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Building a rig for Video Editing! need advice!

A

Akaz1976

Platinum Member
My bro wants to start video editing and in order to do so he upgraded from Duron 800 to XP1700+, he already has GF2 GTS 64DDR plus 256MB SDRAM. Would this rig be enuf? and what would his HDD requirements be?

I havent really used my PC for anything other than games so i really dont know much about what different vid editing programs require (i am not entirely sure what vid editing does infact 😛)

Thanx

AKaz
 
That video card won't be enough but it would work if he didn't have the funds to upgrade. Also, if he does any rendering, dual cpu's are the way to go, may even help with the video. Raid is also an option he may consider. 256mb RAM isn't enough, 512 is bare minimum with 1GB probably being the ideal amount.
 
The ATI AIW series is great for video editing. He will likely need something of this nature, with video-in capabilities, if he actually wants to do video editting. 😉 I doubt his GF2GTS has these features.

Anyway, what video camera does he have and what is his budget? A great card for the job is the ATI AIW 8500DV (I actually have one for sale). It has two firewire ports in case his camera uses firewire to connect to the computer and it also has RCA jacks audio and video-in and also an S-video port on the breakout box. It's really well equipped for video editing. Not to mention, if he games at all, it is about as fast as a GeForce3 Ti500.

What motherboard is he using? It would be a wise investment to get a DDR motherboard or at least put some DDR into his current motherboard and ditch the SDRAM. Perhaps an ECS K7S5A for ~$50 and some PC2100 for another $100 (512MB would be good).

He will also need a good sized hard drive for video editing. How large is his current one? He will likely end up with some very large video files on that drive unless he imports one, edits it, then burns it or something and deletes it from the drive. 😛 Heh. A nice speedy Western Digital 120JB 7200RPM 8MB cache drive would do him well.
 
lol, i am gonna point him to this thread. But just be aware that he is on a very student like budget (read very low budget).

Akaz
 
Lots of ram- preferably faster than PC133 and a minimum of 512MB with 1 GB recommended and at least one really big really fast HDD...

ripthesystem

 
Originally posted by: Stealth1024
can someone say RAID0 SCSI? hehe
Click to expand...
Can someone say 'ouch' when the array corrupts and kills all the videos?

What motherboard is he using? It would be a wise investment to get a DDR motherboard or at least put some DDR into his current motherboard and ditch the SDRAM. Perhaps an ECS K7S5A for ~$50 and some PC2100 for another $100 (512MB would be good).
Click to expand...
If he's on a budget I highly recommend doing this before anything else.

Also a marginally decent editing card should be in order, you could spring for a 7500 AIW to same some $$ over the 8500. All in all, editing on a budge is going to blow. Keep in mind good software will set you back at least $300. What specifically is your friend editing and what for?
 
First, he'll need some kind of video input for the system. You don't mention what he will be using as his primary source. If he is using a Digital Video camera DV or Digital8, a Firewire port is almost a necessity. You can buy a separate Firewire PCI card or buy a AIW Radeon 8500DV or what I did, buy a SoundBlaster Audigy, which also has a built in Firewire port. Composite, S-Video, and TV inputs are required if he wants to pull video from other sources such as VCRs, TV broadcasts, or non-digital video cams. These can be found on TV cards (many models) and many "All-in-Wonder"-like video cards.

As for video, his GeForce2 GTS will probably be good enough. The Radeon AIW 8500DV would be much better, plus has firewire and all the other inputs, but would add to the cost. He'll have to balance these needs with the cost. Personally, I have a regular Radeon 8500 with an ATI TV Wonder and an Audigy with Firewire port and everything works great.

As for the system itself, any XP 1700+ should be just fine but 512+ MB of RAM is minimum. Don't go with anything less than 512MB. 1GB would be better. For HDD, any relatively late-model 7200 RPM IDE drive will be fine. No need for any kind of RAID setup. Capacity is a different matter. If he is capturing from a DV camera uncompressed, the file sizes will be huge - about 1GB for each 4 minutes of video. I would suggest a dedicated second drive of 80GB minimum. Other compression schemes require less space, but with prices of HDs these days, it makes sense to not skimp on size here.

A good web site to find more info on PC Video is www.vcdhelp.com. Check it out, lots of interesting stuff here.
 
Video card does not really matter. What you need is

Fast CPU
Lots of ram
Big HD
Capture card

Firewire or AV capture depending on the source. 512 meg ram is good. HD size...80 Gig should be fine. 1Hr of DV full quality capture is ~ 13 Gig. Analog capture is easily twice that. The CPU/Ram does not matter much for the capture, just the capture card and HD.

Once you capture you need to convert the AVI to some other format such as MPEG1/2/4 depending on what you are trying to do. Here is where you need the CPU power. Say you are doing 2 pass VBR MPEG2 conversion, every bit helps. Some video cards such as ATI have hardware MPEG encoding, but are limited on what formats/options they support. A program such as TMPGEnc will do a lot more. It depends on what you are looking to do.
 
OK is he serious about the editing or is he more playing around with home videos? If it's home videos and what not, an AIW will do fine, it's what I use, with a 900MHz Athlon with 512MB ram. Sure the cpu is slow but when I convert to the format I want, I just set up a cue for everything I want and let it do it as I sleep and go to work.

If he's serious keep everything the same that he has, just make sure he has a seperate HDD just for capturing. I would go with a Newtek Video Toaster if I had the money. It can do realtime effects and non-linear editing.
 
If he wants decent video editing on a budget, I would recommend buying Pinnacle Studio 7, which comes with a capture board. If he is using 8MM, VCR, etc., you'll want to get the AV version, and if he has a digital camcorder with firewire, you'll want the DV version. It runs a little over 100 for the software and card. As far as the processor and RAM, that should suffice for this type of setup. I would recommend a 7200 RPM drive as a minimum, but to make sure you don't drop frames, you really should be running with 2 HD's, both 7200RPM, and capture to the second HD (not the C: drive). Other than that, he should be good to go.
 
I have to second a lot that has already been said.

RAM = 512 is OK... don't see much need for more
HD = 100Gig plus is a must! Video eats HD like nothing else, you can never have enough!!! If possible buy 2 7200rpm drives of the smae size and raid them. Use them for all youir VIdeo capturing and nothing else!
Video = If you are on a budget... do yourself a favor and get the 8500DV. It make capture easy and gives you every possible input you could wish. CompUSA has the 128MB Version right now for 150$ after MIR (Till Sat only)!

Hope that helps a little!
 
knowing what he wants to do w/this rig and what video format he is going to use is going to make a big difference in what kind of setup he needs.

All I'm gonna say now is
1. Going DV is yer best bet. Buy a firewire card and an analog to digital converter (assuming you don't have a DV camera).

2. An IDE RAID isn't worth it. Current drives can support DV w/o a problem, and if you want to go any "higher" (in terms of quality) you'll need to go SCSI.


Lethal
 
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