What video card is best for VIDEO EDITING ?

[HardwareAddicted]

I have a request for building a system for a friend of mine.....he is NOT a gamer.

But he has told me that he will be doing video editing alot.

This will include a DVD-RW and most likely the WD hard drive that has the 8mb buffer.
(If this drive lags at all, I may throw in another and go IDE raid)

But what video card would you recommend ? (Without going insane...$1000)

Would an Nvidia card be good for this ?

ATI or Matrox ?

Thx for the input guys...

~ HardwareAddicted

 

[dolph]

nvidia cards have historically not been as up to the task as ati cards. but an 8500dv would probably do him fine.

 

[rmblam]

You use software for editing typically; although there are a few hardware capture cards that feature real time editing. These typically start at $500 and go well into the $1,000s.

The real question is "How will he be capturing the video"?

There is analog, firewire and analog to firewire. I use miniDV and firewire for capture raw DV AVI. MPEG capture with video in video cards is very limited and editing mpeg is a headache. The ideal is to capture in raw DV, edit, and convert/compress.

Does he have a camcorder? Or is this just for DVD rips?

The Radeon 8500DV has video in and firewire so it is an ok choice. If he gets more into it he will likely want to go to a realtime card though (Canopus DV Raptor RT for example).

With the realtime cards it is best to build a system around the card based on compatibility.

 

[Rickten]

stay away from via chipsets if your going to get a capture card. www.videoguys.com.

via chipsets are known to cause problems with many capture cards do to irq conflicts and stuff like that. Intel chipsets don't seem to have these problems as much.

 

[Pabster]

rickten wrote:

"stay away from via chipsets if your going to get a capture card. www.videoguys.com."

Good advice. Mine is to avoid VIA chipsets period. The PCI latency and timing issues along with a host of other oddities and quirks are enough to turn any sane user to the dark side.

As for the "best" card for video editing, it depends on your needs. Hobbyist or Professional? A hobbyist can get by with, as mentioned, an 8500DV. It's reasonably priced and has a plethora of features. If you make a living this way, you'll want to look at higher-end (hardware) cards, ala Pinnacle, Canopus, etc.

 

[Rooster286]

Get a Quadro


Better yet, buy a Geforce 2 GTS and do that hardware mod to turn it into a quadro save about 400.00

I wish I had a link, but I'm at work and am not able to access google.

 

[skypilot]

no offense rooster but a quadro, while a great card, has nothing to do with video editing. It is nvidia's foray into 3d editing and modeling, workstation work. Not video editing.

 

[Rooster286]

Please excuse my stupidity

 

[Haribo]

you know that AMD makes mobo chipsets, right!

 

[conjur]

<< you know that AMD makes mobo chipsets, right! >>



Yep...and an 8500DV is going into my A7M266-D very soon.

BTW, if you check the refurb section at Newegg, there's an OEM 8500DV for $255. I'd rather have the retail for all of the stuff that comes with it.

 

[Pariah]

It really depends on what your friend's definition of video editing is, or restated what he wants to actually do. His best options depending on his needs are an ATI 8500DV, or maybe a Matrox G550 and a low-mid level consumer capture card. Keep in mind, video cards don't edit, software does. So if he actually wants to do a lot of editing, the software he picks is more important than the hardware.

 

[gdawson6]

for video editing...get a ton of ram...it will do him good.

 

[DandyWarhol]

I would get a Matrox board because they have hardware M-JPEG compression and the G550 is only $88 plus Matrox has great drivers unlike ATI.

 

[HardwareAddicted]

I will be getting with him soon and will find out how he intends on using this exactly...

I thank you guys again for all of your input.

I will update this thread with his reply soon.

~ HardwareAddicted

 

[yazz]

Matrox RT2500
Matrox DigiSuite LE
Targa 3000/3100

on the low end definitely get him a Matrox card like a G550/G450 or something like that. Matrox is superior in image quality and compatibility if you are just doing Video Editing on this machine.

The Matrox RT2500 is the best solution when it comes to professional video editing when on a budget. the RT2500 is a REAL-TIME video editing/effects RENDER board. no need to render and use valuable CPU time because the RT2500 does it for you.
For this solution you will need a Matrox G550 and the RT2500. if you buy the RT make sure you get a bundle that comes with the full version of Premier 6. you will probably pay just for the video card and render board is around $1000 dollars.

The next real step up would be getting a Matrox Digisuite LE or the full DigiSuite board. and at that point i would seriously think about acquiring Discreet's ( www.discreet.com ) edit*6 or 6.5 video editing software. this is probably the most powerful video editing software one can buy for the x86 NT/WIN2K platform. But the Targa 3000/3100 by Pinnacle just hit the streets and it is full of features like the Matrox Digisuite line. These render/capture boards can capture/render/edit video UNCOMPRESSED in REAL-TIME. your friend would be editing video with no generation loss. the software cost around $12,000 and the cards range from $3000 to $10,000 dollars. if your friend wants to do film like big screen Motion Pictures then this solution is for him. if you want to cut costs you can always use Premier 6.

If all your friend does is Video then these ATI/Geforce3 capture video cards are a joke! those cards are for consumers that like to poke around making home videos.
Just make sure you are running Windows 2000/NT with these cards because they are not supported on WINXP. even though the RT2500 will run on XP it is not a proven platform yet. i say get WIN2K and use the RT2500 for professional beginners--cheap and very fast solution.
good luck.
yazz

 

[HardwareAddicted]

Ok...well it seems that he will input video from his VCR....I hope to see that this will be S-Video.

So I'm looking for a starting setup for him...although I can tell you that he learns quick,
so I would want to get a setup that will not bore him as he grows into it.

The software would be important here...what would be a good program to look at for this given this new info ?

Then I will most likely get him the Pioneer DVD burner so he can pass out his new movies.

I wonder if I still need to get him a gig of DDR, or if 512mb would be just fine for this ?

Thx again for all of the input guys !!

~ HardwareAddicted

 

[HardwareAddicted]

More input...please !!

 

[Agent004]

I think SCSI is better for video editing if your friend afford it

 

[Pariah]

Unless he has an SVHS VCR, it won't have Svideo connectors on it.

Depending on his budget, tell him to look at the Pinnacle Systems DV500 for about $500. If his budget is higher the Pinnacle Pro One for $900 may be a better option. The DV500 comes with Premiere 6 which is pretty industry standard and a good tool to learn how to use. The software itself costs about $650, so gettting it bundled with a $500 capture card is a very good deal. The Pro One comes with Premiere as well as a lot of other SW. I think the Pro One may be a bit much for a beginner with no experience in the field. Most of the features he probably won't use.

512MB is probably enough. More is always better, but if he isn't doing anything major, there isn't any reason to waste the money. If he finds his system trashing and he needs more RAM, it's not a major deal to add more later.

 

[cass]

Shown below is my Video editing system for some home use based on AMD and using the DV500+.
I Love the system, and feel it is easy to use and learn.

I originally tried the nforce chipset boards (both the MSI 420d and asus a7n266e) but both of them had a problem with the pci bus. I would recommend you at least consider a raid setup for the video data, because trying to copy a 10 GB file so you have a working file, and a backup is slower on a single drive. And putting the software on one drive and capturing to a clean raid data drive makes houskeeping (defragging, management) easier.

The DV500+ does require rendering to see the digital video transistions (only the fades/transitions render), but you don't have to render to see the transistions on an analog tv monitor.

I have had no problems with the pci latency deal eveyone references with via chipsets, but my board came with pci latency setting in bios. also I was very well schooled on settiing up inerrupts and disabling devices after working 3 weeks with both the nforce failures.

www.videoguys.com is a better reference than me.

good luck


k7t 266a rev 2.0 (pro2, no raid, no usb 2.0)
512 x 2 kingmax ddr1&ddr2
TT volcano 7 on a AMD 1800+
AGP: xtasy 5864 (gforce2)
pci slot2: DV500+
pci slot3: IWILL side raid 100 Raid 0 (2) maxtor D740X
pci slot5: hsp 56 micro modem
onboard ide primary master: hp DVD 100i (I like this)
onboard ide primary slave: Sony cdrom
onboard ide secondary master: Maxtor D740X
350 watt ps amd sticker
4 case fans
dbracket installed.
3.5 floppy.
Win XP Pro