Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 1:48 pm Post subject: Buy the "perfect" system now or upgrade later?
I currently do all my editing on a laptop using Adobe Premiere because my ancient desktop simply wouldn't be able to cope with the demands of video editing. I've upgraded this desktop to the max and it has served faithfully for many years but it's time to put the old work horse into semi-retirement. My dad is actually thinking he'd like a computer and my current computer would be just fine (more than fine actually) for anything he'd be doing.
So I find myself beginning the hunt for a new computer!
I'm an impatient kind of person when it comes to things and it is very tempting to hit the major manufacturers and build the "perfect" system and fork over the money. Of course, every time I play on a manufacturer's website the cost of the "perfect" pc rises rapidly and I'm wondering if it is worth it to get everything at once or find a system that is expandable.
On the other hand... I'm a big fan of out of the box fun as well.
Suggestions? Any systems I should avoid at all costs?
Joined: 07 Jun 2005 Posts: 2 Location: Pensacola FL
Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 4:37 pm Post subject:
Looks like you and I have the same goal. I've been trying to answer the same question you have about building a new computer.
Primarily I want to use the machine for video editing but I don't want
anything radical - when I'm not video editing, it's going to be a
web-surfing, e-mail checking machine. I have zero experience with video
editing, but I'm going to start off slow by archiving my 8mm and miniDV
tapes.
I used the Nov 04 issue of PC Builder (I know - it's 6 months old and
that's probably the equivalent to 12 dog years when converted to
computer years) as a reference and here's what I figured would be a
decent build:
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3000 (400FSB)
Motherboard: ASUS A7600
Video Card: ATI Radeon Pro 9800 (w/ 256 MB on board memory)
RAM: Corsair DDR400
Case: ANTEC Life Style (Sonata, w/ 380 watt pwr supply) - it
has 2 each USB and Firewire ports on the front.
I guess the motherboard will support the front ports,
but I don't really have a clue yet on that.
Software: Pinnacle Systems Studio 9 AV/DV (I've heard it's
pretty good AND it's only around $100) Do you
know if this software allows you to make DVD
menus/chapters? I'd like to be able to do that.
Here's what I have already purchased:
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Gamer
(it came with 5 games)
Media Reader: Atech 12 in 1 Portable/Dockable Card Reader
I'll take any help/recommendations at this point. Any ideas? Anyone?
Hi guys, a fatal mistake a video editor system assemblers can make is to actually go by what the big shot PC magazines says. It can be pcworld or whatever, but these guys are really catering a general audience, with the most hardcore being gamers. So just take whatever they say with a pinch of salt, those quoted high end systems aren't for video editing. I have read some video editing magazines of last year, and they have the cheek to suggest a Athlon XP for editing. Total faux!
Qualities of a brute Editing System
- Real fast CPU
Believe me, you really need a friggin fast one. Everyone out there might be saying Megahertz doesn't count and that the war is over. But every Mhz does count in raw encoding.
Intel
If you are getting Intel Pentiums, go for the P4 3.6ghz, dump as much moolah as you have and get the highest clock speed you can get.
AMD
Avoid Athlon XPs at ALL COST. They are chips of YESTER-YEAR. Go for a Athlon 64 if you are a die-hard AMD fan. I have nothing against AMD, but the Pentium 4 does rule in encoding for the time. Minimally, a 3200+ would be good, but beware of the different cores. Sledgehammer, Winchester, Venice, Paris, these are core names, and each have different specs even though they are marked as 3200+. Be Aware of this! Get the highest clocked chip among them. The notable differences include cache sizes, but these are negligible as the A64 is not affected much by cache in encoding.
Recommended: Intel P4 3.6ghz / A64 3500+
Physical Memory
RAM is king! Between DDR and DDR2, just get the DDR. DDR2 offers no real world benefits in speed and is friggin exp$$. RAM speeds dun matter much in editing, the real bottleneck is your Harddisk, will come to that later.
Recommended: 2x DDR400 1GB (total 2GB
Harddisk
Don't save money here, your harddisks are the NUMBER 1 bottlenecks in all editing systems. That's why we want lots of ram (2GB), so we dun have to seek from HDD all the time. If you look at perf charts, extracting something from the HDD takes eons as compared to RAM, not to mention cpu cache. So get the fastest, maybe WD Raptors if you have the moolah. Notice the (s), whatever HDD you get, get a pair of them. RAID0 is a must if you don't have moolah for Raptors. Its even better if you have 2 Raptors. If not, just get the Hitachi 7200rpms. Use the raptors for editing, and store your completed videos on a Seagate 300GB.
Graphics Card
Unless you have a 30inch Cinema Display, forget the 6800GT, its a friggin waste of money. Even a 6600 non GT would do just fine for dual 19inch setup. Graphics cards accelerate 3D games, not your friggin videos! Don't waste your money here. But for a occasional kick of games, the 6600GT is just fine.
Recommended: Nvidia 6600GT
Sound Card
Unless you really own a studio and is a crazy audiophile, you will never consider a Creative Audigy2. Its a gamer's audio card, not an audiophile sound card. Those audiophiles know better than to get the Audigy2 as its sound qualities are really overhyped. But anyway, it does fine for normal editing.
Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:39 pm Post subject: no answer
well, as i see, nobody really understood the philosophy of video editing..
acintas, had two good ideas, but i dont mean perfect. Higher CPU, is better and faster HDD is better, but i know, idea that Intel is good and AMD not (sorry for simply speaking) is bad.
Everthing u need to know is, what do u want to do. If u wants to edit DV, not a HDV u dont need SUPERPC.
So my minimal recommend is 2 ghz CPU, 512 MB RAM, 160Gb HDD (ATA 100), Firewire, and if u wants, buy some AV/DV converter.
thats all
Definitely get two hard drives... I'd recommend using a smaller economy drive and a larger faster work horse drive for video if you don't have a lot of $ to blow... But you don't want to have your video on the same drive as your system files... your OS drive does not need to be huge but it should be fast...
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