Dual Processors necessary for a Video Editing machine?

[CaptainBill]

I'm building a machine for my bro who is big into video editing. He uses After Effects and captures from a Sony VX2000, but anyways...would it be in his best interest for me to go dually? If so, should I go Xeon or MP?

Thanks

 

[vladgur]

I use premiere and after effects and i have a single cpu system. In my opinion, oftentimes 2 cpus & a SMP motherboard will cost MORE than a FASTER SINGLE CPU and GOOD motherboard and you will only get 30%-50% "speed" increase over a single cpu.

For example: 2 xeons 2.0ghz will cost you roughly $420 according to pricewatch, while single P4 2.53 is only $250. Furthermore 2xXeon 2.0ghz does not equal to 1 4ghz cpu. Depending on the O.S. and the application you use you will get 30-to 50% increase or an equivalent of 2.6ghz to 3ghz. But that p4 2.53 if neccessary could be overclocked to 3ghz most of the times. so for $250 you will get virtually same speed but better value. Additionally, multi-processor motherboard cost MUCH more than single-processor motherboards. So my advice, take the money that you will save from buying a Single-cpu solution and invest it in faster hard drive(wd SE with 8mb cache) better memory(DDR3200 or RDRAM) and better screen(18inch LCD or something).


I got a rig with 1.8a cpu running at 2.7ghz with 512mb DDR3000 ram running at DDR4000 and 2 Western digital 120gb SE hard drive in a dual firewire enclosure(who needs raid with 8mb cache) and I edit my miniDV video in Premiere through firewire capture. The whole system cost me less than $1000(and that includes another hard drive that hosts the OS and the applications, external firewire CDRW, internal DVD and Geforce 3 , case, power supply and mobo)

 

[CaptainBill]

For capturing video...do you recommend the gf3 or like getting another capture card like a pinnacle or something...he will be capturing quite a bit of video at one time.

thanks man

 

[Blain]

I would think that a stand alone capture card would be preferred over a GF3 or 4.
The Videoguys 7th Annual Video Capture Card Round-Up may help you further.

Tom's Building a Digital Video Capture System - Part I
Tom's Building a Digital Video Capture System - Part II

 

[zephyrprime]

Doesn't the sony vx2000 have a digital out?

 

[malandro]

A dual system with same cpu MHZ will be definetely faster and smoother and I would reccomend the AMD MP route. But right now the Athlon is stuck at 2200+ for MP and you would be much better served with a P4 system where I have my 2.26B running 100% stable at 2.8Ghz aircooled with just a .1v add on. For high performance I went for RAID 0 on a dedicated RAID133 PCI card. Along with the 8MB WD HDD's you will notice the biggest performance improvement there. RAID 0 PROPERLY CONFIGURED is awesome for Video or Audio Editing. Now is money is no object, for the RDRAM PC1066 Asus 850C chipset board, if it is then go with DDR. Somehow I feel that my old PC800 RDRAM is quicker than DDR running even at 380Mhz, but I could be wrong.

 

[Nutzo]

If money is no obect, then get a dual CPU (Athlon or Xeon), and 2 or 3 15,000 RPM SCSI drives configed in a Raid 0.

However, if you have a limited budget like most people, then you need to spend your money where it will help the most.

If I was building a new system for video, I'd buy a fast (but not to expensive) P4 (533 Mhz bus) like the 2.53 Ghz model, a good name brand mother board with built in RAID, 512 MB Fast DDR memory like PC3200, and 3 WD 120 SE drives.
I'd use the 1st drive for the OS & applications, and set the other 2 drives up on the RAID controller in a RAID 0 fro speed.

That's pretty close to my own system I currently use for video that I built last year, 2.1 Ghz P4 (overclocked 1.6a), PC2700 Overclocked to 400 Mhz, Maxtor 60 GB OS drive & a WD 120 SE for the data.

When Video editing, I spend most my time waiting for Disk I/O (when splitting/merging files) or the CPU (when re-compressing files to a different format like SVCD). So, if he is going to be just editing & saving back out to the camera, then make sure you have fast drives. If he is going to be re-compressing the files for DVD or SVCD, then you might want to get a faster CPU or even a capture board with it's own MPEG2 compression chip.

 

[vladgur]

Originally posted by: CaptainBill
For capturing video...do you recommend the gf3 or like getting another capture card like a pinnacle or something...he will be capturing quite a bit of video at one time.

thanks man

Sony VX2000 is a MiniDV camcorder and as such it has a firewire/ieee1394/ilink interface. just get a motherboard with firewire built-in or a firewire pci card for the capturing. Just about any firewire capture will do, since there are only 2-3 firewire chipsets, both brand-names and no-names use the same hardware pretty much. I got a swann firewire card 1.5 years ago for $29.95 and it was recognized by windows without any drivers. You can find firewire for as low as $20 nowadays. You dont have to buy a brand name for $80 unless they provide software that you like, but most likely the bundled software is outdated.
Unless your friend is making serious money from that video editing and cares about every minute spent while waiting for special effects rendering, dont waste your money on real-time cards that render some pre-set special effects/transitions in real time as opposed to waiting for a minute or 2 for transition to render. These cards can go anywhere from $500 and up and usually require drivers for specific applications.