A frequent question I receive from people who plan to start creating web videos on a regular basis is…should I use Windows or a Mac?
The answer isn’t so simple. In fact, I use both. So what I’m going to do here is highlight what you need to know about these platforms, as they pertain to web video.
First Windows. PC’s are cheaper than Mac’s. Video editing software like Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere runs on Windows. And Windows is the operating system that the majority of people already own.
In other words, you can create web videos (and even run a web video based business) using nothing but Windows based PC’s.
The biggest advantage with PC’s is speed. And when I say “speed” I’m talking about one product in particular; Sony Vegas. Sony Vegas is unique in the video editing world in that it allows you to preview your video edits in real-time. That means if you edit your clips, add transitions, special effects, etc…you can instantly preview your changes. With other products (like Final Cut on the Mac), you have to “render” your changes before you can actually see them…and this takes a lot of time.
So if I need to crank out a video…and I need to do it fast…I’ll always turn to my Windows PC. However, if time is not an issue…and I really want to focus on quality…I’ll turn to my Mac.
Now, Mac’s are more expensive than PC’s…twice as much and often more. But the number of tools available on a Mac to “tweak” your videos (and their ease of use) far outnumber what’s available on a PC.
For example, let’s say I want to do a green screen video. I know that no video editing software (for Windows or PC) will do a very good job by itself. I’ll need plug-ins to make the job easier. And you’ll find a lot more plug-ins on the Mac side than you will for Windows.
Or let’s say I want to add color correction to my videos so they look cool, like a Hollywood movie. Once again, I’m going to find a lot more “tools to do this” on the Mac side (and at better quality) than I will for Windows based video editing software.
And to be honest, Mac’s are just a lot more elegant when it comes to video or any type of graphic creation. After all, Mac’s are geared towards the “artist” market, while PC’s are geared towards the “business” market.
So to answer the question of which platform you should use, it really comes down to how much video you’ll be creating and how important the production quality is to you. If you’re just going to be creating a few web videos here and there, you’ll do fine with Windows.
However, if you’re doing something like a daily video podcast where you want pristine, “pro quality” production value, Mac would be the way to go.
Or you can be like me and use both platforms. That allows you to take advantage of the features each platform has to offer. In the long run (based on my experience), that’s the best way to go.
It just happens that I produce more comments than any other person on this site lately, it is just strange for so nice a site that I read daily. Dave, I believe soon you will have tons of comments.
Here in Ukraine where I live some people use PC and Mac operating systems on the same computer, so I am pondering over this option as I have never used Mac to this day yet. My friend movie producer once said that with Mac you always get what you planned, and PC sometimes produces unpredictable results. I experienced this a lot of times. Final video is corrupted in some points no matter what.
For me it would be great to know about boards for grabbing video. I use camcorders with hard drive and mini-DVD disks, and it is annoying to see the quality that they produce. I want a mini-DV camera and grabbing board to connect to my Adobe Premiere CS3 or Sony Vegas 8 (and hopefully to Final Cut, soon…). The prices vary from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Dave, can you elaborate on this point please?
Alex…I run Windows XP on a Mac (I also have a separate PC running XP). I run Windows “virtually” using software called Parallels. That means you can open up Windows just like any other application on the Mac. And basically, Windows runs faster on my Mac than it does on the PC sitting next to it.
As far as running something like Sony Vegas, on a Mac, within Windows, it runs faster too…as long as no other applications are open on the Mac.
As you’ve found out, cameras that record to DVD or hard drives have poorer image quality than those that record to tape. That’s because compression is used on the footage for those cameras.
But the drawback with tape is the speed in transferring your video to a computer…and…always using the tape drive in your camera for transferring video can wear out the camera much more quickly.
If you want to record directly to your computer’s hard drive, both Premiere and Vegas support that feature out of the box (I think…don’t hold me to that). No extra equipment should be necessary.
But if you want to save your camera’s tape mechanism…and make life a little easier…you should use a feeder deck. They aren’t cheap, but then again, neither are cameras. Here’s a link to a popular tape deck:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=product&A=ShowProduct&Q=&sku=430959&addedTroughType=replacementLink
I kind of differ with you in that mac’s video quality are better than those produced in PCs. All is reduced to the type of software used and the quality of the clips you start with. Adobe Premier and After Effects renders the same high quality than that on Macs. With Adobe Premier Pro you get to see the your effects instantly without rendering as it used to be. The only thing I really envy from macs are their screens. But that is also changing with the new monitors for pc. Just my humble opinion.
I work in the Windows business side of things. I believe the Macs had better video output, color and clarity on the monitors. I am unsure if this gap has closed in recent years though. Obviously if what you look at all days means everything, the Macs would have been used by artists and video/photo/print editors vs. someone on the Windows side staring at a spreadsheet.