Mid-price Editing Software

[Mad Matt]

Any recommendations? I'm after something that's accessible yet will provide me with plenty of options as my skill level increases and confidence grows. Basically, something half the price of Premiere Pro but almost as good!

Pinnacle DV200 pack,

contains full licensed version of Premiere v.6 for £99 in jessops.
comes also wiyh a chunk of pinnacle stuff (cards software) which will only run on a pre xp computer.

The premiere software will run on xp with the 6.02 upfrade free from adobe site.

If you then need dvd authoring, buy pinnacle 9 for £60 (software) or £80 (software with dv capture card).

[Mad Matt]

Thanks!




Edit: Just checked Jessops site - they haven't got it. Neither has Amazon, sadly. I'll have to keep looking. One further question; if my PC already has Firewire input (which it does) could I just use the Premiere software and leave the capture card in its box? (Sorry if I sound totally ignorant; I've been editing videos for quite a while, but all this computer-based NLE business is very new to me...) Also, how would I use the DVD authoring aspect of Studio 9 if I had edited my film in Premiere? I'm guessing this would all become clear in the Studio 9 manual, but I just thought I'd ask. Again, apologies for my stupidity...

call your local branch, ask them to do a stock check with head office...

you would dump your premiere project to dv, then recapture in pinnacle.

your exsisting dv card should be fine.

[Mad Matt]

Excellent, thank-you!

[Bassbin]

I'm also tempted by the DV200 but noticed that ebuyer have the DV500DVD for about £180. I'm only running a only running a windows ME Duron 850 with 128mb Ram and a UDMA 30GB hard drive. Will either of these work ok on my PC?

[MarkE19]

Bassbin
yourprocessor is a little on the slow side,but you should still be able to do editing, it will just be very slow. But your memory at only 128Mb may well cause many programs to struggle, if they even run at all. Most editing programs require at least 256Mb, but I would say you should have at least 512Mb if not 1Gb of memory. This upgrade should not be too expensive and will improve the performance of everything you run on the PC not just editing.
Now for the Hard Drive. At 30Gb you have no where near enough disk space for video capture. Just to capture a 1 hour tape will use up approx 13Gb and then you need extra space for editing and file conversion etc. So if much of your 30Gb drive is used up for the O/S and all the other programs you have installed you will be unlikely to have enough space for even a short video. Yet again you can upgrade to a second disk for very little money. I have just upgraded my video drive to 160Gb for about £60. If you only have a single drive at the moment then it is just a matter of plugging the new one onto the same IDE cable, setting the jumper to 'slave' and you have a lot more disk space - easy!

So if you have around £100 that you can afford to spend (plus the editing software/hardware) on upgrading the PC you should then be able to use it to do all the editing you require.

Good luck,
Mark.

[Bassbin]

Thanks for the pointers Mark. I guessed that I'd only have limited space (I think I've got about 20GB spare) so I'll look at getting another drive which makes very good sense as it can be taken with mer to a new machine. Memory is a little harder as I have a HP machine so it may be a little more costly but I'll check on prices. My plan is to get a new PC for Photoshop, Audio and now video work next year anyway.

[MarkE19]

Well a brand new PC should speed things up by a lot. Rendering a short piece of footage on my P4 1.8Ghz PC still seems to take forever, so if this is something you want to do a lot of then the faster tyhe PC the better. Most PC's now come with 512Mb of RAM or more so you should be able to get something very good for not too much money. Also they now seem to come with firewire built in and if you get Windows XP (which just about all new PC's will be suppplied with now) you also get editing software, so you will have everything you need to start editing without haveing to buy any additional software or hardware.
IMHO when choosing your new PC steer clear of the badged PC makers such as Dell, HP, Pacard Bell etc and you will be able to upgrade memory, disks etc very cheaply. Dell do make some very nice PC's at very good prices but they still cost a lot to upgrade as you need to use Dell or Dell compatable parts for many upgrades.
Of course we wouldn't want you to waiste any money on upgrade if you are going to replace the PC next year, so why not just upgrade now

Mark.

Very interesting reading! I wonder, can you buy an external hard drive and plug it into a spare USB port (for example) to save opening up your PC? What would you then have to do to make sure your editing software knew to access this drive rather than your usual one?

[MarkE19]

Yep, you can add an external HDD via USB2.0, but I'm fairly sure that USB1.1 is not fast enough especially for video capture! You could also connect and external drive by firewire, just make sure it is connected directly to the firewire card and not daisey chained. Many external cases have both firewire & USB2.0 connections. I would advise buying the drive and case separately and putting them together yourself as this will save you some money.

The external drive will be given a drive letter just like any internal HDD/CD/DVD drives. To get the editing software to use this just tell it in the capture setup (exact settings are software dependent!).

Mark.

[Bassbin]

After some more reading here and at Computer Video I think I need a new PC. I considered the Poweroid off the shelf systems but the £2k price tag is a bit daunting. So looking at ebuyer I cam up with the following:

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe SKTA NVNorce2ST ATX 8xAGP Giga LAN, SATA, Firewire, 6 channel Audio, USB2 Dual chan. DDR +WiFi slot (up to DDR400) £51.48

AMD Athlon XP3200 400FSB 512Cache Barton Retail Boxed Inc Heatsink & Fan with 3year Warranty £102.62

Samsung 512 PC3200 DDR400 184pin Original Memory Module x2 £95.60

Western Digital Caviar SE 40Gb UIDE 100 7200rpm 8mb Cache - OEM £33.22

Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB UIDE 100 7200rpm 8mb Cache - OEM £50.05

Sony 8x DVD+R 8xDVD-R 4x DVD+RW 24XCDRW IDE Burner OEM BLACK £36.99

Samsung 52x Internal IDE CD-ROM Drive (Black) - OEM £7.59

Alps 1.44 Black Floppy Drive £3.69

Microsoft XP Home With Service Pack 1A OEM £49.76

Pinnacle DV500 DVD/PCI DualStream DV S-Video EN (inc premiere 6.5) £154.21

Deluxworld M9512 4-1 Pack - Case Keyboard Mouse Speakers £34.99

All prices ex.vat total inc vat is £736

I will probably add a Matrox G550 or similar dual head graphics card but not decided yet.

Does this look like it will give me a powerfull editing solution that will compliment my new jvc dv4000 camcorder and still be good if I upgrade to a prosumer 3ccd camcorder next year.

[MarkE19]

Well those specs look fairly good to me! A couple of thoughts though:

Why get a CD-ROM? The DVD writer will do that for you.
The Sony DVD writers have had a few issues in the past, not sure what they are or if they have been fixed. The writer of choice seems to be the latest Pioneers.
Does the MoBo support IDE drives or is it just SATA? If only SATA then you will need to get SATA drives.
What is the waranty on the Maxtor drives. I know all Seagate drives come with a 3 year waranty that will give added peace of mind.
If doing serious editing then the Matrox double head graphics do make life a lot easier. But if only doing the occassional bit then a lot of money for little use.
Do you specifically want Adobe Premiere? It is hard to learn and unless being used all the time is a bit OTT (says he that has it!). You could save a fair bit by getting the consumer NLE packages from Pinnacle or Ulead etc - software & firewire card (MoBo has onboard firewire that is fine for the job) for around £50. With Premiere you will still need to add DVD authoring software.

Mark.

[Bassbin]

Thanks Mark.

It sounds like I'm on the right track then. I added a CD drive largely because they are so cheap and it will mean less wear on the writing drive. I'll look at the DVD writer again (I'm not sold on any one brand) but the Sony had some good reviews. I read a good review of the Western Digital drives a while back and after that just checked the spec and went for them.

The Matrox double header graphics cards are under £100 for the older models with about 32mb of ram and everything I've read about them suggests they are the best option for running a 2 monitor desktop. I'm watching several on ebay so I may start with one and upgrade it if required.

My only reason for wanting Premiere is that it is so widely used. However, if I didn't need it then I wouldn't need to buy the Pinnacle card (I don't mind not having analogue inputs and the motherboard has firewire anyway). I would probably look to U-Lead for some authoring software but initially I will probably burn discs by sending the edited footage back to the camera and using my domestic DVD recorder even though this would be a stop gap.

I think my main thought is to get an edit PC up and running even though my efforts will be more focused on learnings in the lighting and sound recording areas.

[MarkE19]

Well I use a Matrox 550 duel head graphics card and agree that they are excellent for NLE, as long as you wont use the PC for games as they are just not up to modern gaming.
Why not leave out the Pinnacle card for now and just use Movie Maker that comes with XP to learn with. You can always buy the card at a later date. The DVD burner, unless OEM, should be supplied with some basic authoring software to get you up and running. You can always download a free 30 day trial of the Ulead software.

Mark.