Video editing build

[johndh]

Looking to do some video editing. Basically to just copy pieces of footage from my library of home video DVDs to DVD and maybe add a few effects but nothing fancy. My video camera(D8) has firewire,so I would also like to copy those tapes to DVD as well. Looking to spend about $1800.
I Bought the Cool Master HAF923 case for $109.00 and the Antec Earthwatts 650 pwr sup. for $69.00 from TigerDirect in Mississauga,Ontario
I’am going to pickup the I7-920 but what would be a good motherboard and ram for this system?
I get different opinions on what graphics card I should get and how much of a role it plays in the whole process. Would like to start the build between Xmas and New years.

 

[kranky]

I don't know enough about it to make a recommendation one way or the other, but I believe the CUDA technology that can run on Nvidia graphics cards has some available apps which can do transcoding right on the graphics card with miniscule load on the main CPU.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Looking to do some video editing. Basically to just copy pieces of footage from my library of home video DVDs to DVD and maybe add a few effects but nothing fancy. My video camera(D8) has firewire,so I would also like to copy those tapes to DVD as well. Looking to spend about $1800.
I Bought the Cool Master HAF923 case for $109.00 and the Antec Earthwatts 650 pwr sup. for $69.00 from TigerDirect in Mississauga,Ontario
I’am going to pickup the I7-920 but what would be a good motherboard and ram for this system?
I get different opinions on what graphics card I should get and how much of a role it plays in the whole process. Would like to start the build between Xmas and New years.

How about getting these:

http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/costco-hot-acer-desktop-1199-now-699-a-805933/
http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/ati-all-wonder-hd3650-512mb-ddr2-pci-e-59-99-a-822131/

Add whatever peripherals you wish (eSATA, 1394 etc, if necessary) and you're good to go.

 

[wiretap]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813188039
EVGA x58 - It's pretty much the most proven i7 motherboard. I run one as well and couldn't be happier --lifetime warranty too. Firewire, eSATA, 16x/16x/8x PCI-e, plenty of SATA ports, etc. Of course it's mainly geared toward gaming and overclocking, but it is a solid board for any purpose, especially if you want plenty of expandability and possibly future HD video editing.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227365
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145236
6GB DDR3-1600 - Quality fast RAM for triple channel x58/i7 support. It has plenty of room if you wanted to overclock someday.

Then I'd go with a smaller operating system hard drive (maybe a velociraptor 150), and pair up some Western Digital 640's in RAID 0 for speed for your video editing storage. The onboard SATA controller will be ok for a simple raid volume.

 

[elconejito]

I get different opinions on what graphics card I should get and how much of a role it plays in the whole process. Would like to start the build between Xmas and New years.

The role of the video card depends on the software you are using. Some programs don't use it at all, some use it in certain situations, and some use it all the time.

Adobe Premiere for example uses the graphics card to decode video and I think do some minor effects. For that you don't need any high-end card, any budget $50 card that supports OpenGL (which is any modern card) will do just as well as a $300 high-end card. The exception to that rule is if you get Nvidia's workstation card. they have a version specifically for Premiere that retails about $2000 and adds CUDA support to encoding. Only encoding. This is worth it only if you do a lot of encoding and the *massive* increase in encoding speed is worth $2k to you.

If you use After Effects along with premiere, then a higher-end graphics card may be worth it since it is used for a lot of the effects.

Otherwise, you're better off investing the upgrade in CPU, RAM and hard drives instead.

I don't know about the other video editors out there like Vegas, so you'd have to verify what they do and don't do.

 

[mmntech]

Looking to do some video editing. Basically to just copy pieces of footage from my library of home video DVDs to DVD and maybe add a few effects but nothing fancy. My video camera(D8) has firewire,so I would also like to copy those tapes to DVD as well. Looking to spend about $1800.
I Bought the Cool Master HAF923 case for $109.00 and the Antec Earthwatts 650 pwr sup. for $69.00 from TigerDirect in Mississauga,Ontario
I’am going to pickup the I7-920 but what would be a good motherboard and ram for this system?
I get different opinions on what graphics card I should get and how much of a role it plays in the whole process. Would like to start the build between Xmas and New years.

Try Canada Computers at Eglington and Mavis, next to No Frills. Good stock and they're pretty cheap. Under new management so they're a lot better than they used to be. Tiger is a bit expensive. They're renovating too so they don't have a lot of hardware in stock right now.

Editing doesn't require a lot of power provided all your clips are in the same format, which they should be. It's just the transcoding at the end that's time consuming. It all depends on what you're doing and how long your movies are. If they're under an hour, a mid-range system (i5) would be great. Go for the i7 if the price difference isn't that big. I haven't checked Intel prices lately. The industry standard is Avid or Final Cut Pro/Express. Nobody really used Premier anymore. It's considered a dinosaur.

 

[wiretap]

Avid or Canopus EDIUS is what I recommend. In more recent years, I've been very impressed with EDIUS. It's a wonderful platform.

For the video card, go with a CUDA capable Nvidia card. That way you'll be able to take advantage of the increasing number of video editing/encoding apps that use CUDA.

 

[Skypix7]

I've been using Serif MoviePlus X3 and it handles mp4 High Def clips (1920x1080x60 frames/sec progressive) just fine (Adobe Premiere CS3 doesn't, and I didn't want to pop a couple hundred bucks of more for CS4).

I have a 6600 quad-core cpu, Asus p5w dh Deluxe, 8 GB DDR3 memory from OcZ, nvidia GS7600, two year old plus system, running dual boot XP/Vista 64, do all my Photoshop CS4/Lightroom and video editing in Vista and it's good enough to get the job done. As mentioned above, video editing is most time consuming in the rendering stage. Serif's MoviePlus x3 is a great little cheap (find it on Ebay under $50) program with superb, friendly, free tech support.

Memory, good card, good moboard, powerful cpu will stand you in good stead with video, good luck.

 

[EnzoLT]

pretty much what Skypix7 said. very good mobo, very good memory, very good cpu and a decent video card (budget->mainstream should be fine).

this would constitute to an i7 9xx, at least 6gb of ram, mobo with overclocking (which helps), and hard drives in raid 0 for the encoding process and another hard drive in jbod for storage. always keeps backups!!

i am currently running a q9550 with a asus p5e and 4gb of ram. i used to have 8gb but money problems....i suggest getting more than 4gb since you can really tell difference (i did anyway) between 4gb and 8gb. i use premiere pro cs4 and encore cs4 as well as some other shareware like virtualdub, avi2dvd. i sometimes use nero vision for the hell of it.