CompuServe Messages

Craig, I would personally stay away from Avid, especially their Media Suite Pro. We have one at work, and have recieved very little attention from Avid. They almost seem ashamed of it (very buggy), wanting you to upgrade to a composer. The ImMix, on the other hand, is fantastic. We just got a Turbo Cube, and it's a dream. Like the "regular" Cube, all 2D DVE's, transitions, flying audio levels, color correction, keying, titling, etc. etc… are all REAL TIME! This is WONDERFUL, in comparison to all the other NLE's that render everything. (Like our AVID MSP) Wow, it's soo much more productive. Soo much more creative, and a dream to work on. (And I'm not even an editor!) The Turbo Cube has realtime 3D DVE's, like page turns, etc. and the highest video quality I've seen. It's incredible. The "regular" cube is great as well, but with a lesser quality video. (comperable to similarly priced NLE's though) One downside to the cube is that you have to "flatten" video channels if you want more than 2 channels of video. (3 channels including alpha keyed, uncompressed title track) On the TC, it's not bad though, taking as long as the clip is in length. (1min video flattens in a minute, etc.) Not bad. Another downside, is that all the really wild transitions and filters are not realtime, but rendered by the PowerMac. (Actually, not sure if that's an option. I'd check on that..) If you're into long projects, with little need for the flash of rendered effects, I'd highly recommend an ImMix. If you're into :30 type spots, with lots of flash, etc. RP/NT may be what you want. Running RP/NT, I'd think that a dual Pentium, or Alpha 266 would be a great thing, if you rely on lots of complicated effects, etc. (not sure about 100% photoshop plug-in compatability with an Alpha though. Jamie?) But for long form, I'd personally rely on ImMix over a patchworked NT NLE system. good luck! JNJ