Video Editting Rig Suggestions

[heffe734]

Hey guys,

I'm looking to put together a video editting rig for m friend. Though i've assembled a few rigs of my own, i'm clueless when it comes to video editting. So i'm asking the anandtech community for their help and sound in on some good advice! So let me know what you think...single/dual processor? Amd/Intel? etc...

He's just getting started out on this by the way, so he will not need anything extravagant. So we set the budget at somewhere around $700-$1000. And it will strictly be used for just video editting...(no gaming, etc)


Thanks in advance guys!

 

[bob4432]

for video editing you will need a lot of hdd space as uncopressed avi is ~13GB/hour, which is what wil come off the mini-dv cam which i am assuming he is using.

other than that, see if the program he is going to use is smp (dual cpu) aware and we will go from there.

the others specs will be:
1GB Ram - value series will be fine
nf4 m/b
cpu - to be determined
hdd - lots, 2-3 250GB
dvd-rw - benq or nec

does he have anything that can be used or does he need a case and everything?

 

[Czar]

lots of hd space
lots of ram
firewire


aim for those things and he should be fine

 

[halfadder]

2+ years ago you needed a pretty beefy computer to edit video. Today you can buy any $250 PC and go to town as long as you have 512+ MB and 80+ GB.

I assume you will be using DV25 (MiniDV, DVCAM) video? That's actually compressed (25 Mbit/sec = 3.125 MByte/sec = 11.25 GB/hour without audio) but all modern editing programs work with it in its compressed format and then just transcode to MPEG2/DVD, XVID, etc when you're done editing.

Uncompressed standard NTSC video at DVD resolution is actually about 30 MByte/sec or 240 Mbit/sec, which is about 108 GB/hour. Editing raw uncompressed video is rare unless you have a prestine quality video source on BetacamSP or DigiBeta. Even the very high end pros these days tend to use DV25 or DV50 (50 Mbit/sec DV).

Of course there are the various flavors of HD, but that's beyond what most of us can afford, especially when you get into uncompressed 4:4:4 cinematic material at hundreds of MB per sec...

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: halfadder
2+ years ago you needed a pretty beefy computer to edit video. Today you can buy any $250 PC and go to town as long as you have 512+ MB and 80+ GB.

I assume you will be using DV25 (MiniDV, DVCAM) video? That's actually compressed (25 Mbit/sec = 3.125 MByte/sec = 11.25 GB/hour without audio) but all modern editing programs work with it in its compressed format and then just transcode to MPEG2/DVD, XVID, etc when you're done editing.

Uncompressed standard NTSC video at DVD resolution is actually about 30 MByte/sec or 240 Mbit/sec, which is about 108 GB/hour. Editing raw uncompressed video is rare unless you have a prestine quality video source on BetacamSP or DigiBeta. Even the very high end pros these days tend to use DV25 or DV50 (50 Mbit/sec DV).

Of course there are the various flavors of HD, but that's beyond what most of us can afford, especially when you get into uncompressed 4:4:4 cinematic material at hundreds of MB per sec...

i think your computer specs are a little weak. i would recommend at least 1GB and more than 80GB of storage, unless the ops going to only work on 1 job at a time, and that would also limit how long his video could be with scratch disks and all the other overhead.

thanks for the info and specs on the dv formats, i wasn't aware of those numbers. i have worked with BetacamSP(i was able to get the raw footage from a news station about a particular item i was working on) that was converted to mini-dv, so i am assuming there was a lot of quality lost...but is still looked flawless, just like a dvd movie or the news.

 

[gsellis]

Everyone has forgotten the first rule. Pick the software first. What you use will dictate alot. Some editors don't really benefit from duals yet (but the latest HDV editors do). Some want OpenGL performance, some don't care but like OpenGL, and one (and now a compositor) likes DirectX performance (read X800 w/ 256 is sweet if doing 1080i).

For additional reading, go to Videoguys and find the DIY articles on building editors.

1GB, maybe 2 (read editor specs), tons of space (I have 800GB now and worried about only having 178GB free with 24 tapes sitting on my desk), best processor you can afford (Intel if single core, X2 or Xeon if duals, Opeteron dual core might smoke but could be nothing special - read the recommendations for the software), firewire, a 24-bit ASIO2 audio card (not on mobo!).

With your budget, get 1GB, a 3.x P4, a 200GB C:, a 250GB E:, and a DL DVD burner (I always recommend Pioneer), an Audigy 2, and video is dependent on the software (ATI or nVidia, but not on the mobo). If adding, get another HDD over 5.1 speakers and even good headphones over expensive speakers.

You do know that the better editors start at half your budget, right? (barring student versions)

 

[mshan]

http://www.videoguys.com/system.htm

If you are going to use Pinnacle, I read elsewhere that they collaborate closely with ATI, so a Radeon might be your best bet.

 

[Venomous]

Originally posted by: mshan
http://www.videoguys.com/system.htm

If you are going to use Pinnacle, I read elsewhere that they collaborate closely with ATI, so a Radeon might be your best bet.

Umm, you have that backwards.. Pinnacle along with thers uses OPEN GL has the AP
I of choice and this IS Nvidias domain, so... having an Nvidia card is your advantage. To be honest, it doesnt really matter if you have a 9700 pro/ NV FX or greater.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Venomous

Originally posted by: mshan
http://www.videoguys.com/system.htm

If you are going to use Pinnacle, I read elsewhere that they collaborate closely with ATI, so a Radeon might be your best bet.

Umm, you have that backwards.. Pinnacle along with thers uses OPEN GL has the AP
I of choice and this IS Nvidias domain, so... having an Nvidia card is your advantage. To be honest, it doesnt really matter if you have a 9700 pro/ NV FX or greater.

Actually, you have that backwards. Pinnacle uses DirectX API calls for GPU effects and uses the GPU to render playback. nVidia cards have caused green screen issues with various drivers on older Studio and Liquid series. The Liquid Edition 5.0 Pro card is based off of the ATI Radeon 8500 chipset.

 

[halfadder]

Umm... you really don't need that much horsepower to edit video, seriously. The first time I worked with DV25 material was with a MiniDV camcorder, a 333 MHz iBook G3, 384 MB RAM, and iMovie software. Scrubbing was a little slow due to the 2.5" notebook hard drive and the effects were a little slow to render, but the actual *editing* was just as zippy as can be. In fact, the slowest part by far was dumping the DV material to and from the camcorder, as that generally has to happen at real-time tape speed. That's a slow step no matter what hardware you use.

It seems like every new home video editor goes through the following steps:
1) First basic no-frills edit
2) STAR WIPE!
3) STAR WIPE!
4) STAR WIPE! (Have you seen the Simpsons epsiode I'm referring to? Homer goes nuts with the transition effects.)
5) Nutty crazy insane special effects, compositing galore!
6) Back to basic no-frills editing.

I've been editing and burning home videos for years now. I've gotten to the point where I will dress up some special events, but for the most part I only do basic edits and spend more of my time making a nice set of DVD menus. Now, transcoding from DV25 to MPEG2 to burn to DVD does take a lot of CPU power, it's a slow process, but it doesn't actually suck up that much RAM.

My bottom line advice is this:
Obviously get the best machine you can afford, it will last longer that way. But keep in mind that you don't really need a huge fire-breathing monster editor unless you plan on making the next Matrix movie. Even a 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HD, 2 GHz Athlon system is way more horsepower than you need to edit most television shows. Save your money to buy a better camcorder, one with 3 CCDs and a nice lens. The little palm-sized camcorders are trash. They're fine for little suzie's first steps, but they just don't grab and digitize enough light to make a "broadcast quality" picture. A Carl Zeiss lens doesn't help much when the CCD itself is the size of a pinhole.