Thinking of buying a Apple Imac to transfer old videos

[Happyfeet2]

Hi,

I'm thinking of purchasing a Apple iMac b/c our PC is dying. I've been using pc user for a long time and I'm tired of them breaking down and/or crashing most of the time. I would like to spend money on a pro mac, but I don't have the money right now. I'm leaning towards a 21.5" iMac, i5 processor, 8GB RAM, and using their iMovie and iPhoto. I really need to take things slow and do baby steps along the way. This is all knew to me. I know I can get a PC for half the cost and with lot more features. I'm just so tired of our PC not lasting more than 3 years.

I will be transferring mini Dv's and super 8's tapes from the camcorders to the iMac using a firewire cable. Finally, copying the video to a dvd. I don't think I will be doing some editing, but maybe adding titles and dates.... I know it's going to be slow process...

I would like to know, if I'm going in right direction - buying iMac and will the dvd's I make would have a good picture quality? Looking forward to your comments

Thanks.

[usually_quiet]

If several of your PCs have lasted no more than 3 years, either you are exceptionally unlucky, or something is very wrong.

If you don't already know the reason, you should determine why this is happening before blaming the problem on your computer being a PC. For example, if the source of your problems is an electrical issue, i.e. frequent outages, brownouts, power spikes, etc. a Mac will also be at risk.

[edDV]

Hi,

I'm thinking of purchasing a Apple iMac b/c our PC is dying. I've been using pc user for a long time and I'm tired of them breaking down and/or crashing most of the time. I would like to spend money on a pro mac, but I don't have the money right now. I'm leaning towards a 21.5" iMac, i5 processor, 8GB RAM, and using their iMovie and iPhoto. I really need to take things slow and do baby steps along the way. This is all knew to me. I know I can get a PC for half the cost and with lot more features. I'm just so tired of our PC not lasting more than 3 years.

I will be transferring mini Dv's and super 8's tapes from the camcorders to the iMac using a firewire cable. Finally, copying the video to a dvd. I don't think I will be doing some editing, but maybe adding titles and dates.... I know it's going to be slow process...

I would like to know, if I'm going in right direction - buying iMac and will the dvd's I make would have a good picture quality? Looking forward to your comments

Thanks.

I bought a Mac Mini and it died about 18mo in. Only solution is to buy a system board which costs almost as much as another Mac Mini. With a PC I can swap parts including motherboards for under $100. So don't expect a Mac to be more reliable, just more expensive.

For SD editing, you are in a more confined world of iMovie/Toast. None of the free tools available with Windows but you can get the job done. DV to DVD is well supported.

What do you mean by "Super8"?
Does your MiniDV camcorder accept analog input with DV pass-through?

[jman98]

I've had a few weird disk drive issues at home over the years on various PCs. I finally stopped being cheap and bought a UPS for my home PCs. Have you considered the possibility that if you are not using a UPS that maybe power issues are to blame for your problems? Honestly I wish I had done this years ago. The place where I live is subjected to a good number of brownouts.

iMacs are fairly expensive. They are reliable but you pay for it. They're not really consumer repairable. I changed out the disk drive in mine but it was very painful and not for the faint of heart. My microphone doesn't work anymore since my disk drive swap and I'm too cheap to pay Apple to fix it so I've decided to live without it. If you have to use Apple for repairs, they are not cheap (that's why I did the swap myself). There's no way to expand an iMac other than to put a USB hub on it and they come with a small internal disk drive. You'll have to buy a big external drive to do your video work on.

[Case]

and they come with a small internal disk drive.

What one calls 'small', another would call 'big'. Just pick (BTO) what you think you need.

[jman98]

and they come with a small internal disk drive.

What one calls 'small', another would call 'big'. Just pick (BTO) what you think you need.

My bad. I thought that they still weren't selling anything bigger than about 500 GB.

[orsetto]

I'm thinking of purchasing a Apple iMac b/c our PC is dying. I've been using pc user for a long time and I'm tired of them breaking down and/or crashing most of the time. [...] I would like to know, if I'm going in right direction - buying iMac and will the dvd's I make would have a good picture quality? Looking forward to your comments

I've been using both Macs and Windows for more years than I want to remember, each has its advantages and drawbacks. But don't believe the hype from either platform: the landscape began shifting radically three or four years ago, and those advantages/drawbacks now vary year to year and model to model. Its no longer really credible to make blanket statements about either system being better or worse at anything. Apple of late has been making a distinct market change towards primarily being a consumer products company: between the OSX "Lion" mess and bizarre specs for the next Mac lineup I wouldn't bet the farm on Macs always being preferable for video or photography anymore. (And I say that as a Mac owner since 1989).

Making the shift from Windows is not as simple as it's cracked up to be: unless you have compelling need for some feature on the Mac platform its usually not worth the aggravation of migrating. A new Mac will come loaded with the new "Lion" version of OSX, the most grotesque incompatible OS Apple has spewed out since the original OSX a decade ago. It will make migration for consumers from Windows even more difficult and unwieldy. Pre-Lion it might have made sense to switch from Windows for some people: today if I were a Windows user I wouldn't think of touching a Mac until the" Lion" OS gets through all its teething pains- which may take at least a year.

For SD editing, you are in a more confined world of iMovie/Toast. None of the free tools available with Windows but you can get the job done. DV to DVD is well supported.

In your particular case, happyfeet2, where you're very interested in transferring old videos, Mac lost all its key advantages ages ago. edDV nailed it: the Mac video software selection is down to almost nothing, especially for creating or copying DVDs, and the built-in slot DVD burners are fragile, funky, and expensive to replace. The advantage of the iMac is its clean all-in-one design, great screen, built-in FireWire support for older video cameras, and resistance to virus infections (they do happen, but its much harder to get a system-wide destructive eavesdropping virus or trojan). The included wireless mouse and keyboard are pretty but not terribly comfortable to use. The bundled video transfer software is OK but not the game-changer it once was: depending on what you want to do and how long your videos are, its simple or its a PITA. I'm not trying to discourage you from an iMac, just saying this may not be the best time to buy one. If your PCs are (electronically) dying within 3 years, and they aren't laptops, something is wrong and you need to consult a computer pro who can recommend a solid, reliable tower or mini tower for you. I still have several cheap generic PC towers dating back to 2002 that run 24/7 doing video work for me: aside from an occasional HDD failure or virus issue they work until their power supply fan wears out. Yours should too. Laptops are a different story- they are so flimsy now to achieve low prices that few make it to three years old: they're all disposable.

One alternative you might consider for dubbing FireWire camera video is a standalone DVD/HDD recorder like the Magnavox MDR513, now on sale at J&R for $169. Its a simplified device designed to dub your camcorder videos to its internal hard drive, where you can perform basic edits, addi chapter marks, and create a menu with custom thumbnails for each video. It will then burn as many copies of the DVD as you want, each takes about 20 mins. This avoids tying up your computer, and the recorder is not subject to crashing or other computer-type malfunctions. Worth a look.

I bought a Mac Mini and it died about 18mo in. Only solution is to buy a system board which costs almost as much as another Mac Mini. With a PC I can swap parts including motherboards for under $100. So don't expect a Mac to be more reliable, just more expensive.

This is kind of a cliched slam against Macs: its certainly valid if you happen to be the rare unlucky owner who's Mac breaks like this, but the percentage of hardware failures is actually as low as it is for Windows PCs. You just hear about it more with Macs because theres expectation that they all will be 100% perfect (fostered by Apple PR spin and over-enthusiastic Mac fans). Generally its a Mac laptop issue when it does occur, Apple sells way more laptops than desktops. Apple usually provides extended warranty coverage for unusual motherboard defects, you have to hound them for it and sometimes it isn't easy. The Mini has been stone reliable since day one and very very rarely fails. As part of my last my last job I supervised a showroom with fifteen Minis, half dating back to the original G4 version of 2005, and not one ever tanked in the course of six years continuous operation: not even so much as an OS burp. We did have problems with the four G5 iMacs, all of which were serviced under recall/extended original warranty due to a known power supply defect (the later Intel iMacs do not suffer from this). There are definite pluses and minuses to using Mac, but hardware breakdowns isn't one of them: statistically they match Windows. For better and worse, Apple moved all consumer Macs to the small form factor Mini and iMac: these custom designs are not easy to self-service or upgrade. Thats a compromise involved with any such design: just speak to anyone who bought an HP or Sony Vaio iMac knockoff. Same issues: if you're into DIY service, tinkering or upgrades the bog-standard generic Windows/Linux towers are the way to go.

[lordsmurf]

Macs are not good for capture/ingest -- they really suck at it.
Fine for editing in Apple-blessed formats like Avid or ProRes, but that's really about it.

I use Windows, Linux and Mac OS X for work.