Desktop PC for Video Editing

[ldivinag]

i use sony vegas 9.

using a $600 hp box running a quad core athlon. has 7 gigs of ram. this is about 3-4 years old now.

you dont need a specialized box. unless of course you will be making your primary job in editing...

windows 7 is a must. 64 bit not so much. but get it anyways. a couple or so years ago, i talked to sony reps during CES. i asked them about the 64 bit version. the guy was upfront saying that 64 bits wont help in the speed of rendering, unless i am using some effects like gauss blur and others like that.

but normal fades and transitions... nope.


but get windows 7 since it can use tons of memory. the memory can be used by Vegas as virtual memory to pre-render complicated transitions and still almost preview in real time...

dont know about vegas 10's new feature though...

[TheExpertish]

Great info so far. SuperSet, love your videos. We're getting a Canon EOS Rebel T3i today so I'm looking forward to that.

Was at Best Buy and it seems the best way would be to build something. What is the best place to get hardware for the best price? Best Buy, Fry's? Any good manufacturers I should be look at?

[ldivinag]

wow...

i just checked.

vegas is now version 11 with cool new features to take advantage of 64 bits, GPU and only vista or windows 7 only.

they had a video where they did a render test from ver 10 and 11. ver 11 started like 2 minutes later than 10. and it finished before 10. wow!

i was at a local MICRO CENTER and they have a few refurb machines from dell, HP and gateway.

nice prices.

[af240z]

Realistically you can build a high end desktop for under $1,300.

Rough estimates:

-core i7 sandy bridge 2600k ~$300
-motherboard ~140
-16gb DDR3 ram ~100
-1.5TB western digital caviar black 7200rpm 6gbps drive, 64mb cache - ~170
-Antec Two Hundred series case + 700 watt power supply ~150
-DVD ROM drive ~30
-GE Force 560Ti (2gb ram, ddr5, 384 cores) video card ~$250
-Win 7 64 bit home edition ~99 (no need for professional or ultimate, those are only useful for enterprise/domain logins)

Total is around $1,240, and I'm just going off prices off top of my head (this doesn't include monitors/keyboard/mouse/etc).

You can build this a lot more budget friendly too, if costs are a huge concern.

[SuperSet]

Great info so far. SuperSet, love your videos. We're getting a Canon EOS Rebel T3i today so I'm looking forward to that.

Was at Best Buy and it seems the best way would be to build something. What is the best place to get hardware for the best price? Best Buy, Fry's? Any good manufacturers I should be look at?

Thx, man! Enjoy your new T3i as it's an excellent camera. There's a lot more to it than a camcorder so try to enjoy yourself while learning about lenses, filters and other DSLR goodies.
I'll defer to the other hardware guys here as I think with so many good desktops out now, you really can't go wrong. I saw a Velocity system for under $1K that's on CNET.com that I'd get if I didn't already have my Gateway, which does more than adequate job. Have fun!

[paul0660]

I was Microsoft up until 2002 then switched to OS X

You should really rethink things ever ten years or so.

[TheExpertish]

Realistically you can build a high end desktop for under $1,300.

Rough estimates:

-core i7 sandy bridge 2600k ~$300
-motherboard ~140
-16gb DDR3 ram ~100
-1.5TB western digital caviar black 7200rpm 6gbps drive, 64mb cache - ~170
-Antec Two Hundred series case + 700 watt power supply ~150
-DVD ROM drive ~30
-GE Force 560Ti (2gb ram, ddr5, 384 cores) video card ~$250
-Win 7 64 bit home edition ~99 (no need for professional or ultimate, those are only useful for enterprise/domain logins)

Total is around $1,240, and I'm just going off prices off top of my head (this doesn't include monitors/keyboard/mouse/etc).

You can build this a lot more budget friendly too, if costs are a huge concern.

It's not a huge concern. That is over my initial budget estimate, but not out of the question. Perfect list to give me an idea of what I'm looking at.

Thx, man! Enjoy your new T3i as it's an excellent camera. There's a lot more to it than a camcorder so try to enjoy yourself while learning about lenses, filters and other DSLR goodies.
I'll defer to the other hardware guys here as I think with so many good desktops out now, you really can't go wrong. I saw a Velocity system for under $1K that's on CNET.com that I'd get if I didn't already have my Gateway, which does more than adequate job. Have fun!

Oh I plan on it. The wife is a make-up artist and beauty guru. She wants me to tag along at weddings to take pics for her portfolio. I have an artistic eye and she plans to exploit that. So I'm probably going to take a class or two since I pretty much forgot everything from my Photo I class in high school way back when. We're also trying to figure out YouTube rendering settings in this mix as well.

[SuperSet]

For YouTube rendering, this is the method that I use. Just follow the instructions as outlined for the Better Method and you'll find that it produces the best quality-file size mix out there:

[command_liner]

Perhaps a bit out of your league, but I run a HP Z800, which is a shockingly fast
desk-side PC.

2x 6-core 3.2 Ghz Xeons
48 GB RAM
one boot disk for Win7 and one for Linux
multi-disk high-speed SCSI raid in the box

Although I am not doing video editing, I am doing graphics work.
Last Friday I was running just over 9000 frames per second, which is still
short of my 10Khz target speed.

[glock 357]

A decent ivy bridge should be out around april. I had a chance to mess with one myself and benchmarks are off the hook. Build one up yourself it shouldn't cost you more than 1K for something decent.

[TheExpertish]

For YouTube rendering, this is the method that I use. Just follow the instructions as outlined for the Better Method and you'll find that it produces the best quality-file size mix out there:

Perfect, thanks.

Perhaps a bit out of your league, but I run a HP Z800, which is a shockingly fast
desk-side PC.

2x 6-core 3.2 Ghz Xeons
48 GB RAM
one boot disk for Win7 and one for Linux
multi-disk high-speed SCSI raid in the box

Although I am not doing video editing, I am doing graphics work.
Last Friday I was running just over 9000 frames per second, which is still
short of my 10Khz target speed.

And how much did this run?

[TheExpertish]

Also, I've been transferring to my current PC directly from the device. Is it better to transfer from a card reader?

[ocabj]

You should really rethink things ever ten years or so.

I'm familiar with Windows up until 7 / Server 2008. I unfortunately have to administer some Active Directory domains since we use those for a secondary user store (with OpenLDAP as our primary). I just choose not to use Windows for my working OS.

[ocabj]

Also, I've been transferring to my current PC directly from the device. Is it better to transfer from a card reader?

Card reader will be significantly faster.

[JDay]

windows 7 is a must. 64 bit not so much. but get it anyways. a couple or so years ago, i talked to sony reps during CES. i asked them about the 64 bit version. the guy was upfront saying that 64 bits wont help in the speed of rendering, unless i am using some effects like gauss blur and others like that.

but normal fades and transitions... nope.


but get windows 7 since it can use tons of memory. the memory can be used by Vegas as virtual memory to pre-render complicated transitions and still almost preview in real time...

dont know about vegas 10's new feature though...

Windows 7 32bit cannot use more than 4GB of RAM. That is reason enough to use the 64bit version. 64bit Windows is also more secure.