Purchasing Mac.

[serega]

I'm dreaming to buy Mac.

1. Will Mac read my external NTFS formatted HD to access all my AVI's?
2. Is IMovie good and easy to use as Pinnacle Studio (except to be stable)?
3. Are there any programms to work with MPEG's without reencoding untouched parts (like Womble)?
4. IS it thruth that you do not need as much powerfull computer if it is Mac?

I hope here some people who converted to Macs and they know these answers.

[dnix71]

#4 first - The new macs are real computers. Dual, quad and eight core Intels. If you buy new, with BootCamp from Apple, you can dual boot to XP or Vista as well (you'll have to buy XP or Vista separately).

#1 NO, but there are third party softwares like open source freeware MacFUSE that allows read/write abilily to NTFS.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070220150856279

You are better off not doing that, though. A 250 GB firewire hd sells for about $90 incl shipping
http://cgi.ebay.com/LaCie-Porsche-250GB-Firewire-Mac-PC-Drive-Ships-TODAY_W0QQitemZ150...QQcmdZViewItem

#3 Tele2DVD will make a dvd compliant disc from a valid avi mpeg without recoding. It's free.
ffmpegX is $15. It will do much more and is well worth the money.

#2 There is a lot of license weirdness with Macs. mp2's and mp3's sometimes require buying extra licenses to import to "i" apps, or Quicktime or Toast. If you make movies for a living then you know the routine, otherwise convert everything to an mp4 first and then it doesn't matter. Get VLC for Mac, it's just as useful as the pc version.

[serega]

Thanks

[edDV]

Don't assume an NTFS USB2 drive or flash drive will work or that all multimedia files will play. It all needs research and testing. VLC on a Mac is a godsend. I mostly do transfers through a network.

#2 iMovie is fairly basic but then so is Pinnacle Studio.

#4 Both are similar in CPU needed and now both use the same Core2Duo Intel CPUs.

[serega]

Thanks. It's not a plan to use NTFS on Mac. All I need to transfer AVI's for editing my home videos. A reason I asked about speed is that some people been telling me that slow Mac a lot better then fast PC for Video editing. One thing looks weird to me I can not find Mac made in case. Those that for sale now are made of laptop parts. If I want put bigger HD then it costs more and they are not as fast.

[jman98]

Don't assume an NTFS USB2 drive or flash drive will work or that all multimedia files will play. It all needs research and testing.

You are correct. I am no Mac expert - at work it's a secondary machine for me, but I can tell you from personal experience that my iMac refuses to write to an NTFS formatted USB2 flash drive. I asked one of the more experienced users about it and all I got was a shrug of the shoulders that this person had never tried using a flash drive on the Mac.
My iMac did mount it in "read only" mode, which was useless to me as I wanted to write to it, but if that mode actually works, there is some small chance that you might be able to access data on NTFS partitions and play it. I wouldn't count on it though.

Question #4 in the original post is not really true. The OS can do things more efficiently than Windows, that is for sure, but any video related work is still going to use the CPU and the OS won't help you much there.

In a worst case scenario, you can use something like Parallels (http://www.parallels.com) or Fusion (http://www.vmware.com - warning - it may be tricky to find as the VMware web site isn't well designed) to run Windows under OS X if the Mac tools for video aren't to your liking.

[Case]

It is a documented feature for Mac OS X to read (but not write) NTFS file systems, for the very reason to allow one to move files over to the new Mac. To get write access, get MacFuse.

[serega]

OK Thanks. OSX still can read and write to Fat 32, is it correct? I just wonder how this work with flash drives with MP3 and pics from cameras. Are those mini macs doing well?

[terryj]

Flash based devices aren't a problem, especially since Apple
started following the trend and made the majority of their
iPods flash based.

I had a guy who won as a door prize at CompUSA
( the card from the fish bowl thing) a CompUSA cheap
128mb mp3 player, and wanted to know if it would work
with his Macbook.

I plugged it in, and it mounted as a MS-DOS drive.
we copied music to it, in mp3 format, and then
unmounted it. He could use it just fine.

and as for #1.--You can build yourself a FW drive for even less
than dnix's off the shelf $90 price. I just built one for about $70.

[edDV]

OK Thanks. OSX still can read and write to Fat 32, is it correct? I just wonder how this work with flash drives with MP3 and pics from cameras. Are those mini macs doing well?

Mac Mini that I bought is great in isolation. Every issue interfacing to a PC multimedia infrastructure is a challenge. They say to just buy Quicktime Pro for Mac. Why is this an extra cost I ask? If that doesn't allow my PC media to play I shall be pissed Mate *

Apple has networking to MS down to art
It auto dealt with Airport wireless G to AT&T DSL 2Wire router and Windows network. Impressed I am.

Hard disk interface so far seems similar to Linux. I've kept some FAT32 partitions but come on YoApple. Linux is Free and you want premium cash. Become a serious player and fix the friggin NTFS licensing issues Or refund 20% to Windows suckers. So we can buy a second set of Firewire drives**.


* Even if you bought Quicktime Pro for Windows, you still must buy it again for the Mac but to be user friendly, Leopard should play what you send it. The target Mac Mini user is too "Right Brain" to deal with Quicktime Pro. Embed Quicktime Pro and make it automatic.

** When Apple went to Intel they should have swallowed the full pill and licensed NTFS. They can't be fully interoperable until they do.

[fairytale00]

It is said that iMac start from $1199 at Apple store recently , you can have a look at that .

[serega]

Thanks all. Price is the reason I'm looking at MAC. They almost cheaper Brand name PC's.

[edDV]

The $599 Core2 Duo Mac Mini is a super value and includes the latest Leopard and iLife software. Think of the Mac Mini as a notebook with separate monitor, keyboard and mouse.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?node=home/shop_mac/family/...9-1&esvid=2001

Factor in cost of additional software (Windows dual boot requires licensing Windows as well).

Overall a PC is still cheaper but the Mac is now a viable option especially for the basic user.