What is a sufficient ammount of RAM for video edditing?

[Smartazz]

I was thinking that 512MB would be enough before, but now that I think about it, video editting is memory intensive isn't it? I was thinking about bumping it up to 1GB. Would 1GB be enough for programs like Adobe Premier Pro? Thanks.

 

[Tarrant64]

If you are truly serious about video editing, you are looking at 2gb+. 512mb would drag your system to a halt. 1gb minimum, but even then you will gain better performance with more memory.

It's cheaper now, so 2GB would be the way to go.

 

[Smartazz]

Does the speed of the RAM affect performance enough to notice?

 

[drum]

I will admit I don't know much about video editing, but I believe it is mainly CPU intensive and that the speed of the ram would have little to do with it.

 

[krotchy]

Your post has no information that is really useful for us to help you, aside from that you want to use Premiere Pro (which if you are buying legally I think assumes you can afford 2-4 Gigs of ram). Video editing could be anything from mpeg-2 QCIF at 10 FPS up to uncompressed 4K-60 video and everything in between,

What system are you considering doing your video editing on (aka what are your current specs)?

What kind of video are you using?

What is your source?

What is your intended output?

 

[ribbon13]

4K-60... yikes

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
4K-60... yikes

RED Raw is 320MB/Sec (big B) for 4k 24 IIRC. Visit www.red.com if you wish to be impressed.

OP, depends on your content. Video editing suites are tuned for low memory. Face it, DV-AVI is 13GB per hour and hardly anyone has a machine that can load a project into memory (editors are still 32-bit apps). I edited SD with 384MB and do it regularly with 512 on our laptop. My previous system edited 1080i HDV with 1GB and the real limitation was my GPU on playback. I have 2GB in my current system, but SD is not any different in feel. Effects renders are better, but that is because it is a E6600 with a X1950Pro 512 vs Dual 3.06GHz Xeons (533fsb) with a X800XT 256 (Avid Liquid uses the GPU and GPU memory for playback and some effect rendering). Have not tried HDV yet (lost the project because of a mobo failure), but the memory will help.

 

[kmrivers]

Originally posted by: drum
I will admit I don't know much about video editing, but I believe it is mainly CPU intensive and that the speed of the ram would have little to do with it.

That isn't quite right.

When the video is being worked on: CPU and RAM are very important. The more RAM you have the faster the editing will be. If you are working with low res files, 2GB would be fine. If you are talking HD video, 4GB for sure. And it goes up from there. The more the better. Speed of the RAM is important as well, not as much as the quantity. However you do want to get some good performing memory.

You can do video editing with 1GB of slower RAM, that is fine. It will be slow though, if you are not doing this to make money. Then just do whatever makes you comfortable. If this is professional work. Do yourself a favor and get as much as you can. You will be able to handle more work and quicker.

Now, when encoding it is pretty much all CPU. HD is also a major factor as it will be somewhat of a bottleneck. More RAM would seemingly offset that. Some fast raided Raptors or SCSI for encoding would make the encoding process go much faster then you can dump that file off to your general storage and backup.

The question is, do you want play around or do it right?

 

[pkme2]

I find that 2GB is quite adequate but for speed, I would recommend a fast processor. Combine the two and you should find video editing enjoyable.

 

[Smartazz]

Originally posted by: krotchy
Your post has no information that is really useful for us to help you, aside from that you want to use Premiere Pro (which if you are buying legally I think assumes you can afford 2-4 Gigs of ram). Video editing could be anything from mpeg-2 QCIF at 10 FPS up to uncompressed 4K-60 video and everything in between,

What system are you considering doing your video editing on (aka what are your current specs)?

What kind of video are you using?

What is your source?

What is your intended output?

I have Premiere Pro legally, but it's a much older version of the program that I bought a long time ago. I'll get back to you on the version number, but I'm almost certain that it's 6.0.

 

[Smartazz]

I actually haven't done movie editting in years and I don't remember much about it(I didn't know much before anyway). It's something that I want to get into, I have the cash to go up to 4GB, I'll try 2GB for now and see how that fits my needs.

 

[gsellis]

Premier 6 will be fine in 2. 4 will probably get you no gain at all.

 

[ribbon13]

4GB is worth it for Vista

 

[13Gigatons]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
4GB is worth it for Vista

Yup.