New home video editing PC - need advice

[HyunYu]

Guys,

I'm looking to build a new PC in the next month or so to do home video editing. Basically, I'll be downloading family videos from a MiniDV camcorder and editing and burning DVDs.

My current setup (that I built about 14 months ago) is as follows:

Athlon Barton 2500
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
1GB Corsair PC3200
Maxtor 120GB SATA boot and application drive
Two other HDDs - 160GB and 250GB - for data and backups
NEC 4x DVD+_R/RW burner
ATI Radeo 9600

I've done a few tests on it, and using the bundled Pinnacle Studio 9 SE program, it takes too long to render and burn a DVD. So, I'd like a new computer, for two reasons: 1. Faster processing, rendering, and burning; 2. Dont' want my computer tied up while it's doing #1.

SO, if I could benefit from your collective wisdom here... I'm looking to put together a system for about $1,500, purchased from NewEgg. I'm open to pretty much any CPUs--Athlon, A64, or Pentium 4. Here are a few "wants":

- motherboard with built-in Firewire, SATA controller
- SATA boot drive
- IDE data drive (around 200GB)
- 2GB or more memory
- DVD burner--probably not dual layer, as I'd want DVDs playable by the relatives' stand-alone DVD players
- I'm going to be running Win2K on it, and will probably switch to something like Adobe Premier Elements.

Any help is much appreciated!

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: HyunYu
I've done a few tests on it, and using the bundled Pinnacle Studio 9 SE program, it takes too long to render and burn a DVD. So, I'd like a new computer, for two reasons: 1. Faster processing, rendering, and burning; 2. Dont' want my computer tied up while it's doing #1.

For number one -- given the speed of your current system, no system is going to be "fast" rendering DV->DVD-quality MPEG2. I doubt you'd get much under half of real-time (so half an hour to render an hour's worth of video). You may also be able to significantly speed up rendering on your current system with faster hard drives, and/or RAID.

If you want a system that will be fast and responsive while doing a CPU-intensive task like that, you might want to think about a dual CPU system. That gets quite a bit more complicated, though... Another option is to just build a second cheap system, network it, and just use that for rendering/burning. Then your desktop doesn't have to deal with the load (or you can render two videos at once), without the costs and added complexity of a dual-processor system.

If you want advice on specific parts, there are many, MANY threads on "what stuff should I buy?" if you search.

 

[JonB]

If you are going to use Adobe Premiere, there is a definite bias toward the Pentium 4. Adobe and Matrox only test on Intel.
Does it work on AMD64? Sure. That's what I run and have no real problem, but the first response will always be - "We don't support AMD"
SATA boot drive - no real benefit, but no downside either
200GB drive for date - gotta have it
1GB of DDR is plenty. really. I noticed virtually NO difference in Premiere when I jumped from 512MB to 1GB
DVD burner - Buy TWO identical DVD+/-RW burners. Nero can burn to both at once. Others probably can too, but I only use Nero
WinXP is required for Adobe Premiere. No choice. Even the cheaper Elements version is XP specific
Get a MB with built in Firewire if you don't already have a PCI card

 

[LethalWolfe]

Buy a KVM and a Mac Mini. Use the Mac for editing and your current PC for everything else. Unless, of course, you start to prefer the Mac. 😉


Lethal