Advice on Video Editing Spec

mattyj1085

mattyj1085

mattyj1085

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I am looking at getting a pc for work that I can use for video editing, the downside is its got to be a hp branded pc but I need to know what spec I need

All I need to be able to do is get video from a mini dv tape onto the pc and then be able to cut, add in music, transition effects subtitles etc nothing too fancy!

a few questions:

1. do I need to get a dedicated graphics card or would on board make a difference to quality/speed?

2. will a quad core be of greater benefit than a dual core when using coral video studio pro software?

3.will I see a greater benefit from 4gig of ram rather than 2gig? Problem is I'm probably going to be limited to win xp for now until we upgrade to win 7

4. can I just get any pci firewire card to link the camcorder to the pc?

Thanks
 
mattyj1085 said:
I am looking at getting a pc for work that I can use for video editing, the downside is its got to be a hp branded pc but I need to know what spec I need

All I need to be able to do is get video from a mini dv tape onto the pc and then be able to cut, add in music, transition effects subtitles etc nothing too fancy!

a few questions:

1. do I need to get a dedicated graphics card or would on board make a difference to quality/speed?

2. will a quad core be of greater benefit than a dual core when using coral video studio pro software?

3.will I see a greater benefit from 4gig of ram rather than 2gig? Problem is I'm probably going to be limited to win xp for now until we upgrade to win 7

4. can I just get any pci firewire card to link the camcorder to the pc?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Why does it NEED to be HP??

You do need one for video editing, it will give a huge boost in performance.
a quad core will help your processing times a lot - if you have a big movie to edit it can cut the process times a lot.

The ram is the most important factor in this so you should really look at getting as much as possible, try aiming for 8gb ram rather than 4.

yes any firewire card will hook up but motherboards usually provide this. just get a long cable and check your motherboard has it, some pc cases also support firewire on the front of the case too so check up on yours.
 
1) check what software you use, if you use premiere there is a plugin for certain quadro gpu's that utilise the gpu for rendering the video. Theres also badaboom that can use cuda (geforce/quadro fx) so it might be worth getting a decent gpu too.

Matrox might do some dedicated hardware too.

2) Quads will be better

3) More ram the better

4) check the motherboard before buying a specific firewire card as most new rigs have firewire (iee1394a iirc) built in now.
 
CPUs: Most powerful you can afford - quad minimum but be looking at 2x quads
RAM: lots of it!
GPUs: Most powerful you can afford, see if you're chosen software package can use the GPU for rendering. Also consider quadro fx / Matrox cards instead of the Gaming cards we're used to here.
Hard Drives: You're gonna need loads of storage space, but for your scratch disks you'll want them to be quick ones!

TBH what you really want is a Mac Pro. Not only for the hardware, but for Final Cut Pro as tbh I prefer it to Adobe Premiere Pro.
 
"All I need to be able to do is get video from a mini dv tape onto the pc and then be able to cut, add in music, transition effects subtitles etc nothing too fancy!"

I really wish people would read and understand the OP requirements before making suggestions..

We do a lot of video work and you don't need a high spec PC at all. You are not working with uncompressed video, special effects, 3d rendering etc etc so god knows where all these recomendations are coming from.

To give you some idea, capturing miniDV video with zero frame loss only requires 2gb of ram and a 5,400rpm HDD

That said, since you are cutting and adding a few simple transitions and overlaying audio I'd recommend dual-core, 4gb ram, 7,200rpm hdd

Onboard video will be fine

If you said you were working with HD footage then I'd recommend a gpu with onboard decoding to save on cpu usage. You don't need to spend a lot of money on a graphics card as you won't be using it.
 
glen8 said:
"
I really wish people would read and understand the OP requirements before making suggestions..

We do a lot of video work and you don't need a high spec PC at all. You are not working with uncompressed video, special effects, 3d rendering etc etc so god knows where all these recomendations are coming from.

To give you some idea, capturing miniDV video with zero frame loss only requires 2gb of ram and a 5,400rpm HDD

That said, since you are cutting and adding a few simple transitions and overlaying audio I'd recommend dual-core, 4gb ram, 7,200rpm hdd

Onboard video will be fine

If you said you were working with HD footage then I'd recommend a gpu with onboard decoding to save on cpu usage. You don't need to spend a lot of money on a graphics card as you won't be using it.
Click to expand...

Cheers for all advice guys, this is the spec im getting.

HP Compaq dc7900 Small Form Factor PC
Core 2 Duo 3.16Ghz
4GB ram
9800GT Graphics card low profile
Firewire card low profile
250GB drive but connected to 100GB fast server storage
 
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