Windows crashing, was Re: Bill Gates: Teen Heart-throb!

chris wrote: As a show of good faith :-) I'd like to make some recommendations if you're going to get a Mac Mini for video work: - Upgrade the memory to at least 512 and preferably 1GB if possible. MPEG-2 encoding, multi-layer compositing, rendered previews, caching, etc. all chew up RAM. I don't recall if you can upgrade the CPU in a MacMini (or add a second one) but it is much more important to max out RAM first and foremost. - Stick with DV only. DV has a nice low data rate of around 3MB/s which is enough for any hard drive to handle. In fact you can composite 3-4 streams on any cheap modern hard drive and play them realtime. - Assuming sticking with DV only, make sure your workspace (desk, etc.) has room for a small cheap TV and your DV camcorder. Previewing on a monitor, however nice, still doesn't compare to an actual video monitor (or properly calibrated cheap tv if you don't have the cash) for checking saturation, field order, overscan/safe title area, etc. Even if it's a cheap $130 15" color TV, it's still better to preview via firewire->DVcam->TV. (Assuming your DVcam does this kind of passthrough, of course!) -- Jim Leonard (trixter(a)oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/