Build for video rendering

Streeteh · 14 Jan 2013 at 12:54

Afternoon gents,

I work in a Media Studies department in a Secondary school. A huge part of our coursework is the editing and rendering of video based projects using Premiere and After Effects. As a result of strict budgeting we are obviously rather limited in terms of computer hardware, we can live with this (just about) on the editing side of things, however rendering is becoming a nightmare, with 4 min long projects taking 12 hours to render (with up to 60 projects being completed at roughly the same time every term, this is causing chaos).

We need to build a beast of some form, dedicated to rendering out videos as fast as possible. This would also be used to edit some of the more demanding multicam footage (some kids end up with 12-stream 1080p multicam projects, an utter nightmare with a core2duo and onboard graphics!). I've been asked to put together a 'bargain bin, ideal beast and best case scenario' hardware list but don't have a clue where to start these days.

I know i7 and Nvidia are where I ideally want to be going. I also imagine more ram is better, we are limited to 16gb however due to the W7 licence the school owns.

I was thinking of writing a £500, £1000 and £2000 build list, school doesn't pay VAT so budget applies to BEFORE VAT. But looking now at hardware prices I'm unsure whether we would see anything worthwhile from a £500 build.

So gents, how much is the bottom end I should be looking to spend and, if you have the time, where would be the sweet spot in terms of bang-for-buck video rendering hardware?

Streeteh · 14 Jan 2013 at 14:04

Ah sorry, would help if I'd said; No, we've got plenty of screens, mice, keyboards etc.

This build is purely the base unit (case is a part of the requirement though)

Streeteh · 14 Jan 2013 at 14:17

Interesting, I never thought of it like that. It will indeed remain un-overclocked. Working conditions are far from ideal (rooms with 25+ computers, windows with opening restrictors and no aircon make for a rather toasty room in the summer) so heat would be a massive issue as it is. Add to that the fact that whilst I am comfortable with overclocking, if I ever leave this machine will need to be as simple as possible to operate and if it lost its clock it would never get it set back up again.

What's the deal with all this CUDA malarkey? Should I be aiming for a 460 or something along those lines?

Streeteh · 14 Jan 2013 at 14:26

Oh I another important note I forgot to say;

As it's a school purchase, it will be VAT free, so my budget would be the cost BEFORE VAT. Will update the op appropriately.

I was under the impression CS6 made use of CUDA cores to improve editing and rendering times? I've only spent today reading into things so I'm very much clueless at present. Attempting to learn as fast as I can though.

Thanks honosuseri, that's a great start. Am i missing something or is there no graphics card there?

Streeteh · 14 Jan 2013 at 14:39

Tell you what, I reckon I could squeeze £1k out of the school, the amount they spend every year is massive so I'm going to aim big.

So, as requested; A set budget of £1000 before VAT.

[EDIT] Missed your post nkata - Thanks very much man. Will save that as the £500 build!

Streeteh · 14 Jan 2013 at 14:42

Idleman said:
http://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/index.html

Something else for you to read.

560ti, 570 or 580 are other cards you can use for Cuda.

That. Is. Awesome.

Streeteh · 14 Jan 2013 at 16:40

That looks pretty stunning. Thanks!

Streeteh · 14 Jan 2013 at 18:23

JonJ678 said:
I don't quite follow your reasoning here. The problem is that the rendering takes too long on the current computers. You have about 60 students, some of whose work is taking twelve hours to run. Which is a long time.

Your solution is to buy one very fast computer, which will bang through the projects in a few hours each. Or allow more complex projects.

I don't think you want this. Since you have more than one student, you want the best performance / £ possible in a single machine. You then want as many of those single machines as you can buy. Better to have four £500 computers than one £2000 computer, as the £2k box will not be four times quicker than the £500 box. Make sense?

Very true, however as stated in my op we also quite frequently have students attempting to multicam up to a dozen 1080p feeds live in Premiere which obviously doesn't work at all on our current hardware. The advantage to having one 'beast' is that we can simply chuck a student onto it for 30 mins so they can multicam their footage, save the project then add extra filters etc to their cut version on the slower computers as I understand that you do in fact need something rather hefty to edit multiple HD SLR streams.

Also, thanks to CS6 allowing you to easily queue project renders, we plan to just line up several students projects at the end of the day and allow them to render overnight rather than render several at the same time.

Many computers would allow faster rendering at the end of the day, however giving the students the ability to multicam in real time with loads of HD footage will be an excellent addition and sorely needed. Also, if this proves to be as successful as we hope, we will eventually expand out the 'high end' computers and have a few as you have stated. Even if it was a £500 computer we would probably only start with one as, schools being schools, you have to prove to the higher ups that it benefits the department before they'll let you go loose.