SPEC ME - need to soup up my computer for VIDEO EDITING

MasterMike · 24 Jun 2006 at 12:19

Right, these are my current specs:

Soltek nForce 2 mobo, couldn't precisely tell you which one
AMD XP 2800 2.14 GHz
1 gig generic DDR RAM
Maxtor 250 GB 7200rpm IDE HDD
Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis
Generic PSU

My hobby is video editing, and come September I am going to university to start a 4 year degree in digital visual effects. While I like the odd game, this takes priority. So obviously I'll need LOTS of storage (SATA would be nice for speed), processing power and RAM, and the graphics card takes the back burner (I would use my current Radeon, but after a power surge it's a bit broken and needs replacing)

I'll also need a new PSU as the one I'm currently using is borrowed; said power surge killed my old one.

So, I've got a budget of about £400, I'd really appreciate it if someone who's familiar with current hardware (I'm about 3 years behind in knowledge terms) could have a look for me. Cheers.

MasterMike · 24 Jun 2006 at 13:41

Looks good, looks very good - dual processor is clearly the way to go for rendering, but my only gripe with that spec would be the only 200 gigs of SATA disk space. With my 250 gig IDE that makes only 450, which is a lot for your average user but not much at all for someone editing a lot of video - 10 second of uncompressed 720 x 576 footage takes 300 MB.

MasterMike · 24 Jun 2006 at 16:17

Energize said:
Why spend £80 on a card when integrated will do just fine? Forget the graphics card, spend as much money as possible on the cpu.

Fancy speccing me out an alternative then?

MasterMike · 24 Jun 2006 at 16:40

Energize said:
Just use stellys spec but use a mobo with integrated graphics that gets you to about £400, as for the hdd space, why would you want to capture in uncompressed format when capturing in mpeg2 and 4 is just as high quality or using a lossless video encoder?

I think you misunderstand the kind of work I do - captured video goes through hundreds of filters, effects layers and the like - and once I've captured DV footage, I can't compress it further until my final render. This means I have to render footage uncompressed once I start working on it. Even the slightest compression will create horrible artifacts. THAT'S why I need loads of hard disk space.

MasterMike · 24 Jun 2006 at 16:53

Energize said:
Just use lossless compression then.

Doesn't work so well when you're juggling 5 different effects programs. I'm lucky hard disk space is quite cheap these days.

MasterMike · 24 Jun 2006 at 17:08

squiffy said:
Not playing games! Video editing only needs a standard card, no 3D acceleration. No need at all for a decent card, in fact the X700 overkill. A X300 128MB dedicated will be sufficient.

As quoted thought, I do enjoy the occasional LAN night...

MasterMike · 24 Jun 2006 at 17:41

Mikey1280 said:
Well then you will have to make the choice between hard disk space and gaming.

Or, just make do with the slightly broken card I have now, until I can afford a better card in a month.