Dream Video Editing PC

[brian0918]

I've bought a couple PCs through them before, so I'll probably go back to these guys:

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/cfgc2d.asp?v=d

Here's what I'm thinking of getting for a video editing PC. Total cost $2600. Any suggestions or changes?

What I was thinking was to have one smaller drive for the OS and software, a RAID-0 setup for the captured video, project files, etc, and another large drive for backups.

Should I stick with the 8MB cache on the 4 drive RAID-0 setup or go with a 2 drive RAID-0 setup for the sake of the 16MB cache?

CPU: (Quad-Core)Intel® Core? 2 Extreme QX6700 @ 2.66GHz 1066FSB 8MB L2 Cache EM64T

MOTHERBOARD: Asus P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333 DDR2 Mainboard

MEMORY: 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (Corsair XMS2 Xtreme Memory w/ Heat Spreader)

Sony Q170A 18x Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive
COMBO DRIVE (16X DVD-ROM & 52x32x52 CD-RW)

VIDEO: eVGA NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 512MB 16X PCI EXPRESS

HDD1: RAID-0 with 4 Identical Hard Drives, 320GB (80GBx4) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

HDD2: 80GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive

HDD3: Some large RELIABLE backup drive (any suggestions?)

MONITOR: ViewSonic VA1912WB WideScreen 19" Color TFT Active Matrix SXGA LCD Display Monitor

POWERSUPPLY: Apevia (ATX-AS600W-BK) 600W ATX Power Supply

CASE: X-Discovery Mid-Tower Case 420W W/ WINDOW & LCD Temperature Display

 

[Slowlearner]

You can build a system yourself
2600$ way too much for a pc from Cyberpower not particularly well known for its quality
Raid0 offers no advantage for video editing, and in case of hd failure totally lost data
Component quality mismatch
Need external backup

IMHO need a complete re-think on your set up

BTW welcome to the AT forums

 

[Snakexor]

agreed, you are skimping in the wrong areas and over paying for cyberpower.

you should have a raptor (74 gig), 4 gigs of ram, quad core, 1 seperate large drive (500gb 7200.10) and an external backup that matches the size of the larger seperate drive.

 

[brian0918]

>You can build a system yourself

I don't come with a warranty or replacement parts, and I've never done it before.

> 2600$ way too much for a pc from Cyberpower not particularly well known for its quality

I tried putting the same parts in a Newegg cart and it came to about $2400, so it's about right. I've had no problems with cyberpower.

> Raid0 offers no advantage for video editing,

RAID0 is great for video editing because of the large file sizes. Read more about it here.

> and in case of hd failure totally lost data

That's why I'm going to have a separate backup drive........

> Component quality mismatch

Where?

> Need external backup

I said I wanted a separate backup drive and asked for recommendations.

 

[brian0918]

I don't think I'm really overpaying. I tried buying the same parts through Newegg and it came to about $2400. I'm not going to buy from some random website just because it's the cheapest.

>you should have a raptor (74 gig), 4 gigs of ram, quad core, 1 seperate large drive (500gb 7200.10) and an external backup that matches the size of the larger seperate drive.

What is wrong with using RAID-0 for the large drive (of course, backed up by a separate drive as well)? I've read that it is perfect for video editing.

 

[Rubycon]

WTF 680 on NLE? They should be using 975X no excuses. NLE is not gaming.

 

[stogez]

Why SLI mobo for vid editing? Get 4 GB RAM for video editing. They're overcharging for the it anyway.
If you're going for RAID 0, get two 320GB drives and use those. Then get a 500GB+ drive as backup or just get 4x320GB for RAID 0+1
Not sure about the PSU either.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

My $.02
4 disks = RAID 5. RAID 0 performance with redundancy
Who makes that PSU???
4gb RAM.

 

[brian0918]

So for the mobo, which of these would you recommend:

Asus P5W-DH I975X CrossFire Chipset LGA775 Supports Core 2 Duo CPU FSB1066 DDR2/800 Mainboard w/GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio
Intel D975XBX2 I975X Express CrossFire Chipset LGA775 FSB1066 DDR2/800 Mainboard w/GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio
MSI 975X Platinum I975X CrossFire Chipset LGA775 Supports Core 2 Duo CPU FSB1066 DDR2/800 Mainboard w/GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio

Any recommendations for the PSU? They have a lot of choices but I don't know what to look for besides the wattage.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: brian0918
So for the mobo, which of these would you recommend:

Asus P5W-DH I975X CrossFire Chipset LGA775 Supports Core 2 Duo CPU FSB1066 DDR2/800 Mainboard w/GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio
Intel D975XBX2 I975X Express CrossFire Chipset LGA775 FSB1066 DDR2/800 Mainboard w/GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio
MSI 975X Platinum I975X CrossFire Chipset LGA775 Supports Core 2 Duo CPU FSB1066 DDR2/800 Mainboard w/GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio

Any recommendations for the PSU? They have a lot of choices but I don't know what to look for besides the wattage.

Intel... You are building a video editing machine, so your main concern is stability, and an Intel motherboard is going to be hard to beat in that respect. As for PSU, you should be going to efficient, with ample power for the hard drives. Your video card isn't going to be pulling too much, so you shouldn't require anything over 600. I like to have extra power if needed, so I'd get a Seasonic or Corsair PSU, 520-700 watts. Once again, my $.02.

 

[brian0918]

Is there a single internal/external hard drive that is definitely the most reliable (least likely to implode) currently available? Are external drives less likely to implode? (ignoring surges/fires/external factors)

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: brian0918
Is there a single internal/external hard drive that is definitely the most reliable (least likely to implode) currently available? Are external drives less likely to implode? (ignoring surges/fires/external factors)

No. They all fail, they all have warranties, and they all should be backed up. That said, everyone is going to have their favorites--I like Western Digital. Get something with a good warranty, and a price to size ratio that fits your budget. Good luck.

 

[Newdude]

Check out Western Digitals new RE2 drives for RAID reliabilty. http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?Cat=2&Language=en

An external backup drive can be removed for the the computer for extra protection from power surges and lightning. They can also be placed in a safe to protect you from burglaries.

 

[gsellis]

From the options you have, I would do this.

CASE: HOT NEW! X-Discovery Mid-Tower Case 420W W/ WINDOW & LCD Temperature Display (Silver Color)
10 bays and front Firewire, which is really nice for plugging in the camera. Not up on those PSU choices. You can aftermarket a Seasonic as an option. 550W should do it (that is what I have in my rig with dual 3.06 Xeons)

CPU: (Sckt775)Intel® Core? 2 Duo E6700 CPU @ 2.66GHz 1066FSB 2x2MB L2 Cache EM64T
Drool - a quad would be nice

MOTHERBOARD: (Quad-Core Supports) Intel D975XBX2 I975X Express CrossFire Chipset LGA775 FSB1066 DDR2/800 Mainboard w/GbLAN, USB2.0, IEEE1394, &7.1Audio

MEMORY: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (Corsair Value Select or Major Brand)
4GB with Vista, 2GB with XP for editing (as more is not a significant improvement)

VIDEO CARD: NEW !!! NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS 256MB PCI Express x16 (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)
Vegas, Premiere, and Edius are starting to use more GPU cycles for in app work. If you go with Avid Liquid, get the ATI 19xx series. If you go with Avid Xpress, you want a nVidia Quadro. For extra bucks, you could get a Matrox for Premiere from Videoguys

VIDEO CARD 2: NONE
No point for nVidia and editing at this time. No benchies for Liquid, but Crossfire owners say they smoke doing GPU effects and playback

LCD Monitor: NONE
I have no preference at the moment - someone else can better suggest, but the Apple/Dell LCD glass might be better and get "none" from here

HARD DRIVE: Single Hard Drive (320GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
320 is the sweet spot. Give the OS and apps legs to grow with and use as a temp project store. If you do a lot, one day, you will appreciate it.

Data Hard Drive: 1TB (500GBx2) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive
THIS is where you want the R0. BUT, you really do not notice it until you get lots of edit lines over each other or in HDV.

Optical Drive: NEC 7170A 18X DVD+-RW Drive Dual Format Dual Layer (BLACK COLOR)
Sony drives are hit or miss with miss coming up more often. Get the NEC.

Optical Drive 2: NEC 7170A 18X DVD+-RW Drive Dual Format Dual Layer (BLACK COLOR)
Get a second one. You can burn two discs at once with Nero after you have mastered the ISO. If you are building 100 copies of a 2 disc project, you will hate yourself if you only have 1 disc drive.

SOUND: Creative Labs X-Fi 24-BIT PCI Sound Card
Do not use onboard audio. PERIOD. It is the chief source of OOS video capture. Get a dedicated audio processor. DV capture goes through both the CPU and Audio card from Firewire as it is brought in by advanced editors. If the audio system is not up to the task and not running independently, the audio no longer will match the video. You could aftermarket this too. M-Audio cards are superior, but you would want real monitors (speakers). An Audigy 2 ZS Gamer will get you another reliable firewire port and is an excellent choice for compatibility.

When you get it, go to Newegg or visit B&M Fry's and get a 320-500GB WD SATA drive. This will be the third drive letter in your system. This is where you point your NLE to for Render.

Choice XP SP2 with the Vista upgrade. Most NLEs have yet to certify with Vista yet and there are some annoyances.

edit for lexdysia, err dyslexia.

 

[Hulk]

Originally posted by: brian0918
>You can build a system yourself

I don't come with a warranty or replacement parts, and I've never done it before.

> 2600$ way too much for a pc from Cyberpower not particularly well known for its quality

I tried putting the same parts in a Newegg cart and it came to about $2400, so it's about right. I've had no problems with cyberpower.

> Raid0 offers no advantage for video editing,

RAID0 is great for video editing because of the large file sizes. Read more about it here.

> and in case of hd failure totally lost data

That's why I'm going to have a separate backup drive........

> Component quality mismatch

Where?

> Need external backup

I said I wanted a separate backup drive and asked for recommendations.

The other posters are correct. You will not get any benefit out of RAID for video editing unless you will be working with uncompressed HD streams, and I highly doubt that. The added complication/cost isn't worth it.

The dual SLI setup also won't help video editing at all. Only Liquid has a some GPU accelerated functions.

The Quad is a good choice if you need the fastest system out there.

If you're not overclocking I agree that you should go with an Intel motherboard. Although at stock (and even overclocked) it seems people are having good success with Asus and Gigabyte.

 

[brian0918]

Thanks for all your help!

I'm not too experienced with external hard drives. Is data transfer much slower to external drives than to internal drives?

Does anyone have a video card recommendation for Pinnacle Studio (besides "don't use Pinnacle Studio" ) ?

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: brian0918
Thanks for all your help!

I'm not too experienced with external hard drives. Is data transfer much slower to external drives than to internal drives?

Does anyone have a video card recommendation for Pinnacle Studio (besides "don't use Pinnacle Studio" ) ?

Get the ATI X19xx or other X1xxx cards for Studio. Studio uses a scaled down version of the Avid Liquid engine.

External USB/Firewire can be slower. I have 4 (3 as one is dying) external USB drives I use to save projects after completion (Liquid has a backup for projects.)

To Hulk - The latest version of Vegas (7?) is now using GPU effects from what I remember from the glossies that Sony sent me. After Effects is going that route too. But, they are more OpenGL than DirectX IIRC (Liquid uses DirectX).

If you decide to upgrade later, Studio usually gets you a discount for upgrading to Liquid. Usually $299. That is how I got to Liquid in the past (it was a $99 when it was Pinnacle Liquid Edition 4.5).

 

[brian0918]

Thanks! So does this setup sound correct:

1. 1. Use the main drive for the OS and editing software, and also to store the project files (no actual video files, just the small project files).
   
   2. Capture video through firewire to the huge drive / RAID-0. Make the project with that captured video.
   
   3. Render to a third drive.

Can the third drive also be the backup drive, or should I get a separate one for backups?

 

[Boyo]

Originally posted by: Snakexor
agreed, you are skimping in the wrong areas and over paying for cyberpower.

you should have a raptor (74 gig), 4 gigs of ram, quad core, 1 seperate large drive (500gb 7200.10) and an external backup that matches the size of the larger seperate drive.

I would follow this guy's advice. He knows what he is talking about. It is the same exact set-up I would recommend for you.

 

[gramboh]

If this is for commercial/business use get an extra drive for backup, they are so cheap now there's no reason not to. For external drives, see if any motherboard options have eSATA ports on them (external SATA). Basically they are SATA headers on the back of the motherboard that allow you to use an SATA drive directly connected with no interface overhead from USB/Firewire, it's much faster. USB2/FW work for backup but are just slower (25-35megabytes/s), in theory eSATA should be as fast as the drive/controller can manage (~55-60megabytes/s on most drives).

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: brian0918
Thanks! So does this setup sound correct:

1. 1. Use the main drive for the OS and editing software, and also to store the project files (no actual video files, just the small project files).
   
   2. Capture video through firewire to the huge drive / RAID-0. Make the project with that captured video.
   
   3. Render to a third drive.

Can the third drive also be the backup drive, or should I get a separate one for backups?

That is it. With Studio, there is not a huge overhead on video source and render as you can only stack main video, PIP, audio, and music tracks. I think you get a max track depth of 5 or 6. I have 7 running in Liquid as the usual max. When you playback, it will then read from the video and render drives at the same time to playback. You will find that with bigger projects, defrag will also become important as the drives get more data on them.

 

[brian0918]

Is it really better to get the 74gb raptor just for the faster rpm (are there any other benefits?) rather than a larger 320gb 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD?

Thanks.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: brian0918
Is it really better to get the 74gb raptor just for the faster rpm (are there any other benefits?) rather than a larger 320gb 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD?

Thanks.

Not that much better. The 7200.10s are pretty good.

 

[Hulk]

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: brian0918
Thanks for all your help!

I'm not too experienced with external hard drives. Is data transfer much slower to external drives than to internal drives?

Does anyone have a video card recommendation for Pinnacle Studio (besides "don't use Pinnacle Studio" ) ?

Get the ATI X19xx or other X1xxx cards for Studio. Studio uses a scaled down version of the Avid Liquid engine.

External USB/Firewire can be slower. I have 4 (3 as one is dying) external USB drives I use to save projects after completion (Liquid has a backup for projects.)

To Hulk - The latest version of Vegas (7?) is now using GPU effects from what I remember from the glossies that Sony sent me. After Effects is going that route too. But, they are more OpenGL than DirectX IIRC (Liquid uses DirectX).

If you decide to upgrade later, Studio usually gets you a discount for upgrading to Liquid. Usually $299. That is how I got to Liquid in the past (it was a $99 when it was Pinnacle Liquid Edition 4.5).

I'm using Vegas 7d and am almost positive it is not GPU accelerated.

Do you have a link?

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Hulk
I'm using Vegas 7d and am almost positive it is not GPU accelerated.

Do you have a link?

I can't find it. But I now remember that it was a dicussion about Vegas8. Sigh. But you do have some new OpenGL acceleration in realtime playback IIRC. I would think it was dvinfo where we talked about it, but I can't find it. AE was mentioned too and where the heck it is, I cannot find.