Capturing Video on PC then editing on a Mac?

Hi everyone,
I'm a long time watcher of the Apple area of this site, and thanks to all the guides and answers I've read from people, I plan on getting my first Mac (MBP) in January after the Penryn refresh.

At the moment I've got a PC (XP/Vista) and a DV Cam, and what I want to know is if I capture video from my cam onto the PC (as one large avi file), can I then edit this when I get the MBP with a view to making some home DVD's?
I'd like to get the capturing done now to free up tapes for xmas, but would like to do the editing once I get the MBP. Is it easy to edit avi's on the Mac, or am I causing trouble for myself, and would it be best to wait and get the MBP and then run the captures?

Thanks!!

 

Depends on what for editing you are planning to do, and what for software you are planning to use. Of course, simple editing can be done via iMovie or something, but more advanced editing might require you to purchase software, such as QuickTime Pro or Final Cut Pro if you are really professional.

Software you might have purchased for use on your PC will not easily work on the Mac as licences will not be easily transferable.

 

Is your camcorder mini-dv? If it is, I suggest you wait for the MBP to arrive before you start capturing video. I don't think AVI works with iMovie and even if it does, it would have less quality in the end, because you would be encoding the video several times. It would be best to get a Mac and then capture all your video, edit them, and then burn them.

 

Are you using Adobe OnLocation?

 

What's wrong with video editing on a PC?

 

It's all about codecs.

.avi files are not the problem, .avi is just like .mov, a container for codecs.

If the video file works on a mac, no problem.

Can have some large files to move around though, kind of a hassle.

Makes more sense to capture and edit on the same machine.

 

Thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated. To answer some questions:

Budding - There isn't a specific package on the Mac I intend to use, I'm open to what might be best for my needs, I want to get into editing video and making home dvd's (with menus, effects etc) so if I need to buy something I will. I thought I'd see how the built-in apps were when I got Leopard first.

I realise software on the PC won't work on the Mac, I'm just using the Windows Video import functionality that's built in at the moment, basically taking the video straight from the cam and storing it in raw DV format with no compression, ready for editing (so roughly 12Gb files for 60 mins of footage)

thnksfrthmmrs - Yes it is a mini-dv camera, connected through firewire. Thanks, comments noted, that's what I was wondering

Olphus - Nope, not using any software at the moment, just built-in Windows stuff to capture

Lithus - My PC at home is powerful enough to capture the video, but most of the time I'm away from home and my laptop isn't too great, so editing the video on it would be painful. That's why I want the MBP, and why I'd prefer to wait and do the editing on that

count_schemula - Moving the files around isn't too much of a problem, I was just going to put all the raw captures on an external drive, and as I understand it OSX can read NTFS but not write, so I could pull the raw files down onto the MBP, and reformat the drive afterwards for OSX use.

Overall though, I'm getting the feeling it might be best to wait and capture straight to OSX?

 

Yes, if you can wait then it would be overall easier to capture straight to OS X and the editing software for Mac OS X is better and there are better quality choices in this area over the PC.

 

if you can capture straight to .dv you should have no problem working with it in iMovie, 08, or the older timeline based iMovie

 

Thanks for the replies.

I also have a Canon Ixus 860 digital camera which can take video clips, and are created in avi format. Does that mean editing or using these clips in a video sequence I'm making on the Mac could be a problem? Can .avi's be used with the video editing software that comes with Leopard? (Is that iMovie?)

 

In your case, yes. Canon cameras use Motion-JPEG compression in the AVI file container. iMovie '08 is quite happy to import/edit your Motion-JPEG video track and edit them.