Hardware recommendations for a light video editing box

[chansen]

I have a friend who wants a new comp, mostly for basic apps and such, but he also wants to plug in his firewire-capable camcorder, edit his home videos, and burn them to CD.

I don't know that much about digital video editing.

We're trying to keep the cost down, with the exception of a Samsung 17" LCD (171S). We obviously need a firewire port somewhere, but what video card and audio card would work best here? I was thinking ATI AIW 7500 and SB Audigy (partly for firewire) on a KT400, or forget the Audigy and get the Asus nForce2 board with firewire and sound onboard.

Idea?

Craig

 

[tart666]

Video / sound does not matter.

All you need is some RAM (like 512) and two hard-drives. Dedicate one drive for storing movie files, the other one for windows/ apps / swap.

And that samsung? you could run into some serious ghosting if you will be gaming / video editing. Check out the new Hitachi with 4 ms fall time.

 

[chansen]

It's not a gaming rig at all, and the space requirements dictate an LCD monitor. I know this Samsung is a budget LCD, but for the occasional home movie, I doubt it will be important.

From my latest readings, the video card really doesn't matter much if you aren't importing video from a non-digital source. He has a DV camcorder, so I could I go with something as simple as a cheap Radeon VE?

Craig

 

[tart666]

you are right. Any vid card will do. Just make sure it has a DVI out if your LCD is digital.

 

[AluminumStudios]

Get a BIG, FAST, hard drive dedicated to video editing. A WD special edition would be good. I use two WD400bb's in a RAID0 for my video work.

Also, if you are going to use Adobe Premiere or AfterEffects load it up with RAM! Premiere will easily eat all of my 512 megs when I get a good sized project going.

Video/sound cards don't matter as mentioned already.

 

[oldfart]

I do a fair bit of video editing with my rig (see my rigs link for details). As othes have said, video/sound card does not matter. What you need is lots of ram (512 will do), FAST CPU (MPEG encoding is very CPU intensive), and lots of storage space. I use a single WD 1200JB 120 Gig drive. Works like a charm, but the 800JB 80 gig will also be fine. I use a Pinnacle firewire card, Pinnacle Studio 7, TMPGEnc, VirtualDub software depending on what I'm doing.

 

[tart666]

We're trying to keep the cost down,

One more thing

If the CPU budget ends up severely limited, get an Athlon XP 1800 at the very least ( should be $60 shipped) Anything less will be unuseable even for light video editing

 

[chansen]

Picked up an Athlon XP 2100, Asus A7N8X (nForce2), 2 x 256MB PC2700, Seagate 80GB and a Sapphire ATI Radeon 9000 64MB in an Antec SX630II case. HD is formatting as I write. The dedicated drive will have to wait.

For anyone that hasn't had one, these Antec cases are wonderful. Worth the premium over crappy cases.

We'll see how this goes.

 

[JellyBaby]

Don't forget to format all or part of that BIG, FAST hard drive using NTFS lest you face FAT32's annoying 4 GB file size limitation.

 

[chansen]

NTFS format at 99%

 

[tart666]

hey, that was quick: asked this morning and 12 hrs later you have everything.

Damn I wish they had a Fry's in New York

 

[chansen]

Well, the local shop just got their first few nForce2 boards in. If I didn't buy today, I'd probably have to wait a week. Besides, the faster I get this together, the faster I get paid for it. This ain't mine, but I wish it was. 1.1GHz T-Bird on a KT133a for a little while yet.

WinXP Home installed, everything running smoothly.