help with video editing PC

[luap.h]

ok, I had asked before for a good VIVO AGP card, but that was until my motherboard went all crazy and melted the gold contact off a memory chip into a nice little glob that's wedged into the memory socket!

Had a look at Komplett and saw this for £565:

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=318023

• AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.2GHz Socket 939, 1MB, BOXED w/fan
• Crucial PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MB CL3 KIT Kit w/two matched PC3200 CL3 DDRs
• Samsung SpinPoint P120S 250GB SATA2 8MB 7200RPM
• MSI K8N NEO4-FI,nForce4 Ultra,Socket-939 Raid, Firewire, SATAII, GbLAN, PCI-Ex16
• APLUS Case Qubic, Black Midi tower (Without PSU)
• Gainward GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3, PCI-Express,"Ultra/1960PCX GS"ViVo/2xDVI
• NorthQ 4775-500BULK, ATX 500W, 120mm Fan, 12-17dBA, 4xSATA, SLI, 20/24pin
• Samsung DVD±RW burner, SH-W162C, 16x, Dual, Black OEM

Would this be a reasonable video editing PC for the money? Just the fact it has a VIVO card already. I did look at maybe getting a bundle from Mesh, Dell and the likes as you get a monitor etc, but the chances of getting a VIVO card are pretty slim

Cheers for any help

[Mike Fishcake]

Always have at least 2 hard drives for video editing, and buy as much as you can afford.

First point because you should have your apps on your boot drive and have a dedicated video drive, so it will be much faster.

Second point because you *will* use more HD space than you think. DV format video takes 12GB per hour. Although that does mean on a 250GB drive you'd have over 20 hours, if you want to keep stuff for a few years, it will build up over time.

Put it this way: I personally think it's so important, but I would actually consider lowering the spec of the CPU to get a second HD (even if it's just an 80GB boot) if I was on a strict budget for a video editing PC.

[nvening]

Why not spec it up yourself, for video editing what you really want is a dual core intel p4.

[luap.h]

it's nothing really that serious, just a few home movies to convert, make a few DVD's from it - trying to keep to a budget of around £600

[aidanjt]

Them specs are fine for the odd home use.

You'd only need to beef up the specs if you work on video day in day out.

[fuddam]

VIVO is not necessary, unless you plan to capture analogue

the MUST have are the firewire ports. Most DV capturing runs through firewire.

what software you plan to run?

also, would recommend an AMD dual core over the intels, esp an AMD dual 4800 -SCREAMS along. The cpu you're suggesting will do the job anyway, but if you do build a machine yourself, AMD dual would def be my port of call.

IMHO

[aidanjt]

His budget is £600, not £6,000 the machine is fine for the small amount of video work he'll do.. also firewire is largely unnessery since most kit uses USB2.0 these days.

[Mike Fishcake]

Nope - you *need* firewire for transferring DV from a camcorder to PC.

Although the peak transfer for USB2 is higher than firewire, Firewire has a far faster sustained data transfer rate and is the only one of the two that can keep up with the bandwidth that DV needs for transferring. If you transfer stuff from a DV cam to a PC via USB2, you might as well have used a webcam for all the quality it's going to give you.

OK, an extra HDD might not be needed if it's only occasional use, but you need, need, need firewire.

[aidanjt]

Not really if you transfer the DV in a byte stream, then sustained transfer rate doesn't effect quality at all.

[fuddam]

well, in these days of USB2 proliferation, firewire remains the industry standard for DV transfer for good reason.

like dropped frames? I don't

[aidanjt]

well, in these days of USB2 proliferation, firewire remains the industry standard for DV transfer for good reason.

like dropped frames? I don't

Read:

Not really if you transfer the DV in a byte stream, then sustained transfer rate doesn't effect quality at all.

If you make a bit for bit copy of digital video, you don't lose any frames, or lose any quality.. and if you look closely, more and more camcorders are using USB2.0 as the interface of choice, namely high-end mini-DVD camcorders.. And even with all that said, USB2.0's sustained transfer rate is well above that of DV bitrate which was designed when first generation firewire/usb was coming about.

[fuddam]

well, to quote a good thread:

The answer or reason for the discrepencies between USB and Firewire drives is that USB is administered by the OS and so is reliant on available system resources. this means your USb speed bitrate can fluxate depending on what your computer is doing and if you have multiple USB devices then the bitrate can fluxate even more. This is fine for most stuff but potentily problematic for data heavy tranfers like video to external hard drive. Firewire on the other hand is not administered by the OS but rather is a pure bus speed and so is a constant bit rate. Whilst USB works generally fine, Firewire is technically a better choice

and

USB I/O uses the processor as a "traffic cop". Every data packet needs to be told where to go. Firewire, on the other hand does a DMA transfer and the processor only sets up the transfer then it gets out of the way

especially evident when editing / compositing multiple tracks of video from external drives.

IMHO



The increasing prevelance of USB on camcorders is due to market pressures - everyone knows what USB is and how to use it - not because it is better for the job. Betacam vs VHS

[aidanjt]

Indeed, I'm not arguing that USB is *better* for the job, just that it's not a *must must must* have for the odd video editing since you can just import it to your PC and just edit it there

[luap.h]

need the VIVO specifically to capture from analogue - so all in all this looks to be a pretty reasonable system - thanks for all your input