Video Editing rig

Velocity219e

Velocity219e

Velocity219e

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Joined
21 Aug 2003
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Looking at putting together a Video Editting rig ... no idea what hardware would be good for it, but have a fairly hefty budget to throw at it ...

anything to consider would be appreciated...

I will post more details as I get a usage spec properly ironed out

Currently looking at ...

2x Dual core opterons
(appropriate motherboard)
at least 4GB memory (probably corsair XMS2, pending Motherboard decision) Matrox Parahelia? graphics card (Dual head & TV outs)
2 - 4 500gb HD's with raid (anyone suggest a decent PCIe Raid card?)
 
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Methinks your best bang for the buck would be getting a Mac Pro. I did a thread a while back spec'ing up a machine for a similar purpose and I discovered that it was very tough to beat the Mac Pro's features and price. Add to that that it comes with a full factory warranty and it's a winner in my book.
 
I'd advise against an Apple for editing since it only really has Final Cut Pro for editing where as the PC has so much more, such as Adobe Premiere (pretty much identical to Final Cut), Avid (by far the best editing program out there), plus all the other ones like Vegas, Pinnacle, Canopus etc. Also all the special effects programs too.

What sort of things are you editing? HD?
 
Sirrel Squirrel said:
how compatible are programs though?
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no i think he means you can install windows on a mac... not just run windows software. so tere wont be issues


i edit video using Vegas... and the source files im using are in excess of 1GB and theres a lot of them ( counter striek montages)

i dont have any problems with my current rig. and for some reason vegas and other programs never seem to use all of thepower of my PC except in rendering the videos.

id throw a thick end of your budget on monitors, and speakers.

would a heavily overclocked Conroe not do the job ? ( sorry not upto speed on mac's )

RB
 
R B CUSTOMS said:
no i think he means you can install windows on a mac... not just run windows software. so tere wont be issues


i edit video using Vegas... and the source files im using are in excess of 1GB and theres a lot of them ( counter striek montages)

i dont have any problems with my current rig. and for some reason vegas and other programs never seem to use all of thepower of my PC except in rendering the videos.

id throw a thick end of your budget on monitors, and speakers.

would a heavily overclocked Conroe not do the job ? ( sorry not upto speed on mac's )

RB
Click to expand...

I know you can install Windows on a Mac but are there any compatibility issues at all, such as drivers for the video card, sound card etc as this would affect any sort of editing program.

If you're editing a lot of long HD clips, a dual xeon or opteron machine would be beneficial as would a lot of RAM, lots of HD space would be required too, ideally you'd want one drive for OS and programs, perhaps a RAID array for storing the clips and then another dive to render to.
 
First up you can install windowsXP and windows64 on a MacPro, so if you do need some PC software you have plenty of options - as far as compatibility.. its windows.. what runs on windows runs on windows, with Macpros thier almost entirely "PC" based hardware now so windows runs under its own steam not under emulation.

The MacPro is by far the best option for video editing. Its used by 90% of professionals together with Final Cut Pro. Anyone here thinking the PC can compete (windows i mean) with a Mac for video editing hasnt used it under a full commercial production. We use Macs for our Compositing and Editing for the past 5yrs (as long as the company has been going) and the users have been using them for longer again.

They are Quite solid machines, no less stable than windows (of note thier just as "unstable" too).

The biggest pull for people atm is the cost, MacPros are very competitively priced for the hardware.
One major consideration is Ram cost, because these machines are using the new Xeons they all rely on FB ram which irrelevant where you get it from.. is very expensive (also very slow) but with video editing ram speed is of less importance to HDD raid speed.
They also have a massive upgrade path, unlike a lot of PCs (unless you consider some of the Dell servers) they have a good 8 slots for ram, so depending on budget you can go from 4 through to 32gb of ram (and the OS fully supports this amount).

The drawbacks to getting a mac, is forget games.. yes you can dual boot to windows and yes all games are compatible doing so.. but for the moment atleast the fastest card available with a MacPro is a 1900xt, which depending on your gaming requirements might be a bit slow. (you can technically use a PC gfx card but theres numerous boot issues and random issue - i wouldnt advise this)

Also you have to consider Software costs. You have to buy ALL mac software - irrelevant to whether you condone pirate software, for the PC atleast you can aquire almost any software to "test" and then purchase, forget this notion on a mac (at the least you chances are limited).

I personaly HATE macs, i hate the cheesy GUI. the spinning ball of doom (which replaces the hourglass in windows) and the insanity of single button mice (macPros have the "mighty mouse" which is 2button + scroll) I also hate the BS that surrounds mac and mac users.
Sadly Apple are now competitive, have Good hardware and solid software - for professional video editing there is no other choice.

Cheers
ROfu

PS - thier also painfully easy to use. maybe one day ol bill gates will steal some of the usefull bits from the MacOS not just half inch the pretty colors.
 
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ROfu said:
The MacPro is by far the best option for video editing. Its used by 90% of professionals together with Final Cut Pro. Anyone here thinking the PC can compete (windows i mean) with a Mac for video editing hasnt used it under a full commercial production. We use Macs for our Compositing and Editing for the past 5yrs (as long as the company has been going) and the users have been using them for longer again.
Click to expand...

At my work everything is done using PCs, all encoding is done using PC but then we do have bespoke hardware that can do things very quickly, also all our broadcast editing systems are PCs, we do have a couple of MACs though that are running Final Cut as an affordable solution to clients. Most companies around here have this sort of setup and it works pretty well.
 
we use them for film and HD tv series, so we have used macs for years because untill lately they have been the only format that has supported large amounts of ram properly.
at 12-30mb per frame (cineon and OpenEXR) ya need a bit of ram ;)
Have you guys started HD broadcasts yet? - im not in anyway trying to patronise you, im just curious to how much UK tv is actually setup in HD these days - i assume most productions are now filmed in HD, even if not broadcast at HD, All our contracts are with the US or film, which has always been HighRes.

What software are you using on the PCs?

Cheers
ROfu
 
Is that for the offline edit you use the mac then you export to an EDL and get somewhere else to online it for broadcast?

I'm not too sure what we have for HD Online stuff, think it's Avid Nitrous or Adrenaline (might be both), then we have Symphony for SD Online. For our SD Offline stuff we either use Avid Media Composer or DV Xpress. As I said we have Finalcut for clients that like to use it as a cheaper option.
 
yup its for the office screenings, Avid is used for the main temp edit.
although most screenings we kick out 1ks direclty from Shake to view (we do post production sequences, so the editing side is small sequences)
Personaly i dont use a Mac or editing software, I look after the 3d side of stuff .. way before it gets to the edting stage.

Cheers
ROfu
 
Ah right, we work on everything from adverts to feature films so we have to have a range of programs that can do SD and HD stuff, for online edits, Avid is the best and it's designed for PC along with the associated hardware for it so we have no choice but to use a PC even though the mac does have very similar spec these days
 
cool, I offered the MacPro as the solution to this thread purely based on, his initial suggestion of Core2, few gb ram etc - another words Home or small buisness vid editing.
If he does mean broadcast, then Avid is the industry standard but you need the specialist hardware. Final Cut Pro, needs nothing more than a generic mac..
My editing knowledge is limited when ya get past home editing. I leave that upto the guys who get paid anoyingly large sums of cash.

out of curiosity who do you work for? are you guys based on Soho?

Cheers
ROfu
 
Yeah know what you mean, I'm just biased towards PCs as I tried a Mac and couldn't get on with, that was an iMac though not a MacPro.

Yeah I work in Soho for Ascent Media, I'm an encoder so don't actually do any of the editing but we have our post production company St Annes in the same building plus own other companies at different sites in Soho and Camden, also got a broadcast transmission facility in Chiswick for Discovery (very hi-tech there lol)
 
ahh right, you guys own Rushes dont ya. We subcontracted work out to those guys on a HBO project last year.
appologies Velocity219e for going off topic, over the last few posts.
If your just starting out and are on a normal budget - personaly i would go for a MacPro.
But as Sirrel Squirrel has mentioned if your going for large scale broadcast stuff then a PC with associated specialist hardware is the way to go.

Hope our suggestions help

Cheers
ROfu
 
Yeah we own Rushes, funnily enough we had HBO looking round the other day, don't know what they were doing though

Think we took this thread a bit off topic lol

Based on what I've heard in this thread though, if the Mac definately can run Windows based editing programs without problems then it might be a good way to go but this of course depends if the main program you use to edit is Final Cut, if it's a PC program then I think you are better off getting a PC, it'd be helpful if we knew what you were editing so we could come up with a good spec.
 
macs were made for editing - im not just saying that - there main design concept for these high end machines IS EDITING u can find loads of pro software for the mac if you know where to look, the quality is far more superior than a pc equal (stock pc equal) the OS is rock solid much more stable than windows (and its foundations).

people just dont like macs because they dont know how to use them and today i heard people discribe them as "weird and stupid" just because they didnt know how to use them. if you can take a little time out just to learn how to use the OS basics im sure u wouldnt find it hard if you going to be doing video editing.

they have the best screens aswell so i say go for the mac, they "just work" but also so much more
 
Sirrel Squirrel said:
Based on what I've heard in this thread though, if the Mac definately can run Windows based editing programs without problems then it might be a good way to go but this of course depends if the main program you use to edit is Final Cut, if it's a PC program then I think you are better off getting a PC, it'd be helpful if we knew what you were editing so we could come up with a good spec.
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Indeed. However, having done quite a bit of spec'ing for DIY high-end rigs , it is rather tough to beat the Mac Pro's package of hardware and support, both in terms of monetary expenditure and performance. You can run Windows and its editing software on the Mac but you can't run OS X and its software on a DIY build. I think the Mac, in this situation, represents the best value for the customer. If this were a gaming rig or something similar I would not hold the same opinion.
 
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