plenty of people who prefer Windows flexible and fully customizable interface.

    Mac hardware was built for video editing, with Firewire ports on every machine sold as well as tight integration with OS X.

    Right, and there's no such thing as FireWire on a PC. Nor tightly integrated software that can harness the technology. You can buy a PC from Dell, Alienware, etc these days that has all these things built in.

    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.

    It's true that Linux has very limited options for professional video editing. Blender and the Gimp are a couple of the best, and their use of file formats and limited features make them impossible to use for doing any real work. However, many businesses use M$ Windoze anyway for other things because of its compatibility and widespread usage (whether thats a good or bad thing).
    So taking that into consideration, a business that does video editing, but not as their only (or primary) service would have to buy a Windoze box AND a Mac in order to stay on top of all aspects of their work. Affordability is always an issue for amatuers and home users, but for businesses, the difference in cost between Final Cut Pro ($1000) and say, Ulead Media Studio ($500), AVID ($1500) or Adobe Premiere ($550) is not the driving factor behind the purchase. The software has to work in their format, on their current hardware if possible, and their employees must be familiar with the interface to avoid extensive training or re-hiring.
    The REALLY big video companies (ie. Hollywood) are going to use hardware and software that costs hundreds of thousand of dollars, such as SGI machines using Discreet Inferno (as used on Lord of the Rings), so applications like Final Cut Pro, Premiere, etc. are not even options.

    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.

    Talk about opening yourself up to be flamed! Did you have your eyes open when you tried this? Since you are most likely a professional benchmarker, and made a fair test (ie. re-formatted, installed a nice clean version of Windows, purchased a professional video editing package, and ran extensive tests on all aspects of input, editing and output), I can't understand how you came up with the final verdict that it is... slow as all hell .

    I realized coming into this thread that it would be bombarded by Mac fanboys futiley crying about how much PC's suck, but your post got modded up, so I figured it was worth proving a point.

  26. Altivec? by Space+Coyote · · Score: 3, Informative

    Does PC video editing software that this site tested take advantage of Altivec on the mac or not? From my programming experience, the 10 minutes it takes to vectorize the critical section of your algorithm can really speed up your code to the point where it's noticeably faster than running it on an x86 machine.

    It seems that Apple has put all their eggs in the Altivec basket, so it would be a big problem if major software vendors haven't taken advantage of it by now.

    --
    ___
    Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
  27. Re:Intel and G4 by L.+VeGas · · Score: 3, Funny

    how can you compare a G4 and a P4?

    Easy, P4's are NINE LETTERS BIGGER than G4's.

    duh

    --
    Best Windows Freeware
  28. Re:Mac is still much much better by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "The only performance that counts is yours, not the machines.
    I really don't give a s**t about 30 percent faster, 50 percent faster, or whatever.
    I care that I have to lose a half a day trying to figure out why my CD-RW no longer records. And then give up and just buy another CD-RW, losing a few more hours.
    Or that my settings suddenly change for no reason.
    Or that my computer sends pornography to everyone on my email list without me knowing about it.
    Or that my system freezes once a week.
    That's the difference between a Mac & PC."


    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.
  29. A Students' Perspective by Murdock037 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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. ;)

  30. Re:Consider the software too by runenfool · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Windows XP responsive? You must be on crack - Microsoft managed to slow the GUI way down while adding no real features (that I've noticed anyway) to the GDI besides 'pretty shapes and colors' ...

    Compared to OS X? Well, its easy to pick the slowest moving UI out there and compare to that. Take XP and compare it to 2K ... 2K feels much faster .. to me anyway. Of course, OS X under 10.2 with a good video card feels pretty responsive nowadays ...

  31. Re:Consider the software too by Rui+del-Negro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > Apple's first advantage is OS X. It's UNIX, which means
    > that it blows Windows out of the water, performance-wise.

    I see. And you are basing this theory on what advertising leaflet? Please define:

    a) What does "UNIX" mean (this is not a trick question).

    b) What kind of benchmark are you using to conclude that "performance-wise, OSX blows Windows out of the water".

    > Plus, it has the amazing Aqua interface,
    > which makes things easy to use

    Aqua is not an interface; it has no influence on how easy programs are to use, only on the way they look. The interface of programs such as Photoshop, After Effects, Combustion, etc., is almost exactly the same on Mac and Windows.

    > Mac hardware was built for video editing, with
    > Firewire ports on every machine

    Most PCs come with firewire ports, too (even laptops). When they don't, you can add them for about $50. As to the rest of the hardware, PCs use the same drives as Macs, the same memory as Macs, and they have faster CPUs (therefore they render the video effects faster, as this article shows). So how exactly are Macs "built for video"...? Is there a new model that comes with a tape drive, per chance?

    > 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.

    I am a professional video editor and I never use FCP. I know several video editiors and several companies, and none of them uses it, either. I'm not saying it's not good, but it's definitely not "the standard".

    > 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.

    Maybe your Pentium III was not "built for video". Or maybe it was built by someone who didn't have a clue about building PCs.

    Please, when you state your opinion, or your wishes, don't present them as facts.

    Macs are excellent home computers, especially for people who are new to computers. Even Apple itself has pretty much given up pushing Macs as "faster" or "better" and is instead focusing on "prettier", "simpler". Why isn't this enough for Mac users? Why do you feel the need to keep shouting that Macs are faster and more powerful when very clearly they're not? It only makes you look like a bunch of fanatics.

    I have a GeForce2 MX graphics card. It has good image quality, it works fine in video editing / animation / 3D modelling software and it runs nearly all games at an acceptable speed. But it wouldn't cross my mind to say it's faster (or even "better", as subjective as that may be) than a Quadro 4 or an ATI AiW 9700 Pro. You see, for something to be good enough it doesn't have to be better than everything else.

    RMN
    ~~~

  32. Re:Yep... by ealar+dlanvuli · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually the 970 and the AMD/Intel offerings are all due out around the same time. They are roughly equal in performance. I wouldn't be suprized if the high end workstations are released in august and the rest of the product line makes the switch in january 04. iBooks will be running 1.3g TiBooks 1.5-1.6g Desktops 1.3g-dual 2.0g (remember thats easily doubled to equate the the x86 speed ratings, probably even more than a simple double)

    Motorola is about to loose *all* of their apple contract. Motorola cpu's are going to be twice the price/performance than a 970, and they can't top 1.3g if they tried.

    --
    I live in a giant bucket.
  33. Reality check by Rui+del-Negro · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > 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
    ~~~

  34. A Mac Plus beats a P4 HT 3.0 GHz... by gsfprez · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  35. You're right by Aqua+OS+X · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!"
  36. Pricing of Dells by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just priced the Dell computer used in the comparison. The bottom line ship-to price of the computer was $3913.52---NOT THE $2900 that the article quoted. Of course I added the gigabit ethernet that he raved about, and I added the DVD burner that he needed and that comes standard with the Mac. And I let Dell compute my shipping and taxes. (Apple doesn't charge for shipping.)
    Now how many other things, did the author of the article need to complete his test that I did not add to get my bottom line price? Software, monitor, DVD drive etc., modem (Dell charges extra for a modem!) How did he get his data in the machine? Where did he export his data to? A DVD Burner? What versions of the software was he using? Was he running internet radio on iTunes in the backgound on the Mac while he was working (like everybody else does)? In fact was he even connected to a network with both machines or only one? Why is Dell Gigabit ethernet so great when it has been standard even on Mac laptops for a year?
    I enjoyed reading how the Dell engineers walked him through the entire process on the phone, explaining how to turn the hyperthreading on and off and so forth.
    GEE, Can I get the Dell Engineers to walk me through my Photoshop routines? Did their help come as a support package and did he add that to the price of the Dell? I couldn't find that option when I priced my Dell but I bet it adds a lot more to the price.
    Come on. This is the most transparent shill set up by Dell.
    I don't mind all this stuff about power computing, but lying about the price--by $1000 even--is really annoying.

  37. Re:About dual systems... by Toraz+Chryx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  38. Re:Yep... by WatertonMan · · Score: 3, Informative
    According to IBM the 970 is dual out the second half of 2003 and is roughly compatible in speed with *current* AMD/Intel offerings. Now IBM says they'll be upping the clock speed fairly quickly. Past experience suggests that IBM has done very well in this regard. (Look at the G3) However to asser that they're "all due out around the same time" is very misleading.

    If you mean the AMD Hammer, you may be right. I don't know the time schedule on that chip nor its SPECMARKS off the top of my head. Whether the Hammer and 970 are roughly equal in performance is an other issue entirely.

  39. Re:Yes, it *DOES* matter with video by GoRK · · Score: 5, Informative

    Um, yeah you do need color management for video. Bigtime. You have to 1) Be able to accurately match balance and levels between different cameras (brands or even individual cameras), 2) get a grasp on gamut: NTSC has a shitty colorspace, and 3) be able to accurately tune and correct your color to warm up or cool down all kinds of shots. You can pick out amateur films and videos pretty quickly when you see the total lack of attention to color processing.

    On windows, color management sits somewhere in between the operating system and the video card's drivers. It's difficult to get good color management on windows, but it's not exactly rocket sience either. On apple hardware, it basically comes with the OS out of the box. As far as color control goes on desktop video software, IMO final cut does an excellent job for an all-in-one solution, and that's definately another bonus for the mac. I think that probably having both platforms around to do your work is the best way to go.

    But, im neither a videographer nor a mac owner, so I'm not terribly qualified to comment I guess...

  40. Re:Yep... by megaduck · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're right, the 970 will help a lot. What's really amazing is that the 1.2 Ghz G4s are competitive at all. Altivec is so kick-ass for things like Photoshop that it allows Macs to be in the running with machines almost three times their clock speed.

    Because of the superiority of Altivec, I'm not really worried about the 970 lagging behind Intel or AMD chips. Sure, SpecINT and SpecFP scores may be a little behind, but OS X + Final Cut Pro + Altivec should rock anything else on the block.

    Also, remember that the 970 draws a rather low current in comparison to similar performing x86 chips. That means that Apple should be able to make laptops that can mop the floor with any x86-based portable, since they won't have to make huge performance concessions for battery life. Having desktop editing power in a 5 pound laptop is a very compelling proposition in the video market.

    I'm not really worried about Apple's position. Even if they don't have the "fastest" machine on the market, they still seem primed to dominate the NLE segment. Final Cut Pro is such an attractive product (at a sweet price) that it seems masochistic to purchase anything else.

    --
    This .sig for rent.
  41. Uh... by autopr0n · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  42. And now for something completely different by Rui+del-Negro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
    ~~~