thinking about a switch-many questions....

Hi,
I have a few questions about switching over to Mac at home and these questions may be redundant but I have searched prior posts and have looked at the mac site and haven't really found clear cut answers to my queries. If anyone can answer all or some of these I would really appreciate it. I may be totally off on any of the questions but I have no idea how a they work...sad to say....

1. I have attended workshops at the local teacher service center that uses macs and the computers -on start up- gives you the option to use the mac or windows platform. Can you "jump back and forth" between the two on the same computer?

For example: If I import all my pictures (mostly shot in NEF) and video to the windows side (they are all catalogued to my satisfaction and I do not think I want to use the iphoto filing system) can I "reach over" to the Windows side and grab them for use in imovie?

2. What file formats does mac support in regards to photos and video.

3. In imovie or iphoto can you use a blank template to build your movies onto? The templates that I saw listed on the mac tutorials were fine but I am an art teacher and want to do my own thing........

4. Can I still use my Adobe CS3 software (or any other software for that matter) since it is for a pc? Or do I need to buy all new software?

5. Can you use still photos AND video clips to build a movie? I use Moviemaker alot and use both in that application.


Thanks in advance for any/all help!!
Jennifer

p.s warning! this may spawn alot more questions......

jenniemar said:

1. I have attended workshops at the local teacher service center that uses macs and the computers -on start up- gives you the option to use the mac or windows platform. Can you "jump back and forth" between the two on the same computer?

Click to expand...

Yes, assuming you have a licensed, official version of windows, you can use bootcamp and/or install parallels and/or install fusions and be able to use both mac and windows. I do this for the few things I either can't afford to replace with mac versions yet, or there just are no mac versions for (ie: EQ2, COD5, an app I need to use when I vpn into work). I use OSX for 75% of the things I do now, working on increasing that number, but as there are a few games I like to play that are windows only, I have to keep it around until I break that addiction

For example: If I import all my pictures (mostly shot in NEF) and video to the windows side (they are all catalogued to my satisfaction and I do not think I want to use the iphoto filing system) can I "reach over" to the Windows side and grab them for use in imovie?

Click to expand...

It is possible - but by default OSX can't write to an ntfs partition, but there is no reason to not be able to pull the photos and videos onto your mac partition or drive and do whatever you want to your hearts content. Of course, accessing your catalog might be difficult unless you use something like fusion or parallels as bootcamp is osx or windows but not both at the same time. Personally, i use Lightroom to catalog my photos - I was afraid I was gonna have to switch to aperature (which I can't afford to do after buying the mac) and found my key worked on the mac version of lightroom, so I'm in the midst of getting my photos all cataloged on there.

2. What file formats does mac support in regards to photos and video.

Click to expand...

Depending on your camera and the version of OSX. I know you can preview D300 nef files (what I have), and open them in iphoto (or in my case I use lightroom). I know - tif, jpg, I think CRW and many, if not most other camera raw formats should work (now importing into iMovie might require conversion first, I don't know many video editing suites that will direct import camera raw formats). If you get a brand new camera (like if nikon came out with a D4 and modified their nef spec) it may not be supported without a 3rd party app to convert the image into a supported format.

Video is a bit more picky - I haven't worked as much with the video yet to know all of the supported formats, part of what is supported will be dependant on the software you use to do your editing. iMovie supports quicktime formats.

There are tools that you can get to play various other video formats on a Mac or in quicktime fairly easily - like Perian, or VLC. I know I have some .ts files I'm having to convert before I can edit them in FCE (can't afford FCP and trying to move away from my windows NLE (I use Pinnacle Liquid Edition Pro 6.1 (Pinnacle later sold to Avid) and I'd love to get FCP, but don't have the $1600 to get it =( ).

3. In imovie or iphoto can you use a blank template to build your movies onto? The templates that I saw listed on the mac tutorials were fine but I am an art teacher and want to do my own thing........

Click to expand...

no idea, hopefully someone else can help here =)

4. Can I still use my Adobe CS3 software (or any other software for that matter) since it is for a pc? Or do I need to buy all new software?

Click to expand...

I read in another post that Adobe does allow for a crossgrade to move you licenses from win to mac versions, but I don't know what is required to do it. I only have Photoshop CS so I'm way behind in the upgrade cycle and to be honest I hadn't been using it much so I was mostly concerned with Lightroom.

5. Can you use still photos AND video clips to build a movie? I use Moviemaker alot and use both in that application.

Click to expand...

AFAIK you can - I mean, I'm pretty sure people use imovie to create home slide show movies as well as edit in footage from trips. Personally I hate windows movie maker with a passion - that thing crashes on my ALL the time, especially when exporting a large movie (I have used it at work to create slidshows with an average of 150 slides to import into Adobe Premiere as a video file (yeah, nice to have big toys at work) since I don't like premieres transitions for building slideshows. I've only used iMovie a few times before getting Final Cut Express, but it seemed a lot more intuitive then movie maker.

I'd definitly suggest going to an apple store and actually trying out a mac and imovie and iphoto to get a feel for the software, and contact adobe to see what the details are on crossgrading from one platform to another. What works for me may not work for you - so it's best to "try before you buy".

You may also want to see if there is a place nearby that you could rent a mac from to play with for a longer period of time then just in the store. I don't honestly know who does, but I'm sure there are places that do offer rentals on these machines.

Thanks for the answers-
I am about 2 1/2 hours away from a mac store so that will definitely have to be a planned trip!

Hi Jennifer! I don't have answers to your questions, except for the one about Photoshop....I recently switched too and I would DIE if I couldn't use my photoshop. Iphoto isn't meant to be Photoshop. I got this back today:

I understand that you would like to switch your software from one
operating system platform to another. We do have a system set up to do
just that but you will need to contact our Customer Service Department
to do so.

Click to expand...

So I guess that means you can. I don't know if it costs anything but it sounds like it doesn't.

Anyway, I was very unsure about my decision at first...there is a learning curve. But honestly, you get SO MUCH MORE with a mac. It just takes a while to get used to it. I am still a newbie but I think that this will be worth it once I get the hang of it.

Just an additional data point, Macs support NEF quite nicely. I don't shoot raw much (but did to see what Mac OS X would do with it) and Finder recognized them just fine, and Photoshop CS3 pulled them right on in complete with all that fancy raw data. This with a Nikon D40.

I have a Parallels XP on my Macbook which I could probably install my Windows version of Adobe Photoshop 7, but saw no reason to do so since I just went with CS3 native to Mac OS X.

The only things iPhoto handles are silly pics I take with the built-in iSight. I use native big-iron (PS) when I'm using my big-iron DSLR.

I take pictures and some mac-compatible documents out of the Windows partition just like that and they open up in OS X with no problem.

You can switch platforms at startup, but if you want to have Windows open at the same, you need Parallels or VMware Fusion. I've tried both and I think I'm going to go with Fusion.

I don't know about criss-crossing files in terms of dragging and dropping between OS X and Parallels (or Fusion). It hasn't really come up for me but I will say it's nice to have Photoshop and all my other Windows programs there if I need them.

Hi Jennifer, I switched to Mac about 10 month ago with CS2 suite (Windows version). non of these s/w suite will work in Mac, except for Dreamweaver (at least thats true for CS2 not sure about CS3). First few month I used VMWARE Fusion to run CS2 on Windows, it worked ok with some delay between yuor mouse movement and cursor... but better nothing. you will eventually have to get MAC version of CSx.

Hope that helps.