I have a bunch of questions:
What have you used in the past aside from MAX to make the final animation? Are there any Open Source video editing programs out there?
How is Windows Movie Maker
Should I try to get my hands on a Mac to use iMovie?
I use adobe premiere and after effects.
I have had pretty good results with iMovie, pretty easy to use and everything, id say if you could get your hands on a mac, do use it!
(side note for anyone wanting to upgrade to an iPod mini…yeah, dont do it yet unless you have extra money to blow, they will drop the price eventually, get it then, plus u dont get the cool touch buttons :yikes: )
I use and am fluent in
-imovie
-Final Cut Pro 1,2,3
-Avid Symphony and DV Express
-Adobe Premire 5,6, Pro
-Adobe After Effects 5,6
-Casablanca
If I had to reccomend a good starting program that is easy to learn and easy to step up to the “big boys” editing programs, I would choose Premire. It has alot of the features and controls usually found only in Avid and Final Cut. However it is easier to use and learn the the professional programs. Though once you use Premire you can easily switch to other programs (ex. Avid and Final Cut).
I would avoid mac programs like the plague because if you are a PC person you will hate them. Also the computing power needed to render video often is not found in any macs except for the G4 of G5 power macs. These are usually in the 3-5 thousand dollar range. For that kind of money you could easily buy several PCs and network render (really fast rendering) or you could use Avid (no rendering. correction: real time rendering)
Good luck!
If you have any questions I would be happy to help out if I can
-Andy
good call
Is any of that software free?
unfortunatelt, no.
If your using linux you could probably find some os software on sourceforge or something.
Those figures are off by a long shot. You can get a G5, dual 2ghz, for under $2000. Now you can get a nice G4 for under $900.
I have to disagree with you on this. The G5 starts at $1,600 for students and goes up to $2,600. G4 go from the sub 1,000 range all the way to a $2,000 20 inch imac. You would probably will want to add some RAM (Usually serious video editors have 2 gigs +), with the G5 you can have up to 8 gigs of memory (only 4 with the low end). They are very competitive and often better than the wintel side of things.
iMovie is a great application for beginners and it is part of the iLife package now ($30)
Final Cut Express is on par, and most of the times better than Premiere, Avid DV express, and more. It is available for $150
Final Cut Pro competes with $50,000 systems and software packages, and its $500.
Final Cut Pro is quickly becoming the new standard in video editing, and there are several articles that can state that.
I have used Premier, and didn’t really like the user interface of it, and it was usually very slow compared to Final Cut Express.
For a free movie editor on the wintel side,there is a piece of software that avid makes. It doesn’t offer much, but its good enough for most projects.
i know adobe has a 30 day trial of premiere on their site, so u can check that out. ive been using it for a couple years and ive never run into any problems
I’ve played around enough with video production to know that I’m really terrible at it, but I have to say that iMovie is simple to learn and very fun and will give you some great results. I’ve used premeire (a little) and Windows Movie Maker and absolutely despised them. Avid DV Express and Final Cut Pro are very powerful, you can do anything with them, but they’re a big step up in complexity and at least for me, very difficult to learn. I guess it depends on what you’re trying to do, if you want a system that’s simple to learn and relatively powerful get hold of a Mac and use iMovie. The newest version is coming out in a few days.
Just remember that you can use older versions of iMovie on the old CRT iMacs - which you can pick up pretty cheaply.
You can also pick up an eMac G4 for around $6-700 with the academic discounts. You can even pick up the 1Ghz eMac with the DVD burner for around the $1000 mark.
iMovie comes preinstalled on all new macs, and the academic price to buy the new version is only $29 if you don’t have it.
You can even get it to run on a pre-G3 Mac, albeit very painfully 
What you really need to worry about for video is having plenty of hard drive space available. Raw unedited DV footage is somewhere in the vicinity of 1GB/min.
Good luck!
Using A Mac Lol Rofl If U Want One There Are Two Sitting In The Corner Of My Basement…mac=bad
In the for what its worth catagory,
Avid is the industry standard.
I learned imovie first, then casablanca (I hate that machine), then I tried to run Final Cut 1 on a new (now old) imac. Poor choice. Imagine having to render something and the status bar says “render time: about three days”
This is when my dislike for macs began. Also, if you edit/use a mac for AV stuff, example FCP or Photoshop (this is coming from a PC user) BUY A THREE BUTTON MOUSE!!! Using all three buttons is so much quicker then using just one! Or you could get a tablet I want one sooo bad!
I digress…
Then I moved on to Premire and After Effects which I used for about 2 years and now I use Avid DV Express. Super nice!
Avid has real time rendering so there’s no waiting for effects to be applied. This makes Avid the most powerful video editing program on the market (in my opinion) however it is also the most costly. sigh
Good luck this year
I’ll take 'em. I’m not a windows-hating zealot but I love my Mac.
Well our team has an old G3 sitting unused in the corner of the shop. I guess I could try to get iMovie running on it. I’m not sure I will be able to get Premire. Maybe if the school has a copy I will, but if they don’t I doubt that the team would get it for our group since it is expensive - and I don’t want to get it illegitimately.
I’ve heard that the new Premiere pro is really good, but premiere six is still above average. I’ve used old versions of avid cinema and hated it, but I haven’t used more recent versions of Avid products. Windows movie maker is terribly simple and limited and not worth using unless you have no other options. As for iMovie, I dislike it as well. The transitions are its only saving quality. After four years of OSMTech, I have developed a hatred for all things mac and found that PC users really feel their programs are annoying to work in. I’d like to try some of discreet’s high level software as well as Final Cut Pro.
You’ll probably not be happy with iMovie’s performance on an old G3.
Alright. I’m going to look into seeing if anyone at the school has Premier and if we could use it for our animation.