Will i be able to edit HD with this setup

chrisdudeperson

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Hey guys,

I'm thinking of setting up a new computer (building it myself) and i want it to be able to edit HD. I've been told that you need at least dual core to edit, but i have never been sure myself.

This is the package i'm looking to buy:

AMD Athlon™2 X4 Quad Core 620 2600MHz AM3 CPU
2GB DDR2 800MHz memory included (up to 16GB maximum capability)
ECS AM3 GeForce 6100PM-M2 motherboard with performance heatsink and fan
NVIDIA® GeForce 6100 / NVIDIA® MCP61P chipset
Nvidia® Geforce DirectX 9 graphics


Would this work?
Is there anything else i need?

Thanks
Chris
 
You are pushing it.
I had an E6600 2 years ago with 4 gig of ram, and my system struggled back then.
1080 editing is brutal on any pc, its slow, chews up your CPU and is very time consuming because of this.
8 gig of ram would be recommended, 4 being minimum, quad core minimum, plenty of HDD space, 2 or 3 HDDs preferably..
What is the GPU you are using, don't tell me its onboard, wont help you, if you are trying to edit dual screen, you will need a good solid GPU like the 9800 minimum..

I have done a lot of editing in the past, I have had to learn from my mistakes, get the most ram you can, and the quickest Quad then work around the GPU and HDDs..

Hope this helps..

:thumbsup:
 
Would this quad be able to handle it if i put a high performance video card in and 8 gigs of ram?

Thanks
Chris
 
Chris, it would be best that you check out the load requirements of the software you intend to use..
IE get some becnhmark info on the CPU with the relevant software..
I know its a hard task, but you will kick yourself again and again if you get too low a CPU...
Short answer yes. long answer, do some research..
I have used Adobe premier, and its a multi core compatible CPU software package, works great..
But it wants a quick cpu..

:thumbsup:

EDIT, if you give me a budget, I will give you something that IMO would be suitable...
I have done an advanced diploma of multi media, I opted to get out early as I found work, not really in the industry, but it was work.
I would say also working in the PC industry directly with customers, I have helped them customise their purchases, also I have bulit many a PC so hopefully I will be able to give you the input you need for some happy editing..
 
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What kind of HD editing you mean?

If rendering or special effects you certainly need good graphics card, if you are only looking at transcoding and some basic effects even integrated graphics will handle fine.
 
I am talking about taking AVCHD form my DVD camcorder and putting it onto my computer and then mainly doing basic effects. I may go into other programs like after effects in the future but i would buy a graphics card for that.

Thanks
Chris
 
I'm also thinking of building my own machine for video editing including HD. I have a budget of £1K and am just starting to put a spec together. I'm thinking about having:
- Intel i5-750
- compatible mb (don't know what yet but circa £100-120)
- 8GB RAM
- ATI Radeon 4890
- 600w PSU
- 75GB VelociRaptor HDD
- 1TB HDD (probably a WD or Samsung)
- suitable case (with Firewire and USB ports on front)

Tonel
 
Tone that system will breeze along nicely, but do you realise that getting the raptor for just editing, not your OS will speed up things?
 
24 P,

I'm not with you. My intention is to use the raptor for Win7 and my apps, thinking that they will all run faster than on a 7,200 drive. All my data including video project files and content will reside on the 1TB.

You seem to be saying something else. Are you saying that the raptor should be reserved only for use in video editing, i.e., capture, project files, preview and scratch? Any advice you can give will be very welcome.

I'm now thinking of using a i7-860. AVCHD editing needs all the CPU it can get and the i7 has hyper-threading. (I've been reading up on it this morning and now looking for a decent motherboard.)

Tonel
 
You got me right in saying that you should use a Raptor for editing, its essential that you be able to access and transfer, read/ write data as quick as possible.
Using the velocity as scratch is a great Idea..
There is no reason that you couldn't use 1 Velocity for windows, 1 Velocity for scratch, and a 1 Tb for all your back ups.
Remember how fragmented you will get your drives moving large edited portions around, could be a pain..
I have done lots of editing, if I had of had the velocity earlier on, I would have been in heaven, unfortunately I only had 36 GB 10 K raptors, you can get quicker Sata II 7200 Rpms now..
If you are editing large files, use the Velocity, with nothing else bar for editing...
Use a diff back up drive, you will slow it down other wise with all the other stuff on it, even if you have it partitioned.

Hope this helps..

:thumbsup:
 
Thanks 24 P, for advice.

Wouldn't have thought of 2 raptors. May need to go back to i5 to keep within budget but hey, an i5 may not have hyperthreading but it's still cool.

I'm only doing this for family vids not pro, using Vegas Movie Studio and Prem Elements. My AVCHD source by the way is from my Panasonic Lumix TZ7 camera - not a vidcam.

Any other pearls of wisdom would be most welcome, but thanks anyway for your most useful input.

I hope chrisdudeperson, who raised the topic has found this useful. Any comments chris?

Tonel
 
Nps dude any time, just make sure when you do edit, use a fresh HDD, as they fragment easy with large files..
Hence why I suggested getting a Velocity for editing..

Anyways, let me know how you get on..

:thumbsup:
 
Nps dude any time, just make sure when you do edit, use a fresh HDD, as they fragment easy with large files..
Hence why I suggested getting a Velocity for editing..

Anyways, let me know how you get on..

:thumbsup:

HDD speed is rarely a factor in editing as long as you have two drives. With lossless compressed codec like huffyuv or lagarith, the size of the file is about 60G/hour (depends on complexity) only for 1080p.

Even at 2x speed thats only 33MB/s. In real life you'd be heavily CPU/GPU limited and should see 0.05~0.4x speed.
My past experience using uncompressed avi for editing gave me no benefit apart from eating a couple times more space. Using lossless codec you can edit from 5400RPM drives, USB drives or over GbE LAN, all of which would certainly struggle with uncompressed clip. There is some overhead for lossless codec but if you are doing relatively CPU-intensive effects or transcoding, it will only be taking up less than 1% of the CPU power, which might have been used up by reading a much bigger uncompressed file anyway, resulting in no apparent performance loss.

Depends on what kind of editing, buying multiple low-end machines like Athlon X4 620 can in most case give more raw power for the same price (bar the cost of software, check if there are any open source alternatives).
 
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Thanks for the info, arthur.

I came back to add another message and saw your post. I have been digging around and wanted to say to 24 P that it seems raptors, like SCSI before them, seem to have lost the advantage to the big SATA drives and RAID.

Have a look at Videoguys DIY7 Intel Core i7 with Vista 64 on videoguys.com. Their DIY7 build (written b4 the i5 and i7-860) uses an i7-920, 500GB 7200 RPM for the system HDD with 1TB (2x500) SATA RAID 7200 RPM for Video storage.

Chris, I'm sure you will also find the info VideoGuys provide very useful.

Spending your money wisely for a video editing PC is very difficult without researching the benefits of the latest technology.

Tonel
 
The kind of system you need is highly depends on what exactly you are doing and how fast you want it to be done. It is not like people couldn't edit video prior to the existance of i7.

A budget system will certainly do the job at half the speed at less than a quarter of the price.

One good way to determine what system suit you best is to add up all the cost (including the software you needed, which could cost more than the machine). Then divide by the processing power (check some benchmarks). And just get the one with the best price/performance ratio.

If you think the speed is not good enough, get another identical machine and you can do two threads at once. You still getting the best value there.

Many software do not utilize multi-thread efficiently so you have to do it the hard way of splitting the frames you want to process even if you have a 32 core machine. (Say running 8 copies of the program at the same time, each using 4 cores). This works with multiple machines as well and can expand into hundreds of core if you have the money.
 
arthur

Your comments are valid. I started editing video on a Pentium 100 and on faster machines since. They have all done the job at their own speed. A current machine - whatever the spec - will do the job faster than my current DIY machine with an Athlon 3500+.

I take your point about multi machines but I just want to have one as I don't have room for more. I'm prepared to wait for it to do its thing.

What I want to avoid is missing a trick with the money I spend, i.e. bang per buck - as no doubt is the reason chris asked the question. I don't do video editing full time as I have many other uses for my PC so I'm not looking for a dedicated editing machine.

Taking on the comments so far and reading what VideoGuys have to say (which is quite up to date) my current spec now contains:-
CPU: i7-860
System HDD: 500GB WD Caviar Black, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache
Video HDD: 2 x 640GB WD Caviar Black, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, which I'll configure as RAID 0.
Data HDD: 250GB SATA drive from my current PC.

I've chosen the Blacks because they only cost a little more than the Blues and have a 5yr rather than 3yr warranty - which tells me they should be more robust. By the way, I back all my data up daily to my 1TB NAS.

My next job is to find a decent mobo and RAM.

Any other comments would be most welcome. Where's chrisdudeperson?

Tonel
 

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