Financing a Computer

I had the SAME problem, only I needed a tiBook. I applied for an Aspire Visa (www.aspirevisa.com) and was approved for $3750 with a pretty decent APR (i think it was like 15%) But the minimum due is only like $39 a month, which will let me pay this thing off in like 3 years. Im only 19 too, so you might get a better quote. Peace...
Paul

Ebay. Not a loan per se, but have you thought about buying a used machine to save some cash? A DP500 is still screaming fast compared to just about everything out there.
Don't think that every editor has a DP800 and every add on available, I run a few G4 FCP machines and only one is DP right now. Get a cheaper machine, learn to use it well, and then try to earn some $ with it to buy another better G5 in January (hopefully!).

I'd have to agree

We'd all like something cutting edge, but a B&W w/a 500Mhz G4 upgrade card is as fast as my real 500Mhz G4 and is only $800 off eBay. Other good idears are the Dual450 or 500s on eBay ($1300 w/FCP 2 installed) or a newspaper. The secret is using a CRT (shhh)

Hell, some of the best stuff I've seen recently was shot on super8 and spliced by hand. Who needsa computer at all!

Hey

You just reminded me, any G4 w/a Matrox RTmac setup can do real time editing and effects in FCP 2. Food for thought since a 350Mhz G4 w/RT Matrox is like $2,000. Or of ocrce Apple offers a pre-installed Quicksilver model for $3995. Your call.

I would go for the cheaper DP powermac, it'll save you a couple thousand that you could use to pay for programs to edit on.

refurbish

I agree, if you are not hell bent on getting a DP800, I would get a refurbished DP533 or 500. They are still wickedly fast.

Or wait until Janurary when there will be 800DP and 867s up for cheap!

Guy

Apple Finance

Try out the Apple finance program at the online store, also use the Education prices!

Guy

How much do they usually reduce computers when mwsf rolls around? What kind of savings could one expect on the "old" models?

DO NOT GET THE MATROX CARD!!!

Ok, the card was nice six months ago, but here's the problem if you're on a budget...$1000 !! and the realtime "preview" only works for three layers under certain conditions, not on Tuesdays, and won't do what you really want it to on any day that ends with the letter y.
The other reason of course, is that it will be obsolete in two weeks when FCP for OSX is released which should have near real time capabilities through background rendering.
Promax dropped their RT card just before production because of this same reason.
Get a DP500, a nice 19" monitor and a small TV set.

Oh yeah, intellimouse. Best $45 spent for editing bliss.

boston8man and Bophonic

I am a Full Sail graduate, I was in video editing too and I've been working in the field for 5 years now.

1. Bophonic, do not be such idiot and do not get a loan to get a TiBook for video editing. That is only showing how inexperienced you are.
How are you going to edit something in a 15” monitor if you need at list a good 17”?
Are you going to use the internal hard drive for uncompressed video?
With the same amount of money you can get a desktop with every single accessory.
Are you going to edit video in a plane too?

2. For video editing, specially if you are a student you may consider the low end Mac, with an extra hard drive and almost any video card like miro DC 30 plus or above, just because you are not going to do professional video editing in your dorm. You need the computer to practice editing, capture, use filters, etc. and you are going to end up using 320 X 240 at most just because the rendering time are going to drive you crazy.

You have to understand that after you graduate your computer is going to be discontinued and the most important reason is that before you edit anything for broadcast you need to work in a company with the professional equipment. That means that you may use your computer for experimenting and maybe to edit some ones else video, but forget about you are going to start your own company after graduation. Many students in my class spend lots of money buying even Silicon Graphics machines. They are inexperience as you are at the point. You need to know the business first and get the experience.

So, get a good computer (G4 450 may be), with a good extra drive (20GB is good), a 17” inch monitor (not LCD), some video card and at list 512 Ram (one per slot). Get After FX and Premiere if you want to. With that you are going to have hours to spend there. Then buy a video camera (not the $2000 Sony, get any may be with a digital out put, analog is good) and a VCR with a digital counter (doesn't have to be SVHS). And you are away above fine.

I was editing video with a beige G3 266, with 96MB Ram, 4 MB video Ram and internal 4 GB drive and a extra 9GB Barracuda with a miro DC 30. I started doing video for my friends of the college and presentations. At work I had an Avid and a Quantel edit box. Most of my friends at work had their video toaster working for free lancing.

Do not believe if some one from Avid or Marcromedia o Adobe comes to you to sell you the latest software. It is good but let some one else but the equipment, you just get the education, because is very sad one some kid comes to your office looking for job and he said “Oh, I only know PC’s” or “I used to work in a Flame at school”, later on you find them on the road using that old beige G3 or amazed with the video toaster.

Do not spend your money based on TV commercials; get an internship at list for a month in some video house.

internships after college or trade school or high school

mymemory's advice on getting an internship (as a primary job after school) is a great idea...but still start your own business, but do it small at first, get the info you need from working for a company, see what applies to you and your current clients, and then, break off and be 100 percent self employed

this applies for college, junior college, graduate school, trade school, and high school

after business college, i did a four month internship for the federal government and learned what not to do

and after computer repair school, with microsoft networking emphasis, i interned with a couple a large IT departments for a few months before taking on my own clients, and more important than what i learned what to do, i learned what not to do...school and hands on will tell you what's right and you will already know most of the stuff you need to learn, but by working somewhere else, you will see the priorities of what's important day to day and see a routine you can memorize in a short time

...so by doing even a one month internship, you can learn most importantly what not to do (steve wozniak worked briefly at hewlett packard and saw the blindspots of a large company and this helped him build apple with steve jobs)

...but beware, and don't get too comfortable in an internship and make it a long term job because you may lose the fire for being self employed and thus lose objectivity and become mediocre and be one of those long term employees who say, "i will start a business one day, really, i just don't have the experience or know how yet"...we have all seen those people and they are like those 75 year old smokers who say they will get around to quitting someday

a good internship is kind of like stealing ideas but almost every founding ceo learned first somewhere else whether it was woz at hp,

...or red-haried, kinky-afro hippie paul orfela hanging out at mcdonald's and using the ideas from the counter space, time motion studies, polyester blend uniforms, and franchise setups to build his multimillion dollar "kinko's" empire (so named after his afro)

Self employed in the US!!!!

All my knowledge comes from my personal experience. I was working free lancing since I got out college, specially because with the multi media degree I was allow to do lots of thing and I didn't want to get stuck in one. The problem was that people doesn't believe too much in freelancers, just because some of them are people that can not actually get a job any where. So because of that and the economic crisis in my country I decide to work in a company as a graphic designer. The good thing is that I'm basically project manager and I can deal directly with the client because of my experience. This company had 2 designers before me, I'm the only one now but I can manage the projects faster and I make a bit more than a graphic designer. The reason is that after almost 2 years I need the education and learn how my boss would deal with the client and approach the project. Every company does that in a different way, especially in web design. In my case I choose to have a paycheck at the end of the month rather than been hunting clients around, but that is the way the economy is around here.

Boston8man if you have the rest of the equipment go for the TiBook, but I would get a Pismo 500 instead, I have one and my eyes get wed when I used Photoshop or Illustrator at such hi speed in a portable that cost me just $1400 with 250Ram and a extra battery just 4 months ago.


[Edited by mymemory on 11-18-2001 at 03:17 PM]

mymymy, Have you you used your beloved Pismo to edit video on FCP? And I mean something more than a few clips with a cross dissolve.
I have and it SUCKED! Way too many dropped frames, creeping slow renders, tiny screen. We had to transfer the whole job to a G4 tower to be able to output to tape.

Originally posted by SPG
mymymy, Have you you used your beloved Pismo to edit video on FCP? And I mean something more than a few clips with a cross dissolve.
I have and it SUCKED! Way too many dropped frames, creeping slow renders, tiny screen. We had to transfer the whole job to a G4 tower to be able to output to tape.

Click to expand...

No, but that is because of the hard drive, that is gonna happend with any laptop I am sure, Boston8man said he is gonna use a fire wire drive, that is why I sugest him the Pismo.
If I could edit video in a Power Mac 9600/200 with 128Mb of ram, I can do it in a Pismo for sure, maybe (and I mean maybe ) with the internal hard drive wich is the weak point in the chain.
If you are gonna out put something from the Pismo be sure to use some good compresión (soreson may be), specially if you are not doing broadcast quality. I have seen people using miro DC 20 for TV!!!! (!!!=crazy people).

And if you read from top to botton my posts I wrote before you did what you are telling me. Forget about doing some serious After Effects rendering in any laptop. You are gonna run out of batteries before is done. But let me try doing some rendering just to try, right now my brother is using the Pismo for some video stuff actually, just a silly thing because he needs the video out put, but I am gonna play with it may be tomorrow.

Ps. I used Premiere




[Edited by mymemory on 11-18-2001 at 04:09 PM]

This was with an external firewire 7200rpm drive in a good enclosure.
What program were you using on the 9600? Not FCP without dropping frames.
Also when you mentioned editing in a smaller frame size like 360x240 shows that you're out of touch with current non linear editing. DV would have to be rendered down to that size or captured through a different device like a USB capture device. Both worthless options for actual video work, maybe useable for the web.
Bottom line is that the Pismo is a poor option for video editing. I know it can be done, but not nearly as well as on a tiBook or I'd bet even an iBook.

Originally posted by SPG
This was with an external firewire 7200rpm drive in a good enclosure.
What program were you using on the 9600? Not FCP without dropping frames.
Also when you mentioned editing in a smaller frame size like 360x240 shows that you're out of touch with current non linear editing. DV would have to be rendered down to that size or captured through a different device like a USB capture device. Both worthless options for actual video work, maybe useable for the web.
Bottom line is that the Pismo is a poor option for video editing. I know it can be done, but not nearly as well as on a tiBook or I'd bet even an iBook.

Click to expand...

Typically I like to just sit back and let ppl fight, but SPG you're REALLY pissing me off with your whole "$19,999 DV System or nothing" attitude. Mymemory was saying that whatever he uses will only be god for learning how to cut and edit. If you're in school it's not an issue of equipment but practice. He's saying that by editing in 360x240 you can quickly experiment and learn to be effective in your cuts. He's not saying to produce editorials for CNN using Sorenson and a 360x240 QT5 movie. And it seems to me that any system drops frames in FCP 1 or 2.

I end up using iMovie a lot more that I want, simply because I can do basic cuts and have simple projects done in record time. I'm learning to use a very nice Toaster system at my highschool, and I just edited a football game on my G4 in iMovie2, it took about 5 hours to edit the 2 hour game into a 5 minute film. The quality is made up in the number of cuts. Of course in the end, FCP2 will be used for anything pro, but as long as the cuts are simple and the objective is to learn, or produce somethign quicky, rendering small little projects in After Effects isn't gonna hurt anyone. Except you apparently. This kid is at some school where they probably have Powermacs and systems w/faster CPUs, more Ram, bigger RAIDs, and faster hardware rendering cards than you.

And the funny thing about video is that in the end it's not what you used, but how you get there. For example, I did a movie where a lot of it was basic cuts so I used iMovie. But it also a lot of SFX, so I used FCP2 for green screening and transparencizing in 3D renders. Boston8mac says he knows what he's doing so I'll take his word for it. What he needs is some cash, not smart-assed ppl telling him what he "needs". If I edit something in FCP and someone else lives and dies by Premeir w/After Effects so be it.

For the record, if you're clever you can do a lot of cool stuff in either iMovie of FCP2.

RE: USA SELF EMPLOYMENT

i was referring to usa self employment

i can't speak for the country of venezuela, but self employed people are trusted in the united states for the most part...that is, after all the backbone of our economy and corporations had to be started by some self employed visionary in the first place

sure there are people who can't work anywhere else so they get self employed, for a VERY SHORT time but if they are not good with people or incompetant at their job they are peddling to the masses, they are not going to get any clients or be able to pay rent or mortgage

many "employees" are just jealous of the self employed who make more (in the usa), have more control over their destiny, and don't have to suck up to supervisors who often don't know what they are talking about

work for a company for awhile, work for yourself awhile, and realize that not all people have what it takes discipline-wise to make it on their own

but i wish you luck in your business!

sba, and stafford

one of my clients did his computer/equipment on stafford and my old boss did her expensive computer/equipment purchases on an sba loan

check into these...maybe your credit will prove worthy, and again i hope this helps and good luck!