Power Mac G4 or HP DV6000 for video?

Hi,

I'm looking for a little wisdom on what computer I should use. I know I am on a Mac forum but I do trust you to all be somewhat impartial. Hmmmm maybe I should rethink this.

I am looking at putting all of my home videos onto dvd in the near future. I have 50-70 VHS-C tapes and about the same number of DVC. My camcorder is a Sony TVR 30 with 4 pin firewire so I should have no problem converting into a firewire 400 port. As for the VHS-C tapes I plan on running my VHS player through my camcorder and into the computer

My wife has a HP Pavilion DV6000 laptop computer with an AMD 64 X2 TL-56 processor. The HP has a 4 pin firewire port so connecting will not be a problem. If I go with this route I will use Adobe Primiere Elements 4.0

I'm looking at buying a Used Power Mag G4 1.25 DP with a 15" ACD studio display for video editing. I would use ilive 08, it comes with the computer.

Would it be wiser for me to just use the HP for the video editing or should I shell out another $500 for the mac? I'm looking for a quality movie, simplicity in use and a nice clean finished product. (isn't this what everyone wants)

What are the reason and advantages of your suggestion.

Yes I do want a Mac but money is very tight right now (laptop was a gift) and I'm just looking for the best way to get everything to dvd.

Thank you very much

Lucas
Sitka, Alaska

Hi Lucas,

I think the key words are:
"quality movie, simplicity in use and a nice clean finished product"

get the G4.

The problem with the HP is:
for starters, vista. Secondly, premiere.

iMovie or Final cut will do the job a lot smoothly.

and for 50-70 hours digitizing material, you will want things to go as smoothly as possible. trust me.

your wife wouldn't want to see her HP tossed out the window.

notice I didn't even mention dvd creation, in which the mac is miles ahead.

cheers!

That Mac is not suppose to support iMovie 08. It will be fine with previous versions. So the iLife 06 package and older. iMovie HD specifically.

From the iLife system requirements page for iLife 08.
"iMovie requires a Mac with an Intel processor, a Power Mac G5 (dual 2.0GHz or faster), or an iMac G5 (1.9GHz or faster)."

If money is tight, I'd look at your windows software editing options. Do some research on the appropriate sites and forums for user experience. If you really want to look at a used Mac, then an Intel based Mac mini or an iMac with the above minimum as the specs is what you should be looking at.

My very limited experience between Windows and Mac video editing says the Mac is the better platform to use in order to get that "quality movie, simplicity in use and a nice clean finished product". I've always had to fight with Windows editing software, but admit that has been mostly when helping friends understand theirs. [RANT] From a user perspective I've found since long ago that most software running on Microsoft OS's is not as polished as software running on Apple OS's. And yes that goes all the way back to the Apple II days. [/RANT]