Best Video editing setup??? p4? of AMD

[lepper boy]

Been asked to build a butt kicking system to do video editing on. I've seen some articles in magazines etc... that says amd is suck for video editing.... and to go with a P4.... so what do you think???
dave

Also, need GOOD quality parts i.e. good video capture card etc........ What are some recommendations. they guy wants to be able to do AWESOME quality..... help apprecaited...
dave

 

[Night201]

What are you doing? Video Editing or Video Conferencing?

I use a Pinnacle DV500 for digital video editing and capture. Awesome card. Looks just like the original (obviously with digital, but with Analog it looks just like the original source).

I would recommend that. Get a big drive as well. You'll be able to hold about 2.5 hours on a 30GB drive with that card. Memory is nice as well. I would recommend 768. 512 would do, 768 would be ideal, 1g is great, but no more. Often when I open Premiere and open my video files to edit, my memory usuage goes up to around 800. I have a gig ram in my machine. I also have 2 80GB drives. Any processor will be fine. I wouldn't worry about whether it is Intel or AMD, as most of the rendering will be put on the card. If you are going to be using other programs like After Effects and other programs that don't render from the card's processors then you will want a fast machine. I'd go with the AMD. It's cheaper - more bang for the buck. You can take the savings and get more ram or bigger hd.

 

[lepper boy]

Video editing..... What OS would be the best to use?? We want to set this up for stability and reliablitity..... Looking at around 1500 to spend on the system. And Want to be able to do some AWESOME stuff quality wise......

Thanks for the input.. I figured as much with the harddrive and memory..... and will probably put a 1.5 ghz speed but havn't decided intel or AMD yet.......
dave

 

[gsaldivar]

If you are strictly looking for a kick-ass video editing system, the Mac G4 should also be on your shopping list.

Setting aside the whole Mac vs. PC debate for a minute - you can see that these systems are commonly used in high end video editing setups. If you aren't tied to the AMD/P4 route, definitely check out these rigs before buying...

 

[lepper boy]

I have looked at the MAc's and I knw they do well in the video department, but the guy i'm building for stricly wants a pc because that is what he has used and that is what he watns to contiune using....

 

[lepper boy]

would having a Dual pentium, or a Dual AMD system benefit video editing?

 

[MrTux]

<< would having a Dual pentium, or a Dual AMD system benefit video editing? >>



If you use a multi-threading OS such as WinXP and additionally use video editing apps that use multi-threading, then the answer is...maybe. The fact of the matter is, like the post above said, that most of the rendering will be done in the capture card. I would stray away from a dual PIII setup though, since they are starting to go the way of the dinosaur. You'll have more than enough power with one CPU though, for example an Athlon XP.

 

[lepper boy]

Just got off the phone with this guy, and i'll admit I don't know much about video capturing or editing ect..... but he insistes that an AMD will not work for doing video editing. said some guy told him.. and this same guy told him the best card to use and that whta he wanted for a Matrox G400 after looking at that it is only a 16meg card and looks kinda like a di naorusaru... sp......


So is a video capture card an addittional card? that you have in addition to the regurlar video card?
dave

 

[SaigonK]

Hope this helps:


With transferring form tape to your system it is all about harddrive speed, if you have a 1 hour video it is going to take 1 hour to get it into your PC.
When it comes to editing, the more ram you have will be fine, frankly you dont need a gig or even 768 for that matter..not until you plan to do some SEROUS editing..and id ont mean adding a few spinning words and then putting it back onto video tape..im talking adding 3D rendered objects.

as far as a cpu..Sspeed DOES matter, go with as fast a cpu as you can, when encoding to say..mpeg2 to record to a DVD my PIII-750 takes upwards of 4 hours to finsih! But an Athlon XP system might only take 1/2 that time or maybe even less...hardrives and ram have nothing to do with encoding.

It is best to be balanced..

I would start off with (if you go with a PC) Athlon XP1600 - 521meg ram - couple of 120 gig 8meg cache western digital harddrives and a raid card to stripe them,

 

[lepper boy]

thanks for the info.. what about the video card?? do I need a Video editing card on top of a regular video card?

 

[BreakApart]

Single CPU-PC video capture/editing systems the P4 is the champ by a huge margin.

AMD has problems with many of the best capture devices, however a dual AMD system would be nice for editing a pre-captured file and encoding it.


The BEST video editing sites will also recommend a single P4 for serious hobbists, the enhancements built-in boost video capture/editing by a huge margin. Next summer i'll be replacing my dual P3 with a dual P4 for video duties, i'm a dual junkie.

OS, Win2000 is still the better choice, they all say XP will be awesome once they release a service pack to fix some problems. Either way 2000 or XP is the best way to go.

If your serious about this project don't get a combined video and capture card. Get 2 seperate cards, one for capture and one for normal video duties. The reason Maxtrox cards are recommended is they have excellent 2D, which is easier on your eyes while your staring at the screen editing. However, Geforce cards work fine also, they just don't have great 2D.

Have you checked out the top video hobbist sites? VCDHelp, Doom9? Lots of good info...

 

[musixian]

Take a look at my rig. I had the exact same need and only one requirement - the Pinnacle DV500 Plus. Just like it was mentioned earlier, this is by far the best deal for the buck ($600). The kicker is with this card there are alot of effects, simple and complex, that are real-time - meaning you don't have to wait 5 minutes just because you have to render every even simple transition or, worse yet, every frame of video! :disgust: Watch out for lower end cards, that will end up being a MAJOR frustration. Everything else required by the system (minus the 80gb 7200rpm HD I bought) came to another $600, well within your range.

But the main reason I recommend this rig is that it was handpicked from manufacturers' recommendations by a top-notch installer (it's his biz). The thing runs like greased lightning and its currently sitting at 256mb RAM. Just completed a 1/2 hour video that edited and ran so much better than my expectations, I was literally giddy. Plus, with the DV500 I got a free 3d effects upgrade by mail-in to Pinnacle.

I can't recommend it strongly enough.

 

[lepper boy]

Breakapart thanks..... I will probably build an p4 system. They are planning on using a program called Vegas video, which according to them doesn't need a capture card just a firewire setup.. and the program is dependent on the cpu not the captrue card... does this sound right to you
?
dave

 

[cass]

Shown below is my Video editing system for some home use based on AMD and using the DV500+.
I Love the system, and feel it is easy to use and learn.

I originally tried the nforce chipset boards (both the MSI 420d and asus a7n266e) but both of them had a problem with the pci bus. I would recommend you at least consider a raid setup for the video data, because trying to copy a 10 GB file so you have a working file, and a backup is slower on a single drive. And putting the software on one drive and capturing to a clean raid data drive makes houskeeping (defragging, management) easier.

The DV500+ does require rendering to see the digital video transistions (only the fades/transitions render), but you don't have to render to see the transistions on an analog tv monitor.

good luck


k7t 266a rev 2.0 (pro2, no raid, no usb 2.0)
512 x 2 kingmax ddr1&ddr2
TT volcano 7 on a AMD 1800+
AGP: xtasy 5864 (gforce2)
pci slot2: DV500+
pci slot3: IWILL side raid 100 Raid 0 (2) maxtor D740X
pci slot5: hsp 56 micro modem
onboard ide primary master: hp DVD 100i (I like this)
onboard ide primary slave: Sony cdrom
onboard ide secondary master: Maxtor D740X
350 watt ps amd sticker
4 case fans
dbracket installed.
3.5 floppy.
Win XP Pro

 

[lepper boy]

Hey cass. you need to enable your private message option.. thanks for the info... what exactly is the DV500? a video capture card? has anyone ever used Vegas video?

and we are kicking around the idea of having a couple of 100gig drives hooked up......
d

 

[cass]

ok, turned it on.

The DV 500+ is a capture card and real time editing card. It has on 1394 internal input and two external connections.
It also has a little breakout connector port with svideo in and out, analog (rca plug) video in and out and audo (Right and left) channel in and out. www.pinnaclesys.com

I know nothing of vegas video -- sorry

check out www.videoguys.com for professional info.... just keep in mind that they are selling stuff.

 

[SaigonK]

The only thing bad about the DV500 Plus is the mpeg2 encoding bug, think seriously BEFORE you buy it if you plan to encode to MPEG2 and make DVD's...they have yet to fix this bug and it is over 2 years old!

 

[lepper boy]

what would be something you can use for mpeg then?