I am considering buying a I-mac with the new Cinestream programme. I first thought of a G4 with FCP2, but then dedided against as i am not used to Macs, i thought if i bought the above system and didn't like it i have only waisted £1500 and not £4000 on G4 & FCP2. I have hired Screenplay (Black box stand alone editor) and love the simplicity, I also have Media pro 6 installed on my (dare i say it) P.C. To be honest Screenplay does little more than a £25 programme like I-movie and i am getting sick to death of my crappy P.C. punching out "Critical errors" and freezing up all the damn time (Win 98 se)not to mention Media Pro 6 is to complicated to use. If i like the Mac OS i can always buy a G4 and put my Cinestream onto it and stick the I-mac in the spare room for the wife to E-mail her freinds. Is the I-mac (40 gig top of range, with extra 256 ram) any good and is Cinestream any good i.e. on a par with the new Premier 6, what programme can you recomend that has a relitively easy learning curve. I make short films, mainly straight cuts and the occasional S.I.V. I also make pop music promo videos, semi pro. I use Canon XL1 and only need to work in native DV. Your advice is much appriciated as hiring Screenplay at £45 per day is starting to get a bit expensive.
I am using Edit DV unplugged on a G4, which was a free download, and I believe Cinestream is the latest development of Edit DV2. I've seen a Cinestream demo at a video show and the interface is very similar - fast in the hands of the demonstrator!
For what it's worth, I've found Edit DV unplugged slow to learn and not very intuitive ( I'm new to NLE but not Macs). However I'm pressing on with it as I don't have the funds for FCP (which I imagine is easier to use), it seems more flexible than iMovie for what I need - and maybe I'll get to like it and will improve.
If I was doing lots of pop stuff and had lots of money, I'd look at FCP with the Mac Matrox realtime board - which I believe only works with a version of FCP currently? If they've released it yet.
If Edit DV unplugged is still available as a download, it would be a good way to try a similar interface to Cinestream, anyhow - if you buy a Mac. Might also be on the PC - I'm not sure.
Hope this is of value.
Guy
....furthermore!!
I see from MacUser that Premiere 6 (Mac) will also support realtime in conjunction with 'supported hardware' - whatever that means - but I can't find anything more specific on the Adobe site. Do they mean the Matrox mac board??
They do mean the Matrox RTMac, but according to the press release that Adobe sent us, there is also real-time hardware (I prefer to think of it as dual-stream hardware, mind), being launched by three other companies - Aurora; ProMax; and Digital Marketing International.
I visited all three companies's sites and could find NOTHING on any of them about related announcements of any such hardware.
The press release is on Adobe's site at:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200103/20010319prmac.html
Bob C
Thanks everyone, I have since found out through various dealerships that G4/FCP2/RTMac is the way to go, they led me to believe that RTMac was designed and optimized to work with FCP2 and not Premeir.
Hi
I think you are right, matrox worked closly with apple. what make realtime posiable is quicktime 5. if premier is based on qt5 then it should be able to support realtime. what i do beleave is that most things in FCP are nativly realtime, AS with premier on a PC you have to use the plug-in effect for realtime. (i think)
Also FCP is better that premier ( i Think :)
You also get loads of third party software that makes FCP worth the extra cash. i would wait for these offer comapnies to release the "duel-stream" boards as they may offer more power than the matrox (although at a hight price)