Have Discounts, May Purchase

[man2525]

Greetings all,

This forum has made me realize that I'm squandering my access to price discounts. I'm a part-time computer science student and a full-time employee at a university with an Apple-fanatical computer store.

I would like help brainstorming a mac-based solution for my following two needs:

1) Create DVDs from divx and xvid encoded video sources.
2) Record a single electric guitar and add synth tracks (together or separate).

Logistics:

I will place this setup in a 3rd bedroom, and will have to move it occasionally.

Wants:

For the DVDs, I would like motion menus, good encoding quality, and the ability to experiment with hotspotting(?, I'm a digital media novice) images, other than squares, in a menu.

For audio recording, I would like something fairly intuitive so that I can work through song ideas, but will still produce sound decent enough that the average person finds the recording quality acceptable.

Background:

Using a PC, I have used a mix of freeware and trialware programs to decompress divx and xvid encoded video files, re-encoded them for use as elementary streams, created
motion menus, and edited wave files for simple fade effects for audio on the menu screens.

I never burned a single DVD because I ran out of patience. It takes my Athlon XP 1600 6 hours to encode 30 minutes of video using 2 pass VBR (high quality setting in TMPEGenc).

I am a decent musician, but recording and production are as intangible to me as computers are to the average person. I am impressed with the improvement in the
sounds of synths, and would like to use them in addition to guitar. I have also played piano, so I think that I could put that knowledge to use with midi control.

I'm going to throw out $3K as a budget because the audio requires so much...

I'm considering using the ADC Student Discount as I have not used it before...

My educational pricing should be the same as most places, but here's the address:

http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/HEDCustom?qprm=53629

This store seems to have good pricing on audio gear:

http://www.audiomidi.com/

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

[thehuncamunca]

the 1.6 or 1.8 single would probably best fit your budget both are very high performance, faster ones should be coming out in a few months if you can wait that long
get at least 512MB RAM whatever you do, 256 isn't enough

Greetings all,

This forum has made me realize that I'm squandering my access to price discounts. I'm a part-time computer science student and a full-time employee at a university with an Apple-fanatical computer store.

I would like help brainstorming a mac-based solution for my following two needs:

1) Create DVDs from divx and xvid encoded video sources.
2) Record a single electric guitar and add synth tracks (together or separate).

Logistics:

I will place this setup in a 3rd bedroom, and will have to move it occasionally.

Wants:

For the DVDs, I would like motion menus, good encoding quality, and the ability to experiment with hotspotting(?, I'm a digital media novice) images, other than squares, in a menu.

For audio recording, I would like something fairly intuitive so that I can work through song ideas, but will still produce sound decent enough that the average person finds the recording quality acceptable.

Background:

Using a PC, I have used a mix of freeware and trialware programs to decompress divx and xvid encoded video files, re-encoded them for use as elementary streams, created
motion menus, and edited wave files for simple fade effects for audio on the menu screens.

I never burned a single DVD because I ran out of patience. It takes my Athlon XP 1600 6 hours to encode 30 minutes of video using 2 pass VBR (high quality setting in TMPEGenc).

I am a decent musician, but recording and production are as intangible to me as computers are to the average person. I am impressed with the improvement in the
sounds of synths, and would like to use them in addition to guitar. I have also played piano, so I think that I could put that knowledge to use with midi control.

I'm going to throw out $3K as a budget because the audio requires so much...

I'm considering using the ADC Student Discount as I have not used it before...

My educational pricing should be the same as most places, but here's the address:

http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/HEDCustom?qprm=53629

This store seems to have good pricing on audio gear:

http://www.audiomidi.com/

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

[man2525]

Thanks

Thanks for the advice. I might have made my post too long, though, as no one else has replied.