What's the best hardware platform on which to do your video post production? A Mac? A PC? This question seems to come up whenever someone wants to get into the video editing game whether it's for personal, occasional use or full blown professional work.
I'll tell you right now, I don't have the answer. At least not for you. I mean, at the end of the day, pretty much any computer with a decent editing package can get you through a project. But if I share with you my personal reasons, maybe that will help guide you to a solution that suits you.
Let's chat about platforms. I've used PCs for-EVER. I've been a Windows user since Windows 1.0. Most of the PCs I own are running Windows. But when I was a software developer in a former life, I was attracted to the macOS because of the similarities between it and the linux world, which I've dabbled in, and the user interface in general. So my daily driver machine became my trusty MacBook Pro from 2013, back when Apple's definition of "pro" aligned with mine. Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, MacBook 2016 dual core usb type c dongle monster.
So it was a natural progression for me to start messing with iMovie and then later Final Cut Pro and now Adobe Premiere Pro CC. I'm just in LOVE with the Mac experience. Native things like QuickLook and the way the Finder works have got me hooked. I know, I know, you can add extensions to Windows to do the same or better, but I'd just rather use macOS.
But when our client work ramped up and as I got faster as an editor, my old Mac seemed to be lagging behind.
That's when I decided to build an Home Theater PC / rendering workhorse. Now this machine is primarily focused on gaming and Virtual Reality as I have an HTC Vive and I've installed an NVidia GeForce GTX 1080 card. It sits in the Living Room hooked up to the 4k tv so my son and I can play Steam games and such, but I also use it as a rendering station, occasionally opening my completed Premiere projects on it and having it render video four times faster than my Mac.
After a while, I wanted to have more speed for my working machine, not just my rendering machine. But it looked like my only options were to shovel out a TON of money for the fastest Mac I can buy from Apple, or give up macOS completely and build a super fast and MUCH cheaper PC with Windows since the Adobe suite of software runs on both Mac and Windows.
But wait! There is another option.
A Hackintosh is simply any non-Apple hardware that has been "hacked" to run macOS.
Now, before we go any further, you need to know a very important thing:
Installing macOS X anywhere other than on official Apple hardware violates Apples EULA for the software. Apple will not give you any support if things go catastrophically wrong, they can disable your Apple ID or even send a lawyer to your door.
Now, this article isn't on how to build it, check the links down below for that. But I will give you a general idea of how it's done.
First, I had to consult some online forums which list mac compatible non-apple hardware. If you've never built a PC from scratch on your own, this might not be for you. Once I found and purchased all the equipment that has been blessed with compatibility with macOS I built the PC. Then in a nutshell, I had to download the version of macOS that I wanted to run from my existing MacBook and put it and some other software on a USB stick and then boot from that drive on the PC. This software will install macOS on the PC. You'll also need to tweak some settings in your BIOS. Once again, if this all sounds new to you, let me suggest going to apple.com and purchasing an actual Mac.
After some configuration and a small problem getting my audio working which was cleared up by visiting the Hackintosh forums, I have a PC that boots into macOS. In some basic benchmarks I found the Hackintosh to render Premiere projects twice as fast as my MacBook Pro. All tasks like scrubbing through the timeline, rendering previews and overall peppiness of the system are much faster.
My old HTPC rendering machine that I mentioned earlier renders my Premiere projects about the same speed as the new Hackintosh. I've noticed that if I have a project that heavily uses effects that utilize the GPU performance of the machine, then the HTPC wins every time, as it's fitted with a GTX 1080 graphics card and my Hackintosh only has a GTX 980.
So do I have the best of both worlds? Well, almost. I'm not giving up my MacBook Pro, since one update from Apple could render the Hackintosh inoperable. So it's gonna require a bunch more maintenance than an actual Mac. But overall, I am very pleased with the performance I am getting.
As a final word, I would say it's really up to you how deep in the rabbit hole you want to go. If you are looking for a macOS based system and want to spend very little time building and troubleshooting, I'd say pay the Apple tax and buy the fastest Mac you can. If you are a little savvy with Windows, you can probably have a PC configured for you that is faster and cheaper than a comparable Mac. If you've gotten your hands dirty and built a couple of custom PCs in your day, then I would say pick your parts, build your own and try running some alternative operating systems. Wink wink.
Either way, no hardware or software in the world can stop you from writing that awesome script or building your amazing YouTube channel. It's just a means to an end.
Machine Specs as of this recording:
MacBook Pro
Intel Core i7 2.3Ghz
16GB RAM
NVidia GeForce GT 750M
HTPC (Home Theater PC)
Intel Core-i7-4790k 4.0Ghz
32GB RAM
NVidia GeForce GTX 1080
Hackintosh
Intel Core i7-6700k 4.0Ghz
16GB RAM
NVidia GeForce GTX 980
Actors in the video version of this article:
PC - Mark Gonzales
http://www.markcgonzales.com
Mac - James Aaron Oh
https://youtube.com/channel/UCeQiZH7aWgTWC-DvORQWwAw
Hackintosh - Courtney Shaffer
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBtssuSITCle-VWO2r_Nt0A
http://courtneyshaffer.webs.com
Hackintosh Build guides and Links:
Tony Mac Hackintosh site: https://www.tonymacx86.com/
Hackintosh How To’s and Guides: http://www.hackintosh.com/
Hackintosh OS X Sierra 10.12 i7 6700k Skylake & GTX 970 Build Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le7anbCaP-k
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