Help me build a system for video comparible to a Apple G5

VisableAssassin

Senior member
Nov 12, 2001
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Got a friends whos really into video editing and hes interested if a system can be built that will run and do video better than a G5. He only has G5 experience and right now hes "feeling out" before dropping cash on any system. Is it possible to build a system that will do VIVO and full blown video editing on par or surpassing a G5 like crazy? Im not 100% familiar with Macs stuff so give me a break :p
But if it can be done please give me a parts list so I canm try and do some compairing for him.
 

jswjimmy

Senior member
Jul 24, 2003
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i would say build the computer around a a64 3400 or p4 3.2ghz with a xt9800 or x800 video card.
 

jswjimmy

Senior member
Jul 24, 2003
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oh yay wate for some one other than me to post because im only one step above a n00b
 

Acanthus

Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
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Dual Opterons, all the ram you can throw at it, and a low end Quadro graphics card for the best 2D quality. (or matrox). Id also reccomend SCSI Raid 5 (requires 3 identical drives for operation, you wind up with 2 drives worth of space example 3x100GB drives give you 200GB of space WITH REDUNDANCY and large I/O performance increases.)


Dual Opteron 248s will slaugher anything mac can throw at it.

Obviously im working with the dual G5 budget type thinking. You can get a lot more PC for the same cash.
 

drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
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It's easy to make a faster computer then the G5, but what makes it better for video editing is the OS. Windows kinda sucks, but you can make up for it thru the vast 3rd party support it gets for being the 94% dominate in the desktop market.

To build the computer:

#1 most important. Your budget! How much money?

Like what the hotrodders say:
"Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?"

Dual proccessors is nice. Not so much for the brute speed, but for the multitasking ability. Doing 2 cpu intesive tasks at the same time can bring a single CPU to it's knees (yes Hyperthreading is fine and all that, but it's a poor replacement for real SMP operation), even if the CPU's themselves are slower.

For instance you would have 1 cpu taking care of disk operation, backround and file moving. Other programs, etc etc.

Like if your friend wants to have a sound editor running at the same time as a movie editor. That sort of thing.

Fast disks are needed, lots of memory is needed, a decent video card is needed, but not for 3d gaming.

You have to also remember that today's computers are just getting to the point were they can handle video without struggling.

My suggestion:

CPU's:
If you have money, Opterons. Dual opterons, will Kick the G5's but in terms of power. To bad Windows is still 32bit-only so it can't take advantage of the massive memory and file size that 64bits gives you.

Dual Althon-MP's are nice. Xeons are nice, but expensive for the proccessing power they can provide. If you got the money, go for Opterons.

Althon MP 2600+ x 2 = $270 or so
Opteron 244 x 2 = $670 or so. Dual 1.8ghz, FAST! Will rule the G5.

Motherboards:

Opteron:
Something like the IWILL "DK8X"
It has a AGP slot, which is kinda rare for these server motherboards. It can support up to 16gigs of RAM. But of course Windows can't realy use all of it.
It can support 4 SATA drives. It has a Firewire port, which is nice.

The downside is that is uses a weird SSI EEB 3.0 and you may have to buy a special case to hold it.

Thats around a 450 dollar motherboard. And, of course, you have to buy the ECC memory, but that's a good thing if you can afford it.

There are other motherboards that work great, but most of them don't have AGP ports, and more importantly:

The Opteron, like the G5 and unlike the Xeons/Athlon/Pentiums, feature a memory controller for each CPU. This board allows you to have a independant bank of RAM for each CPU. This allows very large amounts of memory bandwidth.

Cheaper boards save money by only having 1 memory pathway. That means the CPU's have to share memory, like in a regular PC SMP setup. Which realy sucks.

It's crippling to the max performance the proccessors are capable of. The boards that only have one memory pathway typically can only support 8gigs of RAM, so it's easy to tell the difference. Boards that support 12 to 16gigs of RAM have independant memory busses.

Motherboard for the Athlon-MP:
Something like the Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW-P
Great board, AGP slot, can handle 3.5gigs of RAM.
Around $200

Memory:

Whatever, as much as you can get. Get a nice name brand, Crucial is nice.
If 1Gig is good then 2Gig is better and 3gig is something great.

Video Card:

ATI 9200, one of the higher quality ones. Give great picture quality. Dual output too if you want.

Monitors:

Nice Big CRT's. High quality ones, good color is ideal. 2 X 19inches give plenty of disk space.

Drives:

Big IDE drives, 200gigs aren't that expensive. DVD-RW drive. Get 2. Whatever.

If you want speed get a high quality RAID card that can do RAID 5. One that runs in hardware. Cheap Promise-style cards run in software and often hurt performance. Good hardware based cards unload the task of moving stuff from the CPU.

Some types of file transfers can load even very fast CPU's up to 80-90% cpu load.

Expensive stuff though.

Extras:

Firewire ports. Need those for any DV Camera stuff, they don't work with USB stuff. Firewire 800 is fast.

Power Supply:

450+ Watts, from a good company. Cheap ones skimp and won't come near their rated output without blowing up.
 

VisableAssassin

Senior member
Nov 12, 2001
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Thanx a ton right now hes willing to spend a minimum of $4000 for a PC.
And right off he will be doing nothing but film editing so a top of the line GFX card for gaming isnt gonna help. I know matrox would be top choice but then what about the VIVO function and sound in and out as well? Wouldnt a higher end radeon all in wonder work just as good?
Ive allready pretty much figured to do a dualie system that was the first thought to occur to me right out as well as a large amount of system ram. But since I am not 100% sure about exactly whats in a G5 and what it can do useing adobe premeir and some of the other programs hes interested in versus what a PC can do, I figured I would ask for some help :)
 

drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
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Well I suppose so.

So video in and out for just TV stuff?

ATI 9200 is midrange card. Good 2d performance, good colors. Some models have TV-out. I suppose you could get a All-in-one.

I suggest getting a card like the haugpauge PVR-350...

I don't realy know much about the high-end side of equipment, but I own a PVR-250.

These cards (the nicer 350) have built in MPEG decoder AND MPEG encoder. Do mpeg1 and 2, I beleive. Supports bit rates up to 9.6Mbp/s and 720x480 resolution.
29.97 FPS. You can vary the bitrates. Since this is all hardware encoding then it takes the load off of the CPU.

With my PVR-250 I can encode a 8Mbp/s bitrate Mpeg2 video at 720x480 resolution with something like 10% cpu usage with my 2400+ AMD.

Built in TV tuner. Do the regular cable stuff up up to channel 125 or so. But the regular cable is usually limited to 75. And their are no standards for US digital cable stuff, so you can't realy use it for that.

I don't know how you can do it in Windows, but in Linux I can redirect the output of the card to create a mpeg file easily.

There are other cards that can do that stuff, but with HDTV.... But I haven't played with them.

Can also do composite in and S-video in, i beleive. A nice feature is it can do coax cable out.

However the All-in-Wonder or TV cards like the PVR-350 don't realy strike me as that usefull for actual professional level editing stuff, though.

Most decent video cards have TV-out aviable already, My Nvidia FX card can do VGA analog out, in combination with DVI out or TV out. In my PCI slot I have a 2nd video card that I do TV out on sometimes.

As far as digital video cameras and similar equipment they hook up directly to the Firewire ports and you can play (and control and record stuff in DV tape) them directly to your computer screen.

For instance I hooked up a firewire port for my brother's Sony Handycam. We can plug that into the computer and have software that can play the DV tape directly from the camera and display it on the screen. We can (I beleive) record directly to the DV tape using the camera as the recorder via the firewire port.

I am not familar with professional level stuff to tell you about what to do about getting a card that can do stuff like handle multiple inputs and outputs.

I suspect you can find special cards that can handle multiple high-end and/or propriatory inputs for hooking up to special equipment and whatnot.

But the offerings for special hardware shouldn't be much different for the PC vs the Mac. So if he has some special hardware for input/output he likes it should also be avialbe for the PC.

For sound cards you can find lots of cool stuff. M-audio makes a lot of high end stuff that can do multiple digital inputs and outputs for sound. But I am not familar with high-end digital sound cards to give a recommendation...
 

addragyn

Golden Member
Sep 21, 2000
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The thing is you're just comparing to the HW. Editing on a Mac is a result of the total HW+ SW package. And it's a pretty damn good package. Industry uptake is evidence of that.

If you want to make a G5 a more capable editor attach an AJA Io or plug in a DeckLink card.

You'll get better answer to this question at the cow.
 

VisableAssassin

Senior member
Nov 12, 2001
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Originally posted by: Wahsapa
dood, you should just get a mac....

Im not the one buying it. I have no use for a mac personally. right now hes just interested in different options before dropping a ton of cash on anything.
 

Steve

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May 2, 2004
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For serious video editing, go with an nVidia Quadro or ATi FireGL card (or Matrox "_"). Mainstream consumer cards are nice and all, but serious work should take advantage of the hardware designed for it.
 

VisableAssassin

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Nov 12, 2001
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Originally posted by: sm8000
For serious video editing, go with an nVidia Quadro or ATi FireGL card (or Matrox "_"). Mainstream consumer cards are nice and all, but serious work should take advantage of the hardware designed for it.

If I remember right the quadro and firegls are for CAD and the like not physical video editing.
now the matrox card would be very interesting but I have VERY limited knowledge of their cards.
 

Sniper991122

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May 25, 2004
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if he gets dual opterons or any other 64 bit processors he could try the 64-bit windows xp beta thats free for a year, or windows 2003 server 64-bit which is free for 180 days... that way you can take advantage of that software...
 

Acanthus

Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
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Originally posted by: Sniper991122
if he gets dual opterons or any other 64 bit processors he could try the 64-bit windows xp beta thats free for a year, or windows 2003 server 64-bit which is free for 180 days... that way you can take advantage of that software...

Theres no 64bit software to take advantage of it yet anyway. Im sure stability is a concern.
 

jswjimmy

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Jul 24, 2003
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Originally posted by: Wahsapa
dood, you should just get a mac....

dood thats like a british pilot flying a japanese plane. He can fly it but he is going to suck at flying it for 2 years. i jumped on a G5 last week, i was trying to right click stuff and i could not, its hard as hell to get use to.
 

VisableAssassin

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Nov 12, 2001
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Originally posted by: jswjimmy
Originally posted by: Wahsapa
dood, you should just get a mac....

dood thats like a british pilot flying a japanese plane. He can fly it but he is going to suck at flying it for 2 years. i jumped on a G5 last week, i was trying to right click stuff and i could not, its hard as hell to get use to.

So you actually have one huh?
Any input on what he could do on the PC front would really be helpful.
right now just doing some of the research on it, he snot jumping on anything just yet he wants to know more or less what will be the best route for the time being as well as further down the road.
 

addragyn

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Sep 21, 2000
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Originally posted by: VisableAssassin
Originally posted by: Wahsapa
dood, you should just get a mac....

Im not the one buying it. I have no use for a mac personally. right now hes just interested in different options before dropping a ton of cash on anything.

There is no other solution as unified and as powerful in that price range. Even more so now that FCP does HD since the NAB announcement.

What exactly are you looking for as far as "different options"?
 

VisableAssassin

Senior member
Nov 12, 2001
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Originally posted by: addragyn
Originally posted by: VisableAssassin
Originally posted by: Wahsapa
dood, you should just get a mac....

Im not the one buying it. I have no use for a mac personally. right now hes just interested in different options before dropping a ton of cash on anything.

There is no other solution as unified and as powerful in that price range. Even more so now that FCP does HD since the NAB announcement.

What exactly are you looking for as far as "different options"?

Ok I am not the one looking man.
My friend is, he is highly interested in video editing but he wants to get more information on the hardware side of things before dropping cash on either.
If it is possible to build a PC thatll do video editing as good or better than a Mac at a less cost he wants to know what and how, if it is impossible and he HAS to use a Mac then so be it. Im just trying to help out with his research.
 

LethalWolfe

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Apr 14, 2001
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Originally posted by: VisableAssassin
Originally posted by: addragyn
Originally posted by: VisableAssassin
Originally posted by: Wahsapa
dood, you should just get a mac....

Im not the one buying it. I have no use for a mac personally. right now hes just interested in different options before dropping a ton of cash on anything.

There is no other solution as unified and as powerful in that price range. Even more so now that FCP does HD since the NAB announcement.

What exactly are you looking for as far as "different options"?

Ok I am not the one looking man.
My friend is, he is highly interested in video editing but he wants to get more information on the hardware side of things before dropping cash on either.
If it is possible to build a PC thatll do video editing as good or better than a Mac at a less cost he wants to know what and how, if it is impossible and he HAS to use a Mac then so be it. Im just trying to help out with his research.


At what level does your friend what to do video editing? Home movies? serious hobby? future career? You can at all levels on both systems but a Mac running FCP is a serious beast to beat unless a few dozen grand to drop on an Avid. FCE (final cut express) is also a very nice alternative if he wants more than basic editing features but doesn't want/need all that FCP has to offer (including the higher price).

I've spent a good amount of time editing on both and I'd never choose to edit on a PC unless I had to. In my experience editing on a PC is like running a marathon in dress shoes. You can do it, but it's painful.


Lethal

EDIT: Also, you do not need a big guns 3D gfx card to handle 2D video.
 

Twsmit

Senior member
Nov 30, 2003
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im going to have to agree with everyone else. Its all going to come down to the software. The hardware might be faster, but who cares if its cumbersome to use and or if he is unfamiliar.
 

Erasmus-X

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Oct 11, 1999
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There is a bit of learning curve if you jump to Mac OS X from say, a Windows XP machine, but it isn't too bad. If you miss being able to right-click, you can set the factory Apple mouse aside and plug in a Microsoft or Logitech. OS X has native support for them. It took me about a couple of weeks to make the transition when I bought my PowerBook G4 last year. I've gone from editing on a Athlon/XP/Premiere machine to editing on a G4/OS X/FCP machine and I will make the following observations:

1) The Mac isn't quite as "snappy" as the PC in terms of raw power. It also has very few decent games - and the games that ARE available seem buggy and less fluid than the equivalent versions on PC (but this wasn't really the reason I bought my Mac).

2) The software integration between applications is much better on the Mac platform. For novice users, iLife is simply amazing. Final Cut Pro is a lot easier to get along with than Premiere ever was, and it does real-time rendering, which is super-cool (at the time, Premiere 6.5 didn't have this functionality and 7.0 wasn't available yet). You can't beat FCP for $1,000 (or $500 if you're a student); some of its features even rival an Avid machine, which can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars! I've edited on both machines at school and while I can totally respect the prowess and very structured nature of Avid's system, I keep going back to doing FCP on my laptop because as a whole package, it's simply unmatched.

3) Everything simply WORKS together on the Mac; no fiddling around for the most part. I could never say the same thing about my PC, although the problems were generally very minimal. This is the one advantage of having a closed base hardware/software system on Apple's part. But it's also a major reason why Apple hardware is so bloody expensive.

4) The Mac seems to be a much bigger memory hog than the PC. I have found that it only starts becoming a truly comfortable multitasker with 1 GB+ installed. My PowerBook came with 512 MB the way I ordered it, but I quickly added another 512 MB a month later.
 

mooojojojo

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Jul 15, 2002
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Eug posted a link to these videos in another thread and I was truly impressed. I'm curious, does anyone know whether any PC is at all capable to do this stuff? I mean editing 5-6 HD streams in real-time and not get a hiccup.. my PC can't even play a single HD file, let alone distort it and mask it in realtime, so what's left for 5-6 simultaneous...

Here are the videos:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/video/
http://www.apple.com/motion/video/

Also there's a reason why every serious video editor works on a Powermac. It's not like they're all mindless zealots. Right Achantus? ;)
If he's going to break more than $4000, what's the point in getting a PC... anyway - it's his call, but I would go with the industry standard.
 

LethalWolfe

Diamond Member
Apr 14, 2001
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Originally posted by: mooojojojo
Eug posted a link to these videos in another thread and I was truly impressed. I'm curious, does anyone know whether any PC is at all capable to do this stuff? I mean editing 5-6 HD streams in real-time and not get a hiccup.. my PC can't even play a single HD file, let alone distort it and mask it in realtime, so what's left for 5-6 simultaneous...

Here are the videos:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/video/
http://www.apple.com/motion/video/

Also there's a reason why every serious video editor works on a Powermac. It's not like they're all mindless zealots. Right Achantus? ;)
If he's going to break more than $4000, what's the point in getting a PC... anyway - it's his call, but I would go with the industry standard.

The same reason that consoles games can rival, and in some cases exceed, the eye candy found on PC games even though the consoles have drastically slower hardware. Apple, because they control the hardware and software, can optimize their software for their hardware. It also makes it easier for 3rd party developers because the varients between machines is very limited, as compared to the x86 world. They can spend more time fine tuning their product to work well on a Mac instead of spending the same amount of time just to get it to work on on an x86 box.

The real time you can pull on a G5 w/FCP 4, and no additional rendering hardware, is jaw-dropping.


Lethal