| As someone who is a video pro, cutting commercials in NYC and LA (and former post facility engineer), I'm not seeing it. I don't know of one editor or post facility that has moved from Mac to Windows or Unix. One River Media (the co. that posted the blogpost about switching) is using Davinci Resolve as an NLE, a far more niche choice than cutting in FCPX. Resolve is a color correcting tool (a very popular one that I've used to color grade features) that has added editing support. I've yet to meet anyone in the wild using it for editing. Even the editors I know that cut on Adobe Premiere which is available for both PC and Mac aren't switching from Mac, which honestly has surprised me a bit because of the greater choice in hardware. But for most video editors at this level, you're just trading speed in one area for problems in another. Editors whine and complain every time there is a tiny change in the interfaces they use, they hate change. They have been forced to embrace FCP and Premiere over the years (and complain about it incessantly). Very few will choose to make the jump to Windows for the same reason. As you step down the ladder, the move will make sense for some. Your all-in-one facilities or one man bands (production and all aspects of post handled by one or two people). But in my experience, this group has already been heavily invested in the Windows side because of the cheaper initial costs (that money you save early will be spent later and the Windows post-house will cost as much or more than a comparable Mac post-house, at least it did when I was an engineer). And the other aspects of video post production, the CG, 3D and compositing sectors already heavily lean toward Windows or Linux and have for over a decade. There just isn't a huge need for massive speed increases in the hardware side for most video editors. We've gone from needing very fast, high end systems with fast (and expensive) SAN storage to laptops and SSDs that allow us to do more, faster than ever. iMacs or MacBook Pros are all the average editor needs, with more and more working remotely from home. I cut a project for the NBA over the holidays on the first gen USB-C MacBook and years ago cut a project for REEBOK on the just released MacBook Air. Both these projects came up unexpectedly while I was traveling but went off without a hitch on underpowered hardware (that I bought for web surfing and writing). That's not to say that I wouldn't appreciate (and most likely purchase) a new and expandable Mac workstation. But for the most part, I'd be spending money to just spend money. It wouldn't speed up 98% of my job. And that other 2 percent isn't slow enough to cause me any issues. |