video editing - the right card/LCD?

[notanotheracct]

i'm gonna start ordering pieces for a new PC within the next few days and still don't know what to buy.... first of all, the PC is going to be used soley for video editing/encoding, no gaming etc. the heart of it'll be an X2 (not sure, either 3800 or 4200 depending on OC abilities), i dunno about the rest of the system, but for starters i need...

1. a good card for video editing. the only special needs i have are an s-video/composite input and a firewire input (i already have a firewire card though). i'm curious if i should get a mainstream card like an ATI X800 (if it did what i needed, but i somewhat doubt), or if i should go for an ATI all-in-wonder card, it's just that don't need any tv tuner junk but is that unavoidable? my Vcard price range is $2-300, cheaper never hurting. from what i've read 128mb or 256mb won't exactly make a difference for me, and i've been leaning towards PCI-E although it doesn't seem to be much better than AGP anyway aside from upgrade concerns. thoughts? suggestions?

2. i've seen many reviews for LCDs, most not too impressive, and most geared towards gamers. the ViewSonic VP191B Black 19" 8m is one of a few i've heard good things about and one of the few that's in my price range, so i'm looking for opinions. my monitor price range is about $500, anyone have experience with LCDs and video editing to share?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: notannotheracct
i'm gonna start ordering pieces for a new PC within the next few days and still don't know what to buy.... first of all, the PC is going to be used soley for video editing/encoding, no gaming etc. the heart of it'll be an X2 (not sure, either 3800 or 4200 depending on OC abilities), i dunno about the rest of the system, but for starters i need...

1. a good card for video editing. the only special needs i have are an s-video/composite input and a firewire input (i already have a firewire card though). i'm curious if i should get a mainstream card like an ATI X800 (if it did what i needed, but i somewhat doubt), or if i should go for an ATI all-in-wonder card, it's just that don't need any tv tuner junk but is that unavoidable? my Vcard price range is $2-300, cheaper never hurting. from what i've read 128mb or 256mb won't exactly make a difference for me, and i've been leaning towards PCI-E although it doesn't seem to be much better than AGP anyway aside from upgrade concerns. thoughts? suggestions?

If you already have firewire, you don't need another card with firewire (and where the hell are you going to find a video card with firewire in?) It's all digital; if you're pulling DV from a camcorder via firewire, it will look exactly the same no matter what you pull it through. Getting an expensive video card will do absolutely NOTHING for video editing (unless you are using an editing program that can do real-time effects through pixel shaders, but even then you can render the same stuff in software).

Get a regular video card (if you're gonna use DVI, I might recommend an ATI X300SE or 9200SE, as NVIDIA's DVI support is not great), and a separate PCI video capture board. You can get ones without a TV tuner, but it doesn't add much cost and might actually come in handy. For the best capture quality, what you want is to get a software capture board (preferably something using a BT878 chip, as you can get good third-party drivers with lots of features) and then capture to uncompressed AVI files. It's still 480i in, but at least you won't be getting compression artifacts on top of it (although the files are then enormous until you compress them).

2. i've seen many reviews for LCDs, most not too impressive, and most geared towards gamers. the ViewSonic VP191B Black 19" 8m is one of a few i've heard good things about and one of the few that's in my price range, so i'm looking for opinions. my monitor price range is about $500, anyone have experience with LCDs and video editing to share?

The VP191B uses an 'overdrive' panel; response times are good, but they have a tendency to 'sparkle' a bit when displaying video, since the pixels in Viewsonic's overdrive panels slightly overshoot the intended color values (though I have not observed this panel on my own; this is just what the reviews say). You might try a Dell 2005FPW or 2405FPW, or if you want a 19" display, check out the reviews at Toms Hardware on the regular 8ms panels.

You might also consider a CRT monitor. A good AG CRT monitor will give color reproduction and contrast that's better than any LCD, and has essentially zero response time.

Welcome to AT, btw.

 

[batmanuel]

As far as LCDs go for video work, I wouldn't worry about getting the absolute fastest response times and focus more on getting a decently fast 8-bit panel like the Dell 2005FPW. Almost all the superfast sub-10ms panels are 6-bit dithered (the VP191B being one exception), so a lot of the super fast panels can't display colors as accuately as the slower 8-bit models and also tend to have smaller viewable angles. The VP191B bothers me a bit because of the color overshoot due to the overdrive feature.

With video editing, you can never have too much space, though. I'd go for a 2005FPW or a 2001FP (they usually can be found for below $500 with the right coupon codes) if you can't find a killer deal on the VP191B. The VP191B will look a bit better than the Dells as far as image quality is concerned, but you will get more room to work on the higher resolution Dell monitors. In fact, if you are doing serious semi-professional video editing, it might not be a bad idea to pick up a decent CRT at some point for a second monitor to not only give you even more room but also give you a better idea of how well you've corrected your color balance.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Nice cheap x300 + Dell 2005FPW = :thumbsup:

 

[notanotheracct]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

If you already have firewire, you don't need another card with firewire (and where the hell are you going to find a video card with firewire in?)

just stating my needs, i haven't seen any video cards with FW but wouldn't complain if i didn't have to use a PCI slot just for 4 FW slots, 3 of which i'll never use.

Get a regular video card (if you're gonna use DVI, I might recommend an ATI X300SE or 9200SE, as NVIDIA's DVI support is not great), and a separate PCI video capture board. You can get ones without a TV tuner, but it doesn't add much cost and might actually come in handy. For the best capture quality, what you want is to get a software capture board (preferably something using a BT878 chip, as you can get good third-party drivers with lots of features) and then capture to uncompressed AVI files. It's still 480i in, but at least you won't be getting compression artifacts on top of it (although the files are then enormous until you compress them).

wow. that's way more info than i was expecting, maybe i should have shown more ignorance - reason being that this is intended more for amature editing (family movies and such) and for someone whom i'm not sure will grasp more complex editing so well. very interesting though, but my main question then is, would you consider everything you proposed something more complex to setup than use, especially with someone not very computer savvy at the keyboard?
i do happen to have an old (original) all-in-wonder ATI PCI card that could be used with your mentioend plan, but just how enormous would you imagine the uncompressed files to be? overestimate if you will.

The VP191B uses an 'overdrive' panel; response times are good, but they have a tendency to 'sparkle' a bit when displaying video, since the pixels in Viewsonic's overdrive panels slightly overshoot the intended color values (though I have not observed this panel on my own; this is just what the reviews say).

exactly what i've read and my same problem, i've never observed said sparkle either.

Welcome to AT, btw.

thanks, but i somehow managed to misspell my username more than intended 🙁


i'll check out those mentioned LCDs though, i figured bigger would be better, but a widescreen Dell 2005FPW? i never considered that, i'd like more opinions on that. and while i'm not short on space, the only reason LCD over CRT seemed nice was because of energy efficiency.

 

[Matthias99]

Boy, you mangled those quotes pretty good. 😛

When you said you were building a 'dedicated video editing system', I assumed you actually needed a dedicated video editing system. If your intent is to just slap together some family videos from your camcorder and burn them to DVD, having a dedicated system is WAY overkill. Any reasonably recent computer with video capture capability and a DVD burner can do this.

If your source is DV from a digital camcorder, then you don't need a 'video capture' card at all; just hook it up via firewire, import the video into the editing/mastering suite of your choice, then edit it and burn it to DVD. With most editing suites, this is pretty dang easy. If you have analog sources, get a capture card (that AIW board should work just fine), and use whatever software comes with it to capture to an appropriate format for editing. Then use an editing/mastering program to put everything together and burn it.

Uncompressed 480p video is roughly 30MB per second, or ~100GB/hour. The only reason to do this would be if you had high-quality analog sources and were doing professional post-production, since this would keep the capture process from introducing any sort of compression artifacts. But if you're capturing from, say, crappy old VHS camcorder tapes, and you're going to burn to DVD (which is limited to ~9Mbps anyway), this doesn't make much sense; just capture it straight to MPEG2 at whatever bitrate you're going to use for the DVD output.

 

[notanotheracct]

well i said that mostly to avoid all the people jumping in with "that cards OK but xxx will be much better for gaming!", but really, sadly, this PC will be 'dedicated' to video editing, to whatever limited skill of the user. but hey, if this guy wants to convert old beta tapes to DVD that's his business.

thanks for the input though, i'm already pretty familar with video capturing/editing, just wasn't sure exactly how important a role the video card played in it aside from capturing analog sources. viva la processor, i suppose.

 

[gsellis]

It boils down to choosing the video editor first. What editor? Is After Effects, Boris, Sound Forge, etc., going to be added?

If you choose a Pinnacle product, we might send you in a different direction on video, especially if HDV (then you do need to look at GPU and memory). I think the newer After Effects and Boris do want OpenGL performance.

Any mobo that supports a X2, should have at least an external and internal plug (to go to a case front) firewire port. If you add a Creative Labs Audigy 2 (and you should or consider a fast audio card), you will get an extra port. The audio subsystem can be a key source of OOS audio if it is underrated and that includes analog capture.

You mentioned AIW and that you were familar with analog capture. Instead, try a Canopus AVDC 110 or better. It uses Firewire into the system and has already added the timecode. Some of the Pinnacle externals are ok, but may not all be recognized in other NLEs.