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to love Windows NT Windows NT's growing status as the launching pad for the future of digital video creates a quandary for those who have learned their craft at the Apple altar. Is it time to abandon the faith and embrace NT? If so, to what extent? Should I dedicate a PC for DV, while sticking with Macintosh for general graphics work? Or is it smarter to simplify matters--and eliminate those gnawing anxieties about the future of Apple--by switching completely to PCs? Most Mac users will base their decisions on two major factors:
Adapting to the Wintel interface is no big deal, if the current DV applications for NT are any guide. Software designers are too smart to turn away Mac users-- the market for non-linear editing and 3D animation packages--at the front door. "Time is money," observes Chuck Wilkerson of DigiQuest Video Productions in Minneapolis. "When you have to learn something from scratch, and spend weeks to learn it and get intuitive to it, then that's money out of your pocket." NT programs such as D-Vision Online, Avid MCXpress, In:synch Speed-Razor and 3-D Studio MAX strive to mimic the look and feel of their SGI and Mac antecedents. For example, both Avid's Media Composer series for Mac and D-Vision feature a timeline that serves as the temporal blueprint for a video, "bins" where captured footage is stored, and a similar array of tools: select, cut, undo/redo, zoom, shrink. DV equipment resellers such as HotDish Media Group (www.skamp.com) and AVI Systems (www.avisys.com), both in Eden Prairie, offer instruction to new customers. Shelby Zavoral, director of sales and marketing for HotDish (and sponsor of a DV user group www.interactive-pioneers.org/dv_sig.html that posts to this web site) claims that NT neophytes with experience in digital editing can learn the basics of D-Vision in about a day. Mastering the application takes a little longer--about a week. Yes, even you can learn to scale creative peaks on an NT-based system. But you won't get the chance unless you can solve some thorny capitalization and integration problems.
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