 Matrox or Canopus or??? Please advise.
A bit of background. In 1999 I did a series of online educational videos with a biz partner who handled all the tech, and offered the vids in realplayer... which is looking really old. He converted to realmedia before editing. He is long gone and it is all up to me now. I'm doing research, getting a crash course. Spent much of today reading this board...
I do have the original miniDV tapes of raw footage, and am looking to re edit, remaster them for DVD and web. The problem is (and at first I thought it was tape degradation) there are some colour problems, most notably my white teeth and forehead at times flash a very distracting and unattractive yellow! My more recent research suggests it is a white balance issue, so a lot of my focus has been looking at what software is best equipped to capture, edit and repair my precious original content with regard to specific colour corrections.
I have been feeling drawn to videography for a few years, making more educational vid is on the horizon once I get the original course content remastered. So, I am looking at getting more professional grade equiptment that I can grow into, even though I am pretty much a rank novice. My budget is, I'd like to come in under 4k CDN. possibly including a new computer.
Today I have been looking at a few options.
I can get a discontinued Matrox RT.X 100 Xtreme Pro Suite for 999usd and it comes with Adobe Premiere Pro, Encore and Audition. I have used some adobe products in the past, mostly photoshop and I know how difficult it can be to master them, although the results are exceptional when you do.
The Matrox site led me to talk to a local distrubutor who offered the newer Matrox with software for $1800.cdn but said they were going to stop carrying them because of too many returns and the need to build a computer around the card.
He suggested the less expensive ($1500.) Canopus and Edius software package as being a professional standard with a smaller learning curve that could do anything the Adobe could do, faster and easier. I'd like a second opinion.
I am open to getting a new video editing computer as I work online all day and I expect video editing would probably tie up too many resources to do both. My present computer is a 18 month old compaq desktop from Future shop that I already spent $1200 upgrading with 2g more ram, a bigger hard drive and an excellent radeon graphics card, DVD writer plus Nero.
So, questions. Which would you choose? Would you choose something else altogether? Should I get a mac instead? Am I crazy to "go big" instead of starting with a simpler program like Vegas and the computer I have now?
I need professional quality vid from not-great quality filming and it appears investing in software, hardware, elbow grease and education is going to be less expensive than hiring a pro to edit my 11 hours of raw content into 60 finished clips- plus once I have the stuff, I can continue to make more vid in future. I have considered that the pro software may be out of date by the time I learn to use it, but I'm not creating "Lord of the Rings" and I don't need to learn it all...
Sorry if these are too many questions or too general. I really don't know where to jump and would appreciate any suggestions you have.  | 
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