DV editing

[nix0r21212]

I dunno if anyone out there is into DV editing, but if anyone has any suggestions for building a system to run Adobe Premiere Pro well enough for it not to be irritating as well as to capture video without dropping frames I'd really appreciate your input. Thanks guy, you guys are the best guys.

 

[Crusty]

The key to not dropping frames while capturing is to have a fast hard drive. Any new 7200rpm 8mb cache should hold up fine while capturing, so long as you are not using the disk's for anything else during capture.

I would also recommend a dual proc system with at least 1gb ram, it will help with preview to ram bigtime as well as render times. It will also increase the general responsiveness using the program.

What kind of budget are you on?

 

[nix0r21212]

well i already have the hard drive. I'd probbaly like to stay between 500 and 600 dollars.

 

[oldfart]

Dropping frames is not at all a problem. DV capture at full quality is 13 Gig/hr. You need to capture ~ 3.5 Meg/sec which any drive can easily do. The average HD can do 10X that.

 

[Crusty]

Yes, but if you are listening to music/burning cd/capturing you will have problems.

The faster the hard drive the faster the editing will go. Seeking between frames in the movie will go much faster.

$500-$600 for what parts, if all you have is the HDD, then you are going to need a tad bit more money for a really good editing computer.

$500-$600 is not enough for a Dual Proc system

 

[kuk]

Well, it's a general concensus that if you're going single processor, get a P4 for this.
When I edited DV, I noticed a perceptible speed increase when going from 512MB to 640MB ... so you're better off going with 1GB.

But as MCrusty said ... this budget is for what components? What about case, CD-RW, monitor, etc?

 

[nix0r21212]

yeah perhaps I should explain better. I have everything I need but the motherboard, the processor(s), and the memory. also I have kind of an old video card (TNT2 ultra) but it doesnt sound like video cards come into play much in editing.

 

[nix0r21212]

also I dont need it to be really intense I just need it to run decently. if i went with 1 P4 which one would I need to go with?

 

[Pariah]

$500-600 is about what it would cost to get a transfer/editing board with Adobe Premiere, so I hope you don't play on squeezing anything else into that budget.

 

[kuk]

Originally posted by: nix0r21212
also I dont need it to be really intense I just need it to run decently. if i went with 1 P4 which one would I need to go with?

Best bang for the buck is the P4 2.8C.
But I really don't know anything about motherboards ... do a search around the forums ... there are a plenty of threads that may help you.

 

[Crusty]

Get an ASUS P4C800 with a p4 2.8c and some pc3200 or better ram.

I would suggest getting pc3500 Mushkin ram, or pc3200 Corsair Low Latency 2x512mb Ram.

 

[SgtZulu]

Adobe Premiere Pro is $500 alone

Thanks for the laughs kid

 

[metalmania]

Discard Premiere, go with free VirtualDub.

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: SgtZulu
Adobe Premiere Pro is $500 alone

Thanks for the laughs kid

Laugh at this jerk
$429.49

 

[Pariah]

You can buy editing boards that come bundled with Premiere for less than the cost of a retail copy of Premiere. That's always how I've gotten my copies. It's like buying Premiere at a discount and getting a nice free editing board thrown in for free. Even those cost around $500 though, so there isn't any room in the budget for anything else. Home DV editing does not require substantial hardware, so it doesn't really matter. If quality is what you are after, the software and editing board are the 2 most imporant components.

 

[wallsfd949]

P4 >~2.6 w/1GB Ram and you will do well.

I'm working with the same/similar setup (single P4 2.533 1GB RAM) and do 2-3 projects a month with Premiere Pro.

 

[oldfart]

Again, any modern HD is more than fine. Get a big one (120 Gig is nice). CPU power is the most important thing. The encoding is what takes the most time. The more CPU, the better. For ram, 512 min, 1 Gig is a bonus. For capture, just a firewire port. No special capture card needed. For software, look at Pinnacle Studio 9. It does a lot, is easy to use and wont break the bank.

 

[LethalWolfe]

First thing, you need at least 2 HDDs. One for your OS and proggies and one just for media. For DV all you need is a firewire card for capture. The advantages to getting a capture card are you will get hardware assisted rendering and analog inputs and/or outputs (depending on the card). If you do get a capture card you need to the that company's web site and find the approved/recommended hardware list. If you buy a capture card and do not follow the approved/recommend hardware list you will not be a happy camper.


Lethal

 

[daniel1113]

As others have already stated, you should have at least two hard drives for video editing. One will be used as your system drive, with the OS and programs, while the other will be strictly used for storage and as a scratch disk. Then, get a decent firewire capture card (TI based) and you should be good to go with any NLE, including Premiere. However, if you are this new to DV editing, I would suggest a cheaper, basic NLE like Ulead, or perhaps an old version of Premiere. No need for you to spend $500 on an NLE to edit simple family videos, etc.

Also, make sure you are using 7200 RPM HDs. Although 5400 RPMs should be plenty in theory, you can still drop frames, especially if running other programs in the background.

The only time you will really need a lot of processoring power is during the rendering of your videos. Any 2.2 Ghz P4 and up should be fine for previewing your compositions, and anything above will simply speed up the final render. Unless you do a lot of video editing, there is no reason to spend the extra money on a new processor just to save 5-10 minutes.

Spend the extra money on a good set of HDs and a decent amount of RAM (512MB-1GB should be fine), then worry about the processor

 

[EXman]

do not overclock! stability is key. well OC's are a lil beter these days but if it is really important don't do it.

buy a Mac and get Final cut pro! about the only thing I'd ever want to do on a mac

 

[nix0r21212]

Thanks for all your help you guys are the best. But maybe I should explain my situation a little more clearly. I'm pretty experienced with DV editing; I work on a TV show at my college but up till now I've been doing my editing in their lab on their Macs using Final Cut. I actually already have a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro, it just doesn't run on my computer because I have an Athlon Tbird 1.33 GHz which, as you all know, doesn't support the SSE instruction set. I then secured a copy of Premiere 6.5 (which doesnt use SSE), but that doesn't run well enough to efficiently edit (It's very choppy and it will render but very slowly but the rendered product is all choppy too....) On pricewatch just now I found a P4 2.8 Prescott 800Mhz for 188 bucks from newegg. Do you guys think the Prescott would be a sufficient advancement over the comparable Northwood to merit the extra money? I may eventually buy a new vid card and play some games on this computer too as long as its around, so if you think the Prescott would help sufficiently there....


Also I already have a 120GB Maxtor ATA133, so if I can help it i'll probably just stick with that and not get a second HDD. It was my experience that capturing to the HDD of the Macs I was using in that lab was just as good as capturing to the external hard drive that they had there.

 

[nix0r21212]

IN addition to my last post, I just looked over that review they did between the three P4 3.2's and found that the Prescott is actually worse at games, but better at media encoding and at "High End Workstation Performance"....and I don't really know what that's referring to, but I assume that DV editing might fit under that category?

 

[wallsfd949]

Originally posted by: nix0r21212

Also I already have a 120GB Maxtor ATA133, so if I can help it i'll probably just stick with that and not get a second HDD. It was my experience that capturing to the HDD of the Macs I was using in that lab was just as good as capturing to the external hard drive that they had there.

If there is anything you need to get, it is a second hard drive. You can squeeze by with one hard disk, but if you are using the machine more than once every month or two for DV projects, you need a second disk. With hard drives as cheap as they've been (160GB = $34AR to give an example) you shouldn't do without one.

 

[nix0r21212]

do you just mean for storage reasons?

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by: nix0r21212
do you just mean for storage reasons?

If you keep your single HDD relatively empty, unfragmented, don't run multiple proggies while editing, and do pretty basic/simple edits you could probably get buy w/a single HDD. Any 7200RPM non-POS HDD made in the past 3 years is fast enough for DV. But if that single drive is very full, fragmented, and being accessed by a bunch of programs (including the OS, the editing app itself, and anything running in the background) while you are trying to edit performance is going to suffer and you will start dropping frames.


Lethal