Hi.

I'm in the process of pricing up a custom built PC to replace my laptop so I can finally start to get on with some HD video transfer and editing. I've had my Sony HDR-HC1E for quite a while, but have never had the joy of seeing the footage from the many HD tapes I've shot with it!

So ... I'm after some advice on what the HD users out there would recommend/choose if designing their own PC in today's market. I don't have an unlimited budget, but I'm prepared to pay for decent/scaleable technology.

So far I've narrowed it down to the GPU, CPU, MoBo, memory, hard drive and monitor:

1 x nVidia 9800 GX2 GPU - 1GB DDR3 PCIE Dual DVI 600/2000
Intel Quad Core Q6600 2.4 GHz
nVidia 790i Ultra SLI
OCZ Memory DDR2 or DDR3 - 4GB
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM - 32MB S300
Hewlett Packard HP2408H

Does this sound like a workable setup for HD editing? From the individual component reviews, it seems pretty spot on.

I plumped for the 9800 GX2 (although hideously expensive) because of the Pure Video HD Technology that it boasts. I understand video editing is best with PCIE 2.0, so I'm also considering the 790i Ultra SLI to go with the GX2. Is DDR2 or DDR3 memory the way to go?

This may sound like an extreme setup, but I want to pay good money now as I won't be doing it again for a good 3 years. If anyone has any suggestions, points to consider or different configurations they can recommend, please let me know.

Any advice gratefully received.

S.

[senu]

It is a great deal more than passable setup. In the language of my daughters ( Getting older * coughs*).. It rocks!!
I believe it will fly for HDV editing and indeed AVCHD if that is what you "progress" to ... When the HC1 sings its swan song. ( hopefully not soon)

All of the HDV editing software out there will work fliudly with this kit. I cannot speak for Adobe Premiere CS3 ( it is greedy IMHO) but Vegas 8 and Avid Liquid 7 work with far less
Certainly do not expect instant rendering ( that wont happen regardless of hardware) but it should be As fast as is possible without industrial hardware costing a small fortune
Have you considered playback options? A blu ray writer ( if you have a playback device) would seem logical. Although the discs are niether cheap nor ubiquitous , they should become more affordable, and available,
Otherwise I cannot genuinely see you changing this setup for a good few years .
I edit footage from the HC1 with single core P4 processor with 1-2 Gb of Ram on one of my PCs..

Thanks for the info Senu.

Good to hear it gets the thumbs up. I'd heard that GPU's have little impact with editing, but I still want a decent one as this system is going to be used for viewing/playing as well as editing. I don't have an HDTV as yet, hence the HD monitor.

Any views on DDR2 or DDR3?

I can't believe all this about HDV and AVCHD. I've only just started to get into using my HC1 properly! I certainly couldn't justify a change on that one, so let's hope they keep the format alive - the HC1 is a classy piece of kit. In the meantime, I may have to stock up on a shed load of HDV tapes.

Incidentally, I have an second brand new, boxed HC1 that I'll be putting up for sale ...

As for playback, I was going to install a Blu Ray writer. It's high time I got my HDV tapes onto disc for the family.

Cheers.

S.

[senu]

All the best with it.
Regarding DDR2 vs DDR3 I rather think that the benchmarking gaming fraternity will tell you how many more FPS you will get from the latest game,
or in editing how many fewer seconds/ mins it would take to render a complex effect
otherwise Ill be disinclined to get too bothered unless the Mobo itself promises better performance and the price difference seems to justify the costlier memory

Avid Liquid does actually use GPU for backgrund rendering but Im not sure which other software titles do
Im sure the HC1 will find a happy owner. Although latter models are said to handle low light better , they do so at the expense of videographer friendly features it has
HDV will stay for a while if only because AVCHD has not yet been embraced beyond consumer level . I have to say though that recent models have quite impressive video.

[MarkE19]

GPU:
any half decent card costing £50 - £100 will be plenty good enough for HD replay, and as already mentioned is not really used for HD editing.

DDR2 vs DDR3:
basically I think DDR3 is still to emerge for a realistic price. DDR2 is now very cheap and can do all that is required by any software. So IMO save a fair few quid and get DDR2. If the motherboard can take both (mine can - Asus P5KC) then you can cheaply upgrade once the price of DDR3 has dropped to a sensible price.
If running a 32bit OS then the max it will be able to use is 3.25Gb, so 4Gb may be a bit of overkill. However I have Vista HP 32bit and 4Gb DDR2 RAM as it only cost me about £10 more than the 2x 1Gb and 2x 512Mb DIMMS

Q6600:
Quad core offers no real advantage (compared to duel core) for capture & editing, but should be good for file conversion. The Q6600 is however a great processor for overclocking, and can be pushed to over 3Ghz with good cooling.

Seagate Barracuda 1TB:
although HDD prices are always dropping, I think that 1Tb HDD's are still overpriced. I got myself 2 500Gb HDD's with the second one a dedicated capture drive - OS and all software on the first drive. 2 HDD's can offer performance advantages with video capture etc, but this is less of an issue with SATA II drives than old PATA/IDE.

Mark.

Thanks Senu and Mark.

My problems now revolve around MoBo selection and GPU. I understand that PCIE 2.0 is important with video editing as it doubles the speed from HDD to GPU, and that you need decent disk to monitor speeds.

This is quite an important thing to get a handle on for me as it will dictate the MoBo and GPU I select.

As an example, I was told the following:

If you had no compression, a 1920 x 1400 monitor at 60Hz needs 650 Mbytes/sec. PCIE 2.0 runs at 500 Mbyes/sec and PCIE 1.1 at 250 Mbytes/sec. There will of course be compression, and not every pixel will change with every frame, but if you went up to 100Hz, PCIE 1.1 is ok for 1440 x 1080, but marginal for 1920 x 1400.

Is this something worth considering if the system is going to be used for HD playback and editing on high resolutions? If so, I probably will need the setup I outlined above. If not, I guess I can consider MoBo’s and GPU’s for PCIE 1.1.

The 790i Sli Ultra MoBo I had earmarked will only take DDR3, so I was looking at all the alternatives.

Cheers.

S.

P.S. I think I'll follow your advice Mark and opt for a couple of 500GB drives.

[scorp888]

Originally Posted by sayyfe

Hi.

I'm in the process of pricing up a custom built PC to replace my laptop so I can finally start to get on with some HD video transfer and editing.

Any advice gratefully received.

S.

giving us an idea of your budget might be a good start?

[Smurkenstein]

Originally Posted by sayyfe

As an example, I was told the following:

If you had no compression, a 1920 x 1400 monitor at 60Hz needs 650 Mbytes/sec. PCIE 2.0 runs at 500 Mbyes/sec and PCIE 1.1 at 250 Mbytes/sec. There will of course be compression, and not every pixel will change with every frame, but if you went up to 100Hz, PCIE 1.1 is ok for 1440 x 1080, but marginal for 1920 x 1400.

Is this something worth considering if the system is going to be used for HD playback and editing on high resolutions? If so, I probably will need the setup I outlined above. If not, I guess I can consider MoBo’s and GPU’s for PCIE 1.1.

I dont understand this logic - for digital (camcorder) video - will you ever exceed 1920x1080p at 60 fps for video using today's standards? Ok, a larger monitor will need to be upscaled to by the GPU - but the refresh rate should never exceed 60 for this type of video - anything else is just duplicated frames and of no benefit - even if your monitor can support 100 Hz (I think most LCDs are 60). All this upscaling wont go through the PCIe, just the DVI/HDMI output of the viddy card.

In your thread title - you suggest "ideal setup". Are you considering a professional solution? I think your analysis is a bit beyond what most of us home users would consider for video editing.

I actually think the PCIe bus bandwidth is more important not when considering display output, but if the GPU is decoding/coding the media stream - eg. Pure Video

Does Pure Video actually work? I looked into this a couple of months back and got nowhere. Also, is there any point in Pure video apart from giving your cpu a bit of a break (the cpus you are looking at will happily decode in real time - I have a quad core cpu and it will transcode avchd m2ts 1080i>1080i at about 1/4 speed 150 Mbps, 8 bit).

Sorry to ask so many questions, but I am interested.

giving us an idea of your budget might be a good start?

Scorp888 - I haven't really set a budget, but would ideally like to keep it under the £2K mark. I'd rather pay for a decent setup now and be able to keep it for 3 years or more.

I dont understand this logic - for digital (camcorder) video - will you ever exceed 1920x1080p at 60 fps for video using today's standards? Ok, a larger monitor will need to be upscaled to by the GPU - but the refresh rate should never exceed 60 for this type of video - anything else is just duplicated frames and of no benefit - even if your monitor can support 100 Hz (I think most LCDs are 60). All this upscaling wont go through the PCIe, just the DVI/HDMI output of the viddy card.

In your thread title - you suggest "ideal setup". Are you considering a professional solution? I think your analysis is a bit beyond what most of us home users would consider for video editing.

Smurkenstein - I think you've answered some of my questions in a way. It appears I'm probably over analysing what's needed, but the point of my post was to gather feedback on my proposed list of components for building a PC, and whether they're well suited for home HD video editing and HD playback (be it from disk or Blu Ray) on the monitor. If not, or if it's total overkill, then I wanted some feedback on what I should be looking at.

I'm no professional by any stretch (hence the post ). What I needed was some sound advice on what HD users out there would select as their ideal setup for a home PC. As mentioned, no more than £2K preferably.

I actually think the PCIe bus bandwidth is more important not when considering display output, but if the GPU is decoding/coding the media stream - eg. Pure Video

Does Pure Video actually work? I looked into this a couple of months back and got nowhere. Also, is there any point in Pure video apart from giving your cpu a bit of a break (the cpus you are looking at will happily decode in real time - I have a quad core cpu and it will transcode avchd m2ts 1080i>1080i at about 1/4 speed 150 Mbps, 8 bit).

Sorry to ask so many questions, but I am interested.

I guess you're right on the Pure Video front. If you've got a decent CPU, then the GPU doesn't really need to be taking on that aspect. But then if you're freeing up the CPU to carry out other tasks, that can only be a plus (it's standard on most 8000 and 9000 series nVidia cards anyway).

So let me throw the question back. If you're a home HD video editing/playback user, what would you plump for if picking a new spec PC?

S.

[MarkE19]

Although I don't as yet work with HD video (need a new job to pay for a new HD camcorder ) but the PC I built just before Christmas should do all you need it to - and it only cost me just over £700, and with prices always falling you should be able to do it for less now. The specs can be found in This Thread (and I did upgrade to 4Gb RAM).

Mark.

[Smurkenstein]

Originally Posted by sayyfe

I guess you're right on the Pure Video front. If you've got a decent CPU, then the GPU doesn't really need to be taking on that aspect. But then if you're freeing up the CPU to carry out other tasks, that can only be a plus (it's standard on most 8000 and 9000 series nVidia cards anyway).

So let me throw the question back. If you're a home HD video editing/playback user, what would you plump for if picking a new spec PC?

S.

Back to me. I think £2g is quite a lot for what is needed - so you have got some slack. Tbh, my current pc is a Dell - I went for this mainly because I'm a bit lazy and I couldn't source the individual parts cheaper (saying that, I had a lot of psu supply problems with Dell).

I think what you have is quite good and you could go for the faster PCIe bus, but you risk not seeing a performance improvement for your buck.

64 bit operating system with plenty RAM and editing software that can use the RAM - more RAM is good for the future and I'd imagine would accelerate not the actual transcoding, but the loading of assets, media manager content, long timeline movies - interested in what others think of this - the reason I suggest this is that I have 4 Gb RAM - only 3.4 is adressable by Vista 32 (the rest is wasted) and a single application can only use something like 2.5 Gb. I consider this a bit weedy in future proofing terms. The down side is that 64 bit windows can be incompatable with some software (including video editing sofware such as Vegas).

The GPU you have there is for gaming - its nice - I'd like one - my current gpu is a 8800 GTX - even this is overkill for viewing HD video. But if you have the money, why not. I am actually quite interested in pure video - I just didnt get round to trying it yet. An hdmi output is a nice thing to have, but not very common.

Fast HDDs are typically considered important for capturing - but unless you are captuiring uncompressed HD (I guess you wont be) - a standard HD should suffice. But a quicker HDD will load assets more quicky into your editing software - eg. I use Sony Vegas - when I have a project with a lot of clips in the media manager - I find Vegas quite slow to load - and I have 2x 250 Gb drives in RAID 0. I would guess that if I had say two or raptors in RAID 0 - with a 1 Tb drive for storage - well that would be quite nice. I would also consider additional external storage

Blue Ray burner if you have a bue ray player at home

A method for distributing you videos around the house to your living room - media extender perhaps (I'm not sure if these are good for HD). Tbh, the biggest improvement in enjoyment of my home movies has been able to play them in my living room and I achieve this using a separate pc hooked up to my LCD.

Hope that helps.

Originally Posted by MarkE19

Although I don't as yet work with HD video (need a new job to pay for a new HD camcorder ) but the PC I built just before Christmas should do all you need it to - and it only cost me just over £700, and with prices always falling you should be able to do it for less now. The specs can be found in This Thread (and I did upgrade to 4Gb RAM).

Mark.

Cheers Mark.

Thanks for all the advice everyone, it has given me a lot to think about.

Originally Posted by Smurkenstein

64 bit operating system with plenty RAM and editing software that can use the RAM - more RAM is good for the future and I'd imagine would accelerate not the actual transcoding, but the loading of assets, media manager content, long timeline movies - interested in what others think of this - the reason I suggest this is that I have 4 Gb RAM - only 3.4 is adressable by Vista 32 (the rest is wasted) and a single application can only use something like 2.5 Gb. I consider this a bit weedy in future proofing terms. The down side is that 64 bit windows can be incompatable with some software (including video editing sofware such as Vegas).

I thought I'd shove two OS's on different partitions to ensure I can get all applications working, 1 64bit Vista, 1 32bit XP. Like you say, 4GB RAM should suffice for now, and if getting a DDR3 MoBo, you can always make the switch later. The price difference is shocking.

The GPU you have there is for gaming - its nice - I'd like one - my current gpu is a 8800 GTX - even this is overkill for viewing HD video. But if you have the money, why not. I am actually quite interested in pure video - I just didnt get round to trying it yet. An hdmi output is a nice thing to have, but not very common.

I did consider 2 x 8800GTX in SLi but decided on one 9800GX2 for now. I'm into my games too, so I guess I can justify the extra expense. Only thing that put me off a little with the GX2's is the price and mixed reviews. But you can quibble over it too much I suppose, and within 6 months it won't really matter as something else will be out by then! The HDMI will be nice to plug straight into an HDCP monitor or HDTV (when I have enough to get one!).

Fast HDDs are typically considered important for capturing - but unless you are captuiring uncompressed HD (I guess you wont be) - a standard HD should suffice. But a quicker HDD will load assets more quicky into your editing software - eg. I use Sony Vegas - when I have a project with a lot of clips in the media manager - I find Vegas quite slow to load - and I have 2x 250 Gb drives in RAID 0. I would guess that if I had say two or raptors in RAID 0 - with a 1 Tb drive for storage - well that would be quite nice. I would also consider additional external storage

This I hadn't realised until posting here, so instead of one fat TB disk, I'll get two 500GB disks at the fastest speed possible; 1 for the OS and 1 for data/footage.

Cheers.

S.