Video Editing Build

[manchurio]

So helpful, thanks a lot!

Shouldn't be too dauTnting at all, this is the memory list for the hardware v1.0 of that motherboard:

http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList...a-z68ap-d3.pdf

Here is the CPU support list:

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-down....aspx?pid=3897

Any modern GPU will be compatible with the motherboard, you just need to make sure the cost per benefit to you is weighed up. You also need to do some research on enabling the acceleration in your applications, as its sometimes not supported out of the box, you need to do a little, 'hack'.

[Percy1983]

I am actually running my own business with video editing, I do use the Sony Vegas Suite but the same ideas apply.

The specs of my PC should be to the left.

I have found a raid 0 (2x2TB) with 64gb SSD cache works perfectly. I usually have 8x 28 Mbit/s 1080p 50 frames progressive running and it handles it just fine.

I use GPU acceleration while editing and turn it off for rendering to which my 3570K is more than fast enough. (I do have a seconary render mule for busy times built with a spare A8-3870k I had)

I have had situations with overlays and effects pushing over 8GB ram but I have never hit the 16GB limit.

[Biscuit]

I have found a raid 0 (2x2TB) with 64gb SSD cache works perfectly..

Does the RAID0 array has an automatic backup of some form?

[Percy1983]

There is another 2 TB drive which backs up the important business stuff on a daily basis and finalised projects (final renders, isos etc) are stored on an extenal hard drive aswell.

I will say this isn't due to worry about the raid 0 as such (yes I have doubled the odds of failure as only one needs to fail to kill the data) but a worry about losing it all though any hard drive failure.

It is worth mentioning that if video editing imagine the horror of losing somebodies footage due to hard drive failure, backups are worth it all day long.

[Agent]

Actually SATA1 can be a big bottleneck, however we're talking about far older tech here (back to first gen sata1 motherboards)
Also any sata2 device on a sata3 controller or sata3 device on a sata2 controller will run at the sata2 speed not sata1 speed, the only way way you'd drop down to sata1 speed is if the controller or device was sata1

I disagree. SATA1 is not going to bottleneck most home users on a spindle drive. It's still 150 MB/s - it's more likely that the drive is older tech, thus slower, over the interface being an issue.

Just to put that into perspective: According to blu-raystats.com, 82 released disks use over 35Mbps. That's 4.38MB/s. With each second being 24FPS!

Most home users will be using something like Handbrake. A fine tool for most users, but not used for Bluray mastering. They use significantly higher encoding settings, which are absolutely brutal (hence the size of a BR disk). You need a powerful machine to hit that kind of frame rate constantly, and suitable uncompressed footage to match.

For home users the load is much less on the disk subsystem. Users are normally kicking out footage using Handbrake at a significantly lower bitrate and using much lower settings than BR mastering. This means that while the FPS go up in rendering speed, the file size (thus, disk subsystem stress) is less.

Assuming you're using CQ in Handbrake, footage of 130 mins is going to end up as around 9/10GB, if you use sane settings (I just tested this on well known footage).
Divide that down and you'll end up at around 80MB/s. That's only 5MB/s over being 2 seconds worth of footage, which realistically is going to be hit when it's averaged.
Each film is usually 24fps when dealing with any modern footage - so that's 48fps you need to be putting out when encoding.

I encode on an overclocked i7 and it can't come close to that with decent settings. That's a seriously high framerate to be outputting with HD content like the OP stated. At which point, SATA1 is the least of your concerns.
So quite simply - look at the FPS of the footage, along with it's bitrate. From this, it's trivial to work out if SATA1 is going to limit you. In most cases, for a home user, it's not.

Anyway, all this is academic. Let's take a look at a modern disk and see what it's write speed is: http://techreport.com/review/24487/w...ive-reviewed/4

Most can't come close to capping out SATA1 with writes, even modern 4TB drives with their added density. A few can just squeeze past it, but not enough for it to be a 'big bottleneck'. Certainly when videos are written sequentially to the disk, so you don't get a huge performance drop as if you were rendering every frame out as a single file.

Now I'm not saying the hard disk can't be a bottleneck as it can, but in most home systems with a spindle drive - SATA1 is going to make very little, if no difference to rendering the video which is normally limited by other factors.

[Percy1983]

In all on honesty I could render my blurays on a Pentium 4, it would just take a rather long time.

The main concern isn't final rendering times but having enough grunt to edit effectively.

In my case I mostly author to DVD and bluray to which output is 50i for both as I have 50p going in.

[Agent]

For which you want a fast scratch disk / disks. IOPS is the king there.

These days, just go with a SSD. With the budget the OP is talking about, go with a 840Pro or a Crucial M550.

[Percy1983]

I will agree for the budget they may aswell go all out.

In my case within my budget a raid 0 with SSD cache works wonders and renders are sent to the seperate storage drive. Not quite as good as a dedicated scratch disk but the caching handles anything the OS will throw out and the raid gives more than enough speed for reading multiple source files at the same time.

I will in interested to see the final spec of this machine with that budget, I am not considering an upgrade just yet but it could give me some ideas.

[george1979]

Another thing to consider is what is the final output video to be used for? If its just for YouTube or other online stuff then there is no point in rendering out to a high bit rate as it will be a much larger file and will take longer - especially when you won't see the benefits online anyway.
Even then, the bit rate of DSLR footage from my 600d is around 45mbps IIRC and, if you don't lower it when rendering out, it will take ages and give you a huge file.
If you need the higher bit rate then, of course, this won't apply.

As other's have said, you probably won't notice a huge difference from changing that CPU as it is still quick. Definitely upgrade the RAM - I'd say to 16Gb just to be safe. Its the easiest, and cheapest upgrade, that you can do now and if you upgrade the CPU later then you can re use it (unless you go for one of the new CPUs that pair with DDR4).

Are you using PP Pro CC? If so then you should just be able to change the setting to recognise any CUDA card with over 1Gb ram? If you're using CS6 then you can still apply the text file hack to recognise the 560Ti.

[manchurio]

Another thing to consider is what is the final output video to be used for? If its just for YouTube or other online stuff then there is no point in rendering out to a high bit rate as it will be a much larger file and will take longer - especially when you won't see the benefits online anyway.
Even then, the bit rate of DSLR footage from my 600d is around 45mbps IIRC and, if you don't lower it when rendering out, it will take ages and give you a huge file.
If you need the higher bit rate then, of course, this won't apply.

As other's have said, you probably won't notice a huge difference from changing that CPU as it is still quick. Definitely upgrade the RAM - I'd say to 16Gb just to be safe. Its the easiest, and cheapest upgrade, that you can do now and if you upgrade the CPU later then you can re use it (unless you go for one of the new CPUs that pair with DDR4).

Are you using PP Pro CC? If so then you should just be able to change the setting to recognise any CUDA card with over 1Gb ram? If you're using CS6 then you can still apply the text file hack to recognise the 560Ti.

Oh yes, I tried the text file hack, it didn't work at all :O( now I am going to take some of the advice I was given here, will upgrade the RAM, the video card and get some SSD to see how it goes.