I'm looking into purchasing a Mac Pro, I've priced out the system via the Apple Online Store and it comes to about $10,015.

I have a lot of Hi8 video (mostly auto racing footage) on 100+ tapes that I want to convert and store off on a remote (and some local on the 2 TerraByte worth of space) USB drive.

I'm primarily a Windows XP person (software developer) and used to save the footage to AVI's (about 4GB size per tape). It is a Sony camcorder -- I don't have any HD content yet, but plan to have some in the future.

Primary usage of potential Mac Pro is:

1. Video editing HD and some 480
2. Music composition (primarily for the video compositions)
3. Graphics editing for my web site

The questions:

1. Is this enough to do what I need?
Mac Pro Intel Xeon Quad core 3Ghz
8GB RAM
ATI X1900XTX video
4 X 500MB drives
30" LCD (not really relevant)

2. What version of Final Cut do I need? Can it read AVI format?

3. What is the best web graphics creation software?

4. What is the best audio creation software? (I'm used to Sonar 5/6)

5. Do I need the Fibre channel RAID card?

Yes, I'm a soon to be Mac owner that has spent most of my life working in the M$ Windows domain -- it has taken a long time (20+ years) but I'm finally over the junk that M$ is producing lately. With Intel's injection of hardware to the Mac line-up they have become a serious platform for me.

Any opinions on the above?

Thanks, Rob.

P.S. I have not given up the Windows platform as it still is the primary source of revenue for me and most likely will be for some years.