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Favorite Video Editing Software

JC Callender

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What is your favorite video editing software? Also, do you have a favorite video camera? And one more thing, will an iPhoneX work well as a video camera for a beginner? Thanks in advance! :popcorn2:
 
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Hard for me to name a single program as a favorite because different programs have different strengths and weaknesses.
Overall my go to software for editing was always AVID, as far back as the early 1990's.
But that's because back then most of my work was either feature, docu, national ad spots, MTV and television programming and AVID fit the bill.

Now, with more internet based work, I find that I prefer Sony Vegas Pro for quick and dirty projects, although now MAGIX has purchased the licensing and it's called MAGIX, but I still have Vegas Pro 12 and still use it quite often.

But I also love DaVinci Resolve, even though at my advanced age I'm not spending the big bucks for the high end control interface hardware that goes with it.
I sometimes switch back and forth between Vegas Pro and Resolve on the same projects.

I have Premiere Pro and I've used it but I got off the bandwagon after CS5 because I don't want their subscription based (CS6) software, so if a client has it (CS6 subscription) and they want me to use it, I'll do that but I won't own it.

I don't use Final Cut to any great extent. I know it and know how but I get everything I want from AVID that Final Cut can do, and I feel AVID does it better. I was never ever impressed by Final Cut 7 and its ancient 32 bit kernel. I never understood why anyone was.
Final Cut X is finally supposed to be damn good but again, it's a lot like Vegas Pro and I already have that. But at least FCP X finally went 64 bit like everyone else did.

As a guy who first trained on old flatbed film editing equipment (Kem, Steenbeck) and later on linear videotape, I've seen and used almost everything. I even had to learn EditDroid and LaserEdit in one day to complete a project for Lorimar.

I also own a copy of Lightworks but I confess that the learning curve is daunting for me. I need to sit down with a Lightworks guru to walk me through it. Lightworks is perhaps one of the eight hundred pound gorillas, if their list of clients and projects is any indication.

The biggest notable about it is that it's available for Win, Mac and Linux...I cannot think of any other edit proggie that can make that claim, and the free version is pretty amazing. But like Da Vinci, if you pony up the thousands for the hardware, it's even more amazing.
Now that I am semi-retired (eyesight issues) I wonder if it's worth me 0bothering to learn Lightworks, but I recommend that anyone getting into the business learn the following:

AVID, FCP X, Premiere Pro and Lightworks.
Learn them all and get good with them all.
And get good with Photoshop and GIMP both, and learn Maya and at least one other piece of image compositing SFX software, too.

I may just go ahead and pay an expert to walk me through Lightworks for a week anyway just because it's good brain food anyway, even if I don't get hired to work with it ever. Thirty-five years in the industry, much of it with AVID and I am comfortable with that.
I just like the idea of making Lightworks "my bitch" because I want to say I can.

If you're a beginner, use iMovie for Mac or get Vegas Movie Studio for Win, you can't go wrong and they're both super cheap but super powerful.
An iPhone is a phone that can shoot great video but it is still NOT a "video camera" anymore than a DSLR is a video camera.
A video camera is a video camera.

My FAVORITE video camera? An ARRI Alexa. I've used them at least two dozen times but I rented them.
A complete Alexa with good glass runs well into the hundred thousand dollar range or higher, too rich for my blood at age 62.

But they're super tasty...sigh.

For a beginner? Best entry level HD video camera?
Canon VIXIA HF R800

It's two hundred bucks ($200-250) but you can shoot news, reality TV, papparazzi and even corporate or event video with it.
No, it's not professional grade but you'll see pros faking it with one in a pinch all the time, like when they need to shoot an easy setup car interior shot, for instance.

Double your money and go with a Panasonic H-CV770, get a load of the features on this one. It even allows you to use an external mic (or a wireless audio receiver) for pro audio.

Or go 4K all the way with the PANASONIC HC-WXF991K for about 800 bucks.

Hope that helps!
 
PS:
The greatest thing about Vegas Pro is that you can use so damn many plug-ins with it. The Vegas GUI is also ridiculously intuitive and fast fast fast.
It is 100% format, frame rate and resolution agnostic. Dump anything on the timeline, no pre-render necessary, ever.
The drawbacks are the fact that Vegas doesn't play well with anything but a tiny handful of GPU's so pack a big fat CPU and a crap ton of RAM if you want it to be fast on the render. It will blaze through most MP4 based codecs with GPU or CUDA but that's about it.
The other drawback is that Vegas 9 Pro was the last version to have really dependable and cooperative "print to tape" capabilities.
Since I still have that version, it's not an issue, so if a client wants a tape copy, I throw the completed project onto a Vegas 9 timeline and PTT.
 
PS:
The greatest thing about Vegas Pro is that you can use so damn many plug-ins with it. The Vegas GUI is also ridiculously intuitive and fast fast fast.
It is 100% format, frame rate and resolution agnostic. Dump anything on the timeline, no pre-render necessary, ever.
The drawbacks are the fact that Vegas doesn't play well with anything but a tiny handful of GPU's so pack a big fat CPU and a crap ton of RAM if you want it to be fast on the render. It will blaze through most MP4 based codecs with GPU or CUDA but that's about it.
The other drawback is that Vegas 9 Pro was the last version to have really dependable and cooperative "print to tape" capabilities.
Since I still have that version, it's not an issue, so if a client wants a tape copy, I throw the completed project onto a Vegas 9 timeline and PTT.

Not being too computer savvy, can you give me an example of a Vegas Pro plug-n?
 
All I've got to go on is imovie. Even without a broad array of experience I can still say it's not very user friendly, but I don't edit movies a lot so I'm not willing to drop the money on something better.
 
Hard for me to name a single program as a favorite because different programs have different strengths and weaknesses.
Overall my go to software for editing was always AVID, as far back as the early 1990's.
But that's because back then most of my work was either feature, docu, national ad spots, MTV and television programming and AVID fit the bill.

Now, with more internet based work, I find that I prefer Sony Vegas Pro for quick and dirty projects, although now MAGIX has purchased the licensing and it's called MAGIX, but I still have Vegas Pro 12 and still use it quite often.

But I also love DaVinci Resolve, even though at my advanced age I'm not spending the big bucks for the high end control interface hardware that goes with it.
I sometimes switch back and forth between Vegas Pro and Resolve on the same projects.

I have Premiere Pro and I've used it but I got off the bandwagon after CS5 because I don't want their subscription based (CS6) software, so if a client has it (CS6 subscription) and they want me to use it, I'll do that but I won't own it.

I don't use Final Cut to any great extent. I know it and know how but I get everything I want from AVID that Final Cut can do, and I feel AVID does it better. I was never ever impressed by Final Cut 7 and its ancient 32 bit kernel. I never understood why anyone was.
Final Cut X is finally supposed to be damn good but again, it's a lot like Vegas Pro and I already have that. But at least FCP X finally went 64 bit like everyone else did.

As a guy who first trained on old flatbed film editing equipment (Kem, Steenbeck) and later on linear videotape, I've seen and used almost everything. I even had to learn EditDroid and LaserEdit in one day to complete a project for Lorimar.

I also own a copy of Lightworks but I confess that the learning curve is daunting for me. I need to sit down with a Lightworks guru to walk me through it. Lightworks is perhaps one of the eight hundred pound gorillas, if their list of clients and projects is any indication.

The biggest notable about it is that it's available for Win, Mac and Linux...I cannot think of any other edit proggie that can make that claim, and the free version is pretty amazing. But like Da Vinci, if you pony up the thousands for the hardware, it's even more amazing.
Now that I am semi-retired (eyesight issues) I wonder if it's worth me 0bothering to learn Lightworks, but I recommend that anyone getting into the business learn the following:

AVID, FCP X, Premiere Pro and Lightworks.
Learn them all and get good with them all.
And get good with Photoshop and GIMP both, and learn Maya and at least one other piece of image compositing SFX software, too.

I may just go ahead and pay an expert to walk me through Lightworks for a week anyway just because it's good brain food anyway, even if I don't get hired to work with it ever. Thirty-five years in the industry, much of it with AVID and I am comfortable with that.
I just like the idea of making Lightworks "my bitch" because I want to say I can.

If you're a beginner, use iMovie for Mac or get Vegas Movie Studio for Win, you can't go wrong and they're both super cheap but super powerful.
An iPhone is a phone that can shoot great video but it is still NOT a "video camera" anymore than a DSLR is a video camera.
A video camera is a video camera.

My FAVORITE video camera? An ARRI Alexa. I've used them at least two dozen times but I rented them.
A complete Alexa with good glass runs well into the hundred thousand dollar range or higher, too rich for my blood at age 62.

But they're super tasty...sigh.

For a beginner? Best entry level HD video camera?
Canon VIXIA HF R800

It's two hundred bucks ($200-250) but you can shoot news, reality TV, papparazzi and even corporate or event video with it.
No, it's not professional grade but you'll see pros faking it with one in a pinch all the time, like when they need to shoot an easy setup car interior shot, for instance.

Double your money and go with a Panasonic H-CV770, get a load of the features on this one. It even allows you to use an external mic (or a wireless audio receiver) for pro audio.

Or go 4K all the way with the PANASONIC HC-WXF991K for about 800 bucks.

Hope that helps!

Wow, thanks for all of this great advice!
 
Not being too computer savvy, can you give me an example of a Vegas Pro plug-n?

One of my favorites is Neat Video.

Here is a tutorial for using it in Adobe After Effects but as you will notice, "all the points are exactly the same in other versions of Neat Video (for other host applications such as Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Fusion, Nuke, Sony Vegas, Pinnacle Studio, VirtualDub and others)."


Adjusting Filter Settings

Make sure that you're playing the YouTube video at 1080 resolution.

Neat Video is a professional grade software plug-in which is available for all popular video editing and compositing platforms.
 
I took old analog 525 NTSC television videotape footage shot with tube cameras under poor lighting conditions in 1972 and managed to de-noise and uprez it to a 4K Digital Cinema Print with the help of Neat Video. Yes, I did use a plethora of other tools as well, for up-rez, color correction and color grading, but without Neat Video, the result would not have been nearly as good.

Deep Freeze Films - The Best of the Leon Russell Festivals

Portions of The Best of the Leon Russell Festivals (aka "Out of the Deep Freeze - The Lost Reels") has been used in HBO documentaries, it has shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, it has played to triple sold out crowds at the Circle Cinema in Tulsa, OK, it has been featured in Leon's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and it has played on PBS stations around the country.
In one night, we raised double the amount of money contributed by Elton John to fund the construction of the Leon Russell Memorial via this film.



I've also used Neat Video to clean up countless old tapes shot on the old VHS, BetaMax, Video8/Hi8 formats as well, which is a primary use for consumers who wish to digitize and preserve their old home videos.
 
All I've got to go on is imovie. Even without a broad array of experience I can still say it's not very user friendly, but I don't edit movies a lot so I'm not willing to drop the money on something better.

It is well worth the 59 dollars to buy Final Cut X. If you're Mac, Final Cut X is probably the most popular video editing software program going.
It's maybe not quite as good as AVID but it's damn close and for a fraction of the cost.
Some even believe that the user interface is friendlier than AVID, and they might be right.

That fifty-nine dollar investment can open up an entirely new world for you to the point where you might want to do more video editing.
Vegas Movie Studio Pro is similarly priced, and has about 85 percent of the sophistication of Vegas Pro, also for under 75 bucks.
So for most consumer/prosumer folks on Windows, you're getting a pretty powerful and easy to use tool for a very low price that is hard to beat.
Neat Video will work on all versions of Final Cut and all versions of Vegas, and the newer Magix versions of Vegas as well.

And there are hundreds, maybe even a thousand more plug-ins available that can do incredible things and which will enhance these editing programs immensely.

A lot of these plug-ins will even perform admirably on low priced and underpowered consumer computers.
Maybe not quite as fast but you'd be amazed.
Still, if you're going to get into any kind of video editing, I always recommend you have at least a nice quad-core machine with 12GB of fast RAM, or even more, and that you use a 64 bit machine and operating system to begin with.

But it is well worth the investment.
 
~ Hope that helps!

You sure know your stuff.
Friend of mine swears by Da Vinci - he's tried getting me to use it (I output stop motion, sometimes with sound) and Premiere CC 2018 finally does for me what Windows movie maker (don't laugh) used to do easily. Photoshop is a go-to for me - but I use CS5.5 as well as CC18
 
Wow, thanks for all of this great advice!

Of course I forgot to mention Adobe After Effects. Even if you don't want to buy the entire Adobe suite, or get on the newer subscription based versions, even an older copy (CS4 or CS5) of After Effects is extremely powerful, and well worth the money.
After Effects is somewhat daunting but once you get used to the learning curve you will be amazed at what it can do.

Simply put, After Effects is "Photoshop for motion picture footage", that's all there is to it. It's even more than that but just to start with, it is like having the power of Photoshop for a moving image.
 
You sure know your stuff.
Friend of mine swears by Da Vinci - he's tried getting me to use it (I output stop motion, sometimes with sound) and Premiere CC 2018 finally does for me what Windows movie maker (don't laugh) used to do easily. Photoshop is a go-to for me - but I use CS5.5 as well as CC18

It's not that Windows Movie Maker was terrible, it was just very limited, that's all.
Microsoft could have grown the platform into a monster but for some reason they never elected to.

I snuck a WMM shatter effect clip into a documentary that was shown on NBC back in 2002, and one producer caught it because he recognized the effect. He chuckled, but he was impressed.

"Hey, I had a deadline and I wanted to just do the subclip quick and dirty and get on with finishing the project."

"No no, I understand, I just think it's hilarious that you did it that way but it worked great. Color me impressed."

By the way, up until 2014, ABC News Nightline was using Vegas Pro almost exclusively for their nightly shows.
They started using it way back in 2004, I think it was Version 5.0 back then. They just stuck with it.
I don't know what they are using now but I intend to find out. I was just impressed that Nightline loved Vegas so much, because it's a mighty good program, and a lot of editors sneak around and use it without telling anyone, because it is so damn fast.
 
Of course I forgot to mention Adobe After Effects. Even if you don't want to buy the entire Adobe suite, or get on the newer subscription based versions, even an older copy (CS4 or CS5) of After Effects is extremely powerful, and well worth the money.
After Effects is somewhat daunting but once you get used to the learning curve you will be amazed at what it can do.

Simply put, After Effects is "Photoshop for motion picture footage", that's all there is to it. It's even more than that but just to start with, it is like having the power of Photoshop for a moving image.

Thanks, very helpful advice! I'm just starting out and will using it mainly to showcase work projects, so will be using my iPhone for a little while. I find iMovie underwhelming so want to purchase a program that's not too expensive but effective. I'm probably going to purchase a gimbal on Cyber Monday, more than likely the DJL Osmo 2 or Zhiyun Smooth 4. Pretty awesome realizing what smooth footage you can get from one of these, which cost around $120!
 
You sure know your stuff.
Friend of mine swears by Da Vinci - he's tried getting me to use it (I output stop motion, sometimes with sound) and Premiere CC 2018 finally does for me what Windows movie maker (don't laugh) used to do easily. Photoshop is a go-to for me - but I use CS5.5 as well as CC18

It's just the subscription model that pisses me off. I want to BUY the software and just be done with the expense, not have a continuing suck happening all the time...I already have that with things like Netflix. If I wanted to "rent" the software I would, just like I'd rent a house if I wanted to, but we bought our house, and I want to BUY and OWN the software outright.

I also hate the online license dongle nonsense, too. I've resigned myself to having to deal with it but I hate it. More and more software proggies want you to commit a USB port to having some stupid license dongle stuck in there in order to continally hold their hand and reassure them that you're legitimate. Meanwhile it means I have to make sure I have internet access and give up a port.
 
Thanks, very helpful advice! I'm just starting out and will using it mainly to showcase work projects, so will be using my iPhone for a little while. I find iMovie underwhelming so want to purchase a program that's not too expensive but effective. I'm probably going to purchase a gimbal on Cyber Monday, more than likely the DJL Osmo 2 or Zhiyun Smooth 4. Pretty awesome realizing what smooth footage you can get from one of these, which cost around $120!

A gimbal isn't foolproof. Neither are drones, by the way.
Another plug-in you may want to investigate is ProDAD by Mercali.

I'm pretty sure it's available for Win or Mac.



Phone cameras, and even many professional, broadcast and cinema cameras, use CMOS sensors.
A few pro cameras use CCD sensors.
The difference is huge because a CMOS sensor works the way a flatbed scanner sensor works, only much faster.
Because of this, you will encounter certain conditions that will overwhelm the read/write speed of your CMOS sensor and cause rolling shutter issues like visual harmonics or "jello-cam".

The faster the CMOS sensor read/write speed, the less susceptible it is to these problems but on a phone camera, something has to be sacrificed and it's usually the read/write speed because phones can't cool down their sensors the way a Red Dragon or an ARRI Alexa can.

So you will encounter footage that needs stabilization correction and Mercalli is the best in the business.
 
Wow, ProDAD has grown enormously, be sure to check out their entire product line.

PRODUCTS
 
Simply put, After Effects is "Photoshop for motion picture footage", that's all there is to it. It's even more than that but just to start with, it is like having the power of Photoshop for a moving image.

I find that AE is just too big a learning curve for what I need however if I was editing longer video I would put the time into learning it. As it is, Photoshop does a pretty good job with shorter video clips.

It's not that Windows Movie Maker was terrible, it was just very limited, that's all. ~

What I found it did well, it did easier and better than many hugely expensive programs. When I teach animation and motion graphics we still use an older desktop with WMM on - a beginner can adjust framerate and image times within a sequence so much more quickly and easily than in any other program I know. So when a student makes a stop motion at 13fps but part of the sequence needs to have a different frame rate they can do it without having to dive into arcane menus and settings just to do that.
 
Wow, ProDAD has grown enormously, be sure to check out their entire product line.

PRODUCTS

Appreciate all of your great advice! It looks like AVID recommends 32 GB memory but will accept 16 GB (Windows), and I'm guessing that most worthwhile editing programs will probably demand the same. Can you recommend an economical computer that can handle this kind of program? I really don't need it for much else.
 
Appreciate all of your great advice! It looks like AVID recommends 32 GB memory but will accept 16 GB (Windows), and I'm guessing that most worthwhile editing programs will probably demand the same. Can you recommend an economical computer that can handle this kind of program? I really don't need it for much else.

Nope, I cannot recommend ANY "economical" computers for something like video editing because the term implies that you can get something for "nothing" or for "relatively little" when video editing, graphics and compositing are more demanding tasks than even the most sophisticated gaming programs.

Complex layered video and graphics timelines will bring an economical computer to its knees.
And, if you adjust your render output to compensate, you wind up sacrificing bit depth, or bit rate, or resolution, or some combination of all three.
Simply put, "GIGO"...garbage in = garbage out.
The simple math dictates that one cannot cut corners without risking GETTING cut on the return path somehow.

You will need the best and fastest processor, quad core minimum with a large cache, the fastest RAM and the best and fastest video graphics cards, and you will want to use a 64 bit OS and 64 bit versions of the software. (32 bit is DEAD)
You're going to want multiple hard drives, with the largest cache available and you're going to want a motherboard with the fastest throughput.

And personally speaking, while I know people do edit on their laptops, I liken it to using a garden tractor to plow the back forty for the wheat crop. You can't go wrong with the Hewlett-Packard HPz enterprise level workstation models.
The HPz line has been the default recommendation by AVID since HP first started making them in the late 1990's and while HP consumer level computers are dodgy, it appears that HP has always been totally serious about their HPz line of professional machines.

Start with Videoguys.com and check out their 2017 recommendations.

I know that they don't recommend Win 8/8.1 but I have had zero issues, but I do intend to migrate to Windows 10 and I recommend it for anyone. If you're building or buying new, you're going to wind up with Windows 10.

By the way, there's plenty of tips to streamline your Windows 10 OS to make it run even faster and better.
The most obvious one for any power user is to go directly to the advanced system settings and, inside the PERFORMANCE tab, turn OFF "Let Windows decide what's best for my computer" and select "Adjust for best performance".

That's just the tip of the iceberg.
 
Nope, I cannot recommend ANY "economical" computers for something like video editing because the term implies that you can get something for "nothing" or for "relatively little" when video editing, graphics and compositing are more demanding tasks than even the most sophisticated gaming programs.

Complex layered video and graphics timelines will bring an economical computer to its knees.
And, if you adjust your render output to compensate, you wind up sacrificing bit depth, or bit rate, or resolution, or some combination of all three.
Simply put, "GIGO"...garbage in = garbage out.
The simple math dictates that one cannot cut corners without risking GETTING cut on the return path somehow.

You will need the best and fastest processor, quad core minimum with a large cache, the fastest RAM and the best and fastest video graphics cards, and you will want to use a 64 bit OS and 64 bit versions of the software. (32 bit is DEAD)
You're going to want multiple hard drives, with the largest cache available and you're going to want a motherboard with the fastest throughput.

And personally speaking, while I know people do edit on their laptops, I liken it to using a garden tractor to plow the back forty for the wheat crop. You can't go wrong with the Hewlett-Packard HPz enterprise level workstation models.
The HPz line has been the default recommendation by AVID since HP first started making them in the late 1990's and while HP consumer level computers are dodgy, it appears that HP has always been totally serious about their HPz line of professional machines.

Start with Videoguys.com and check out their 2017 recommendations.

I know that they don't recommend Win 8/8.1 but I have had zero issues, but I do intend to migrate to Windows 10 and I recommend it for anyone. If you're building or buying new, you're going to wind up with Windows 10.

By the way, there's plenty of tips to streamline your Windows 10 OS to make it run even faster and better.
The most obvious one for any power user is to go directly to the advanced system settings and, inside the PERFORMANCE tab, turn OFF "Let Windows decide what's best for my computer" and select "Adjust for best performance".

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Good to know, thanks so much!
 
Good to know, thanks so much!

If the money is an issue, consider looking for secondhand or refurbished HPz enterprise workstations.
They're really tough as nails and refurb models can be very very cheap.
Cheap, as in maybe around a thousand bucks versus two or three thousand (or even $4-5K) for this year's exact same model.
The motherboards on the z Series machines are all the equivalent of mil-spec because as advertised, they have to meet mission critical performance and durability standards. A lot of businesses and agencies that procure them also toss them after five years because they are budgeted to do so and they cannot amortize them for tax purposes anymore after five years.

So out they go, and these outfits spend the budget to acquire the new ones, but that doesn't mean that the old ones are spent and worn out. Generally when you get one, the hard drives are missing, so you have to load new ones and install your OS yourself.

I've seen people get ten or even fifteen years out of an HP-z Series workstation and they're still functioning when they let them go, so it's worth looking into.

A lot of them were built to work on Windows 7 most likely but I assure you they're going to work fine with Windows 10.
 
If the money is an issue, consider looking for secondhand or refurbished HPz enterprise workstations.
They're really tough as nails and refurb models can be very very cheap.
Cheap, as in maybe around a thousand bucks versus two or three thousand (or even $4-5K) for this year's exact same model.
The motherboards on the z Series machines are all the equivalent of mil-spec because as advertised, they have to meet mission critical performance and durability standards. A lot of businesses and agencies that procure them also toss them after five years because they are budgeted to do so and they cannot amortize them for tax purposes anymore after five years.

So out they go, and these outfits spend the budget to acquire the new ones, but that doesn't mean that the old ones are spent and worn out. Generally when you get one, the hard drives are missing, so you have to load new ones and install your OS yourself.

I've seen people get ten or even fifteen years out of an HP-z Series workstation and they're still functioning when they let them go, so it's worth looking into.

A lot of them were built to work on Windows 7 most likely but I assure you they're going to work fine with Windows 10.

Good to know, thanks! This is really great advice because I do want to make quality videos and best to know the cost before buying a bunch of bull **** that I'll have to get rid of anyway.
 
Good to know, thanks! This is really great advice because I do want to make quality videos and best to know the cost before buying a bunch of bull **** that I'll have to get rid of anyway.

It's not bull**** if you know what to look for.
If you start with blueprints like those given by the Videoguys (they're the ones pushing the HP-z series workstations) and go from that platform, you won't be buying bull****, you'll be buying quality.

Look at it this way:

Mac people have better gear because Apple has never MADE a computer that WASN'T based on the kind of architecture found in enterprise level workstations. There is no such thing as a "bargain" level Apple machine because Apple always started from the idea that the minimum level of system architecture HAS to be enterprise level to begin with.

Throughout the whole "Apple versus Windows" battles, once you got to the level of machines that were enterprise level, all that bickering was pure nonsense and empty smack talk. Apple might have felt they had the better OS and we can have that discussion but the hardware was the hardware, and Windows NT enterprise level hardware was always DAMN GOOD.

The weaknesses were the early Microsoft consumer level operating systems that were supposed to be marketed to the general public.
During the whole time that consumers suffered under Windows 95, 98, Me etc...professional users on Windows NT had few if any of those issues. Windows NT was a relatively stable OS.
Apple had better security because they locked down the kernel but Apple also had an advantage because no one was writing viruses and malware for their OS to begin with. Now they ARE.

When Apple went the Intel path, they simply took what was already the hugely successful enterprise level architecture for mission critical Windows machines (most of which always operated on Windows NT) and adapted it to Apple's specs and design parameters. But the adaptation isn't all that drastic, which is why it has been possible to build "Hackintosh" machines that can run Apple OS but aren't made by Apple, which can also run Windows.

Early nonlinear computer video edit software was originally designed only to run on systems that used hardware and software drivers that were "certified" by the software company that wrote the programs.
For instance, in the early days of AVID, prior to Apple's entry into editing, AVID would ONLY run on a system that AVID specified. Your hardware had to be EXACTLY what AVID demanded, or the software wouldn't even run at all, it just wouldn't even start unless it saw the hardware and driver configuration demanded by AVID.

Same with the old Pinnacle Systems, and with a ton of other early video edit packages.
If you wanted to run Pinnacle, a Pinnacle systems designer fleshed out your order and either built the system or told you what to go buy, and you got all your software drivers through Pinnacle. And those systems used the Windows NT OS, not 95, or 98, Me or XP.

Same with Grass Valley, same with all of them, even the early Adobe Premiere, which by the way was written by the same guy who wrote Final Cut! Older nonlinear editing systems that ran on Windows in a professional environment ran on Windows NT.
You could MAKE them run on Windows 98 but most edit software companies wouldn't guarantee it would run properly.

It was only around maybe 2000 or 2002 that people started building whatever they wanted and the marketplace forced edit software makers to expand their software drivers to accommodate different hardware.

So the takeaway from all this is, it's probably better to build a system that is certified as best use BY the software makers, and that means you IGNORE the so called "minimum system requirements" which is always a joke.

It is best to build systems that do not cut corners.
The reason Apple users boast that "it just works" is because Apple systems are all the SAME. When you BUY an Apple, you go into the Apple "walled garden" and you do not use hardware or software, or even software drivers, that are not Apple approved and certified. If you think back to the days of the old "Ma Bell" telephone company, only the telephone company hardware was allowed, so because all "Bell System" hardware was Bell Systems hardware and not something else, Ma Bell could guarantee that everything always worked exactly as it was supposed to.

Using that kind of approach when building Windows based systems worked in the past when computers were relatively weak and underpowered, so if it worked then, it's definitely going to work NOW.
 
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