Welcome everyone to Reelclever.com's first edition of "Ask the Expert". My name is Kevin P McAuliffe, and I am currently a Senior Editor working in HD Post in Toronto, Canada.

A little bit of background about me is that I started working in post over eleven years ago as an assistant editor on an Avid Media Composer, and I currently online in high definition on a Final Cut Pro, and most of the work I do is either episodic or concert work. Some of my clients include Alliance Atlantis, Much Music, CTV, HGTV, Life Network (now known as Slice) and The Discovery Channel to name a few. Some of the artists I have done concert work for include Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies, Coldplay, Hedley, Paul Anka, Stompin' Tom Connors, Sum 41, Il Divo and The Pussycat Dolls to name a few.

Even though most of my daily work is in Final Cut Studio 2, I was an Avid editor for 9 years (and still work on an Avid on a regular basis), and have been an After Effects and Photoshop user for about the same amount of time. I have also worked with so many plug-ins and programs that there are just too many to mention.

I get e-mail on a regular basis from people wanting answers to their questions, and I thought that this would be a good forum to answer those questions. If you have a question related to editing or motion graphics, drop me a line at kevinpmcauliffe@gmail.com, and you might just see an answer to it in my next column. Let's take a look at this month's questions.

"Now my reason for writing to you is I'm about to set up a digital audio/video production studio and i will be grateful if you could help me with what i need to invest in especially in the video editing area.I'm from Ghana in Africa and we are now graduating into DV.We are yet to get into HD. I have been adviced to buy a mac for the desktop. Is mac the only desk top good enough for video editing and graphics. what about the imac. Now with software I'm very confused since there is too much of them.i'm leaning towards final cut. what do you say.i need advice on the very good 3D and graphics and effects. I have already purchased 2 panasonic md10000 pal camcorders. My budget is limited so something affordable is what i'm looking at."

This is a very interesting question, and here are my thoughts. First, do not buy a PC. These days, what's the point? With Boot Camp, you can run both Windows (XP or Vista) and OS X on the new Intel MacPro towers (or Macbook Pros or iMacs) and get the best of both worlds with no limitations.

Since it looks like you are only doing DV editing, you could buy a Macbook Pro or an iMac, as they both have FW400 and 800 inputs on the back of the unit, which make capturing and adding storage to the system very easy. I personally have a 20" iMac 2.4G with 4 gigs of RAM, and it is awesome when editing DV and HDV for that matter.

As for an editing package, I say stick with Final Cut Studio 2, as you want the editing, graphics, sound mixing and DVD creation all in one package. The Adobe Production Premium is missing two vital components, which are an audio mixing application and a video compression program (for DVDs) like Compressor. One important thing to keep in mind is that you might want a still image manipulation program, and for my money, Photoshop is the best. If that is out of your budget, you can probably get away with using a program like MacGimp, which is priced at everyone's favorite price, free!

For more specific details on Final Cut Studio 2, check out the next e-mail question, as I go into more depth on the FCS2 package. As for a good 3D package, this is a big grey area, as there are only a few "high end" animation program for the Mac, but the great thing is that because you can run Boot Camp, you've just opened the door to some more really good 3D applications. On the Mac side, you are looking at Cinema 4D from Maxon and Autodesk's Maya and on the Windows side, you are looking at not only Autodesk's Maya, but 3D Studio Max and Lightwave as well. I'm not going to pretend to be the expert when it comes to 3D applications, because I am not, but the great thing with all these applications (except for Lightwave) is that you can download the demo and try it for thirty days before you buy it!

When it comes to effects packages, I really prefer editing in Final Cut Pro as Apple has integrated FXPlug into your workflow. That may not sound like much, but what FXPlug does for editors is it let's the GPU take some of the load off of the CPU. In English? More realtime effects on your timeline and faster renders. As for which package specifically, I would recommend FX Factory Pro 2.02 by Noise Industries, and I would add on the "Editing" and "Motion" packs if you have the budget. This plug-in package, plus the add ons gives you access to over 200 effects for both Final Cut Pro and Motion, as the FXPlug architecture gives users access to the plug-ins in both applications! So why don't we price this out, and see what everything would come to.

We'll use the iMac for the sake of breaking things down.

• iMac 20" 2.4GHz, 4 gigs RAM, 750G Hard Drive, Apple Care - $2418 US
• Final Cut Studio 2 - $1299 US
• Photoshop CS3 - $649
• FX Factory Pro 2.02 - $399
• Editing Pack - $99
• Motion Pack - $99

The best part about what I have described above is that if you don't have the budget to afford all of it, you can remove the "Editing" and "Motion" extension packs for FXFactory Pro, and you can even customize the computer a little bit further (smaller hard drive, less RAM) so that it fits into your budget. Basically you can get the system, editing package and effects for less than $5000 US.

Well, that wraps up this edition of "Ask the Expert". If you have a question about anything editing related (editing, motion graphics, etc), don't hesitate to drop me a line at kevinpmcauliffe@gmail.com, and who knows, you might see your question in my next column.