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What card for Hi Def video editing?

Jed Shields

Jed Shields

Jed Shields

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Joined
23 Apr 2007
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1,785
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Cardiff-ish, Wales
Hi guys,

my brother in law has asked me to spec a new PC for him. It'll be used for basic stuff - Office, internet, no games but he needs to edit video stuff that will include Hi Def (he's doing a media degree). What would be the minimum spec card he'd need and what would be recommended?

Cheers,

Jed.
 
The graphics card plays almost no part in the speed of editing (for nearly all editing packages). As long as the G/C supports primary overlay and the ability to change the colour space i.e. virtually everything on the market it will be OK. Historically Matrox cards are the best for video editing.

To edit HiDef footage without dying of boredom you need to go for a Quad core processor, 2Gb of ram (4gb + 64bit OS if the editing package supports XP64/Vista64) and a separate HDD for the video (pref RAID + raptor boot disk).
 
Aha ... that takes me in a completely different direction to what I thought. Cheers. I can just go for a basic graphics card with HDMI then and put the majority of the budget towards a quad CPU and ram etc.
 
RAM - Lots!! 8GB if you can!

Also defo need Quad core. What package will he be using to edit on (just out of interest - they might have a 64 bit version --> Vista64/XP64)
 
Jed Shields said:
Aha ... that takes me in a completely different direction to what I thought. Cheers. I can just go for a basic graphics card with HDMI then and put the majority of the budget towards a quad CPU and ram etc.
Click to expand...

I'd suggest an ATI 2600

Bouncer, I don't think you'd need anymore than 4GB of RAM unless you are doing lots of work with effects packages such as After Effects.
 
4GB i agree would probably do, however if you've got £50 kicking about at the end of the shopping list i'd spend it on that above anything else
 
Processor all the way ;) about the only thing a quad is really good for ATM !
Next Raid 0 or 2 fast Harddrives (large capacity)
Memory is not so important 2GB dual channel is fine

Lastly good cooling for CPU and Drives and a good digital o/p GPU and Monitor
 
Ideally you want one fast drive with windows and apps on it, another fast drive for file storage and then a raid 0 for rendering.

2600 is a good card because it does h.264/mp4 decoding taking it away from the cpu. Guessing the 2850 does that too.
 
Put the money into the cpu. Are there boards with two CPU sockets, so you can have two x quad core CPU's?

Plus source/destination drives.
 
Jed Shields said:
Just spoke to my bro in law - he's using Avid, he's not sure the exact package name but it's the top spec one ...
Click to expand...
I'm just wondering, isn't there some aspects of video editing that can make use of a 3D card? perhaps the preview of special effects or somnething like that? I notice that in Cinebench there is an Open GL and Direct 3D test?

Easyrider would know, hes knocking about somewhere ask him to be sure.
 
I've put together a bit of a shopping list. How does this look?

2175081612_057d908b16.jpg
 
I would go for a 600w PSU in case he needs more HDD + HiDef writer. Also I would get 2*2Gb ram rather than 4*1Gb as it limits expansion and probably needs lower timings or lower overclock.

Finally you need a HSF
 
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