Does anyone know anything about the new G3 Macs with built-in Firewire? I was wondering how it compared with the other Firewire /NLE options on the market. Thanks for any info you could give.

-- Tony Lenzo (lenzo@sar.usf.edu), January 12, 1999

Answers

FireMax plug-ins for Premiere work fine. EditDV needs to be updated to work. Apple's FireWire drivers are sad. FinalCut is not yet shipping.

Ross

-- Ross Jones (Rjones@fullerton.edu), January 12, 1999.

I've been using a B&W G3/350 along with my Sony TRV900 camera and the built in Firewire. All I can say is that it's AWESOME stuff and simple to use! I use editDV (www.digitalorigin.com) which lets you control the camera right from the computer (jog, shuttle, pause, play, etc) and save it to disk. Beware, miniDV tape saves to disk at a rate near 3.7 megs per second of your, so I had to get a larger HD for my scratch disk. IBM DeskStar 22GXP (22 gig) HD. This gives the room needed to put together an hours worth of tape with some breathing room. No extra cards, no special device drivers, the thing just works. I nice thing... :-)

Patrick

-- Patrick (pstepp@hotmail.com), May 16, 1999.

I agree with Patrick...Edit DV 1.5 and the new Macs work beautifully together. Quick, easy, and the only additional hardware you need is hard drive space. I like the interface better than Premiere, but the aspect I like best is the ability to view "draft" or "rough" cuts of your effects. Rather than wait an hour for rendering time, you can get a sneak peak at your placed filters or transition effects and decide to change them before your final render. I know that apple's new final cut pro does this as well, but edit dv, as far as i'm concerned are the leaders in this category.

-- kenneth (scourge@thescourge.com), June 09, 1999.

Watch out that your trv900 just doesn't stop working with your computer. It has with mine and it's harder than hell to find someone at Sony that knows anything about it. DV editing may be exciting but it can also be a pain in the ass.

-- harold perniar (haroldp@hotmail.com), February 24, 2003.