Help choosing Video card for Video editing - Please

[Martin SH]

I have recently bought an HD video camera and would like to do a bit of video editing. With Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD my system struggles. I suspect I need a better video card does anyone have any suggestions?

My system is:
Intel core2 Quad Pro Q6600 (2.4)
Ibit IP35 Socket 775
4Gb DDR2 Ram
Saphire ATI Radeon HD3450 250mb DDR2 Ram (PCI Express).
Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit

I don't want to spend a fortune but need to get the job done.

Thanks

Martin

 

[AMG]

how much are you whilling to spend?

 

[Bomag]

If the footage is AVCHD then CPU speed is more likely to be the limiting factor. Graphics card only really matter with smoothness of playback. Even when supported by the software, G/C acceleration is relatively not large while editing.

Even my new 980x has slowdown with Première CS4 editing AVCHD.

 

[Martin SH]

how much are you whilling to spend?

As much as I need to, to do the job..... any help is appreciated. Thanks

 

[easyrider]

I have recently bought an HD video camera and would like to do a bit of video editing. With Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD my system struggles.
Thanks

Martin

You need to look closer at your system,

Whats your HDD configuration?

Throwing money at a GFX card will not yield better results.

 

[86JR]

Overclocking your cpu to 3.2ghz+ will have the biggest increase.

 

[easyrider]

Overclocking your cpu to 3.2ghz+ will have the biggest increase.

Not necessarily,

If he has only one hardrive and he is using his the video scratch disk as the same as the OS he will run into IO problems causing massive stuttering.

I suspect this is what the problem is.

 

[sambot]

+1 on dedicated scratch disk

dont adobe suport nvidia cards to speed up things in their products like rendering etc?

 

[AMG]

they both do as far as I m aware

have to check up on that, not sure what stream supports through...damm brook+ ;p

 

[Evil-I]

Hi there,

For video editing of HD footage its drive speed, drive speed, drive speed.

Typically you'll at least need a completely separate, fast data drive and its worth looking at RAID longer term if you're going to be using a few layers of video.

CPU speed should be fine, it will of course effect render times so its probably worth overclocking your Q6600 a little. I had the same CPU and motherboard combination and you can just knock the FSB up to 333 and get 3Ghz probably without adding any extra voltage.

Graphics card wise, I'm sure it will be fine short term, video editing isn't as taxing on graphics as you might think as after all its only 2d. If you are intending to do any of the 3D effects in either Adobe Premiere or After Effects then a bit more graphics grunt might help on render times etc.

The difficulty with h264 encoded footage is that it can be reasonably cpu intensive during playback. It's worth running some tests whilst having task manager open, that will give you an idea of whether you are maxing out one of your CPU cores or not.

Best,

E-I