CapMac Forums

[Quincy Minor]

First let me say that I am a beginner/switcher. After shopping in Frye's numerous times for numerous things you can't help but to pass the Apple section. A worker gave a demonstration of iMovie. I was hooked and bought my first macintosh and it turned out to be my first mac mistake. It is a Powerbook G3 Lombard and it has been in the shop longer than I have been using it(Logic board not accepting RAM).

Anyway, I am contemplating which system to buy. I have a lot of home movies on analog and I want to put those movies on DVD and I am currently using a PC with Pinnacle Studio Plus. Nice little program. Extremely user friendly but also extremely limited. I am currently video taping my step daughters games on Saturdays. I would like to get into wedding video sometime next year.

I have read plenty of reviews and it seems that final cut is a professional tool at a consumer price. I want another laptop but I also want a powermac however an Imac seems to be complete. Its hard to choose, but this is what I have come up with. I did a little research. Final Cut Studio has features (specifically HD and Motion) that must use G5 processors which strikes out the laptop. I'll just use the same one I have now for small stuff or upgrade to a slightly faster model. Then of course the powermac would have everything you will ever need but it doesn't include the monitor and the bottom line is I'm not rich. So I am leaning towards the iMac. With the new slimmer iMacs on the shelves the old ones are running cheap.

With all this I have a few questions. I would like to know what kind of setup you have for video editing? What do you use to capture analog video? Do you use a second monitor? Why do you need a second monitor? What kinds of projects do you work on? When is the next SIG scheduled?