Building Video Editing PC... What to look for?

[Deacon Blues]

Hi,

I'm looking into getting a new powerfulish PC to use for serious video editing, for ~1.2k to start, and have it flexible for further enhancements in the future.

I don't know if I should be building it from scratch, or get a prebuilt one and upgrade from there? I hear that is it is better to build your own. Or would one targetted for gamers meet my needs?

But I have no knowledge in hardware, what cpu, processor, RAM or anything to get. I have looked around for some articles on this but most are very old or very thin.

So what is the best advice you can give me?


Thanks so much,
DB

 

[snoturtle]

What type of footage and how much of it?
DV, HD, etc...

How soon are you building/buying?

If all your going to use it for is editing you won't need a high end vid card
2 gigs ram and a 940 sounds good
Or if your waiting wait for the Conroe benches to come out

 

[Deacon Blues]

Thanks snoturtle,

>>What type of footage and how much of it?
DV, HD, etc...<<

DV... also will be working with graphics (photoshop,illustrator). I assume the latter part deals with harddrives? Thats alright, I know more or less about that.

>>How soon are you building/buying?<<

As soon as I know what to get.


>>If all your going to use it for is editing you won't need a high end vid card
2 gigs ram and a 940 sounds good<<

Well, I will be viewing video too, so I'll need a good vid card too. I know I'll need ~2gigs of RAM (what type?) but what's a 940?


>>Or if your waiting wait for the Conroe benches to come out <<

This is the first I have heard of Conroe so I doubt it.

 

[MrX8503]

hard drive, i would look into a raid setup or raptor drive. Although the performance increase you get is somewhat a placebo effect to most people. Unless its large files you are working with the raid or raptor setup wont benefit you.

2gigs of value ram if your not ocing. gskill, kingston, cosair, ocz, geil, patriot are good companies.

A 940 is the dual core from intel. i would get an x2 or opteron over that, but it also costs more.

Conroe is Intel's next gen 65nm dual core which supposedly beats an fx-60@2.8ghz considerably.

 

[pkme2]

Check out my video rig, it will help.

Remember the CPU handles the rendering speed, after you edit, you render before burning to dvd.
I'm planning to upgrade to a 4800+ later to aid in my video rendering speed.

Its nice to have at least 2 monitors to edit with. A good video capture card is recommended.

 

[mshan]

http://www.videoguys.com/system.htm

 

[Deacon Blues]

Concerning the link mshan posted, what do they mean by a workstation class machine. That it is from a big brand?

 

[gsellis]

You are violating the first rule of building a video editor, pick the software first.

Dual core is good, but some vendors may only support Intel. Know before you buy as you may have to pay for support and get "no" for an answer.

HDD is important. SD (DV) uses 13GB/hr as does native HDV. I have over 1.2TB available and am constantly shuffling projects (note: my projects usually involve 10-20 hrs of tape). 7200rpm PATA/SATA is fine for DV or HDV.

I disagree with snoturtle about video. There are software packages that video is very important. Avid Xpress Pro wants a workstation OGL card (Quadro?). The latest After Effects wants a strong nVidia card. Avid Liquid and Pinnacle Studio require 128MB or 256MB on a fast processor and PCIe if doing HDV1 or 2 (and it sure helps with DV too.)

Video capture card - You will possibly need it for Analog to digital. Some cameras will do pass-through, so you can plug a VHS into a DV camera and capture it through the Firewire (aka iLink). The best device I know of is made by Canopus. The Matrox card and some Pinnacle cards are kick butt, but may not work with all NLEs.

Don't: buy more than 2GB - diminishing return; overclock - there can be encoding issues if you get aggressive;

Do: Get some sort of FirewireA input; Consider an add-in audio card such as Audigy 2 ZS/4 or M-Audio as the faster audio processor can prevent problems with out of synch audio/video; Get a DVD drive - I use NEC, but BenQ, Pioneer, Plextor are cool; Consider a external drive or a swappable chassis for HDD - HDD is the fastest, cheapest backup at the moment (for those that will say DVD is, try backing up a 130GB project on disc some time - if you have the spare time). Do get at least 3 drives. I have a C: for OS/programs/paging; E: for video store (your read source during edits); F: for Rendering (your write target for changes to files on E.

Videoguys are referring to the dual processor boxes that existed before dual-core. A workstation is designed for heavy use and may include a SCSI drive system, multiple processors and a video card that is more expense than what you want to spend on the whole system. My Rigs has mine, that I built 2 years ago. (Gary Bettan hangs out in DVInfo.net and a few of the vendor forums - he also likes Avid Liquid, but then again, he sells it)

 

[GrammatonJP]

My adobe premiere had to balls to tell me I was out of memory @ 2gb..

Have not had problem after I upgraded to 4GB even though it only shows 3 because of XP Pro 32bit problems..

I would opt for 2 and depending on size of your work.. might need to get 3 or 4.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: GrammatonJP
My adobe premiere had to balls to tell me I was out of memory @ 2gb..

Have not had problem after I upgraded to 4GB even though it only shows 3 because of XP Pro 32bit problems..

I would opt for 2 and depending on size of your work.. might need to get 3 or 4.

If it told you that you were out of memory, sounds like a bug. When an app requests a memory page and none are available, Windows will give the error. Windows will keep allocating memory until it runs out of VM pages that it can hand out. If adding more solved it for you, fine, but I still say it is a bug

edit - PS I ran my system out of memory with a fixed limit on pagefile.sys, editor with 1.5hr project open, and 2 instances of Animation:Master running a render.

 

[Deacon Blues]

Sorry gsellis... I'm currently working with Premiere Pro 1.5, and am looking at getting AE.

I'm not likely to get anything more than 2gigs RAM anyway.

I already have a Hercules Gametheater which works well, a DVD-RW drive, and two HDdrives (80GB and 160GB)... I'll get a third when I can.

So the videoguys article is quite a bit outdated (I can't find a more recent on the site).

As I know that compatibility is big issue, in what order should I choose my hardware?

 

[pkme2]

I started with Sony Vegas Video 4 and have progressed to Version 6, it has been a pleasant experience video editing.

I used Adobe Premiere with its add-ons and the like, but Sony Vegas was amazingly better. Most college students gravitate to Sony because of its academic pricing. The bundles are priced very reasonably and features galore.

I used Canopus DV Storm at school but that's another bit.

I built my editing rig first reasonably priced. 2GB is sufficient.
If I was to use Canopus Edius Pro, then some of my computer specs would have to be upgraded. Otherwise, at the moment, my rig can handle almost any editing program out there.

I plan to update my present CPU to X2 4800+ for rendering speed, but that's another matter.

My laptop can do video editing also. You can set one up to handle video editing with ease and that's another matter too.

My point is to built what you can afford now and utilize a program like Sony Vegas 6.0 w/ bundle! It can do a terrific job video editing and with its other plugins, enhance the final product.

When you build a professional styled rig later, you'll be more experienced to know what your needs are. The editing software can be Avid or Edius Pro, your choice.

 

[Kaido]

Have you considering going with a Mac?

 

[snoturtle]

Originally posted by: gsellis

I disagree with snoturtle about video. There are software packages that video is very important. Avid Xpress Pro wants a workstation OGL card (Quadro?). The latest After Effects wants a strong nVidia card. Avid Liquid and Pinnacle Studio require 128MB or 256MB on a fast processor and PCIe if doing HDV1 or 2 (and it sure helps with DV too.)

He had mentioned a gaming machine thats why I said no need for a high end video card

A 200 video card should be fine but a 500 gaming card wouldn't be the best pic

Avid reqs are interesting on the pc side the recommend a Quadro but on the Mac side they say either a Geforce 4 or whatever ships with the G5's which is an ATI card

As for the comment that was made about using a Mac I don't think its a bad idea as its what I use now for all of my video work

But probably not anywhere near the volume that is being talked about here so I can't say one way or another if that would be good for you

 

[Deacon Blues]

No, Macs are out of the question for now... I only have PC software (even tho you can run WIN in Macs now, probably not ht ebst idea for video editing?), and Macs just cost more.


So in what order should I consider choosing the parts? So I get everything compatible.

 

[OvErHeAtInG]

Originally posted by: Deacon Blues
...
So in what order should I consider choosing the parts? So I get everything compatible.

The first thing to do is to figure out if you're going to use AMD or Intel processor..... AMD is generally a better choice, but for a lot of video encoding performance is pretty close as far as I know, and the Intel would probably be cheaper. But yeah I would choose the processor first: on the Intel side, the Pentium D 920, 930, or 940, or for the AMD side, an Athlon X2 or Opteron 165, 170, 175... it's hard for me to recommend since I always think in terms of overclocking which you probably shouldn't do for a video workstation

Regarding your budget that you state: do you already have your monitor(s), a good case you can use, etc.... or is this totally from scratch....

Regardless I think most people here would recommend building your own, I know I would.

 

[orangat]

Where are some good current video editing benchmarks? All the benchmarks I've seen are encoding only.

 

[Deacon Blues]

Well, it's mostly from scratch except for the few things like the soundcard and DVD drive that I will port from my current one. I don't know if the case I have is a good one... probably best to get a new one?

Ok, so I'll go with some Intel Dual-core... whichever I find for a good price.

What next?

 

[GrammatonJP]

Originally posted by: gsellis
If it told you that you were out of memory, sounds like a bug. When an app requests a memory page and none are available, Windows will give the error. Windows will keep allocating memory until it runs out of VM pages that it can hand out. If adding more solved it for you, fine, but I still say it is a bug

edit - PS I ran my system out of memory with a fixed limit on pagefile.sys, editor with 1.5hr project open, and 2 instances of Animation:Master running a render.

it would spend about 4-5 hours encoding and half way through "u're screwed" i tried the patch they gave me... didn't do much.. end up borrowing memory to try out first before i bought mine..

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: GrammatonJP

Originally posted by: gsellis
If it told you that you were out of memory, sounds like a bug. When an app requests a memory page and none are available, Windows will give the error. Windows will keep allocating memory until it runs out of VM pages that it can hand out. If adding more solved it for you, fine, but I still say it is a bug

edit - PS I ran my system out of memory with a fixed limit on pagefile.sys, editor with 1.5hr project open, and 2 instances of Animation:Master running a render.

it would spend about 4-5 hours encoding and half way through "u're screwed" i tried the patch they gave me... didn't do much.. end up borrowing memory to try out first before i bought mine..

Are you running 1.5 or 2.0, 6.5 or 6.0? Query over in the Adobe forum if you haven't as you cannot be the only one with that issue.