System Requirements For HD Editing
 

So I'm thinning about building a new system and what should look for when editing HD movies?

Quad Core, How much ram, and should I use a 64bit OS?

What do you guy's think?

As big as your budget can afford. As much ram as your os will support. As big of a video card as you can afford. :2 cents: Btw they do have videocards that take over part of the video encoding processing now. Look into the new Nvidia cards and software that handles that. Its currently on my upgrade "list".

until they come back with a 64bit nle its a waste.

And know in two weeks it will all be outdated and you could have gotten alot cheaper... :Oh crap:mad:

Cost of doing biz hehe. Ya and it sucks to have to upgrade so often to keep up. :winkwink:

quad core, 8gb ram

Depends on the NLE you're using too. Make sure components are compatible. PC or Mac?

Also what type of HD are you planning on working with? HDV vs. uncompressed is going to make a huge difference in cost. What's your workflow going to be? Straight to the net, to tape (HDV/DV, DVCPRO HD, etc....)?

You can put together a rig to edit HDV on the lower end for less than a grand or you can go all the way up to $xx,xxx or more.....

Max memory on your motherboard is going to be the limiting factor, Sticky. XP and Vista 64 will support 128gb of memory, but most motherboards support 8gb maximum - until you get up into the server variety (Then the maximum is 16gb and 32gb) which increases cost in several other respects as well as requiring registered ECC memory.

So the short answer is mostly likely going to be 8gb of memory, and a 64 bit OS, and the Q9450 processor which can be found for $299.

Video card doesn't affect rendering ability, only video playback, and a mega-high-end video card is typically a waste for this application. Anything modern in the $300 range is going to play HD video just as good as a $700 card.

You can easily put together a very affordable HDV editing pc by purchasing or building a computer with a Core 2 Quad processor, at least 4 Gb of RAM (more may or may not be useful depending on your setup), any halfway decent video card, with some big external firewire drives and whatever kind of monitor you can afford, like perhaps a Dell 24" widescreen monitor and some software. One can really trick it out with more exotic processors and some other special components but it's not necessary to get the job done.

Thanks for the tips guys.
This is what I came up with. What do you think? any changes or negative feedback?

EVGA nForce 780i SLI Motherboard CPU Bundle - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 Processor 2.66GHz

EVGA GeForce 8800 GT Video Card - 512MB DDR3, PCI Express 2.0, SLI Ready, (Dual Link) Dual DVI, HDTV, Video Card

And 4 gigs of ram if I go Xp or 8 gig?s if I decide to go with vista 64 bit

If ya wait a few months Nehalem will be out (8 core cpu). But what you listed isn't bad at all. Make sure you get a decent power supply to run it, antec, enermax, or pcpower & cooling.

Nothing less than Quad-Core/ 4 gigs ram. winXP

A Mac is what you need

In the real world, the pros only use MAC:thumbsup

Giggles.... I remember when people told me that only macs should be used in recording studios too. Mac Mac Mac Mac



http://www.russellshaw.net/photogallery/photos/016.jpg

Not so much...

32 Bit OS can only handle so much ram...

My 32 bit machines even with some backend tags (updated versions of the old /3gb switch) Your renders will never use over 2gbs of ram effectively. A 64 bit machine that can multi process will handle everything much cleaner.

Most of my editing is done on a quadcore with 8 gbs ram, running vista 64, with dual nvidia gfx... I'm pretty proud of my little setup and how much it handles for me.

I hate to say it but the mac does the job, I use a core 2 quad with 8GB ram and a x1650 and the load it about 80% stupid ass mac book pro uses about 60% and only has 4GB and a core 2 duo

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3374

the video card encoding isn't quite there yet but should be humming in another 6mnths

4Gb is the addressable memory limit in 32bit OS's

Personally I use Vista SP1 with 4Gb and a Q6600. Since video cards won't help you YET I would just get a radeon HD card which has real nice DECODER for playback acceleration. (I bought a $70 one since I don't really ever play games but watch plenty of HD content and don't want it eating my CPU.

Like others have said 8 core isn't far away so don't build your "dream" system right now. Gather core parts that you can use later on. When the Video ENcoding comes along then maybe SLI will be worth it but for now just get a real nice motherboard and a low end quad core and a massive power supply.

For hard drives I use 2 640Gb WD drives striped for max performance and I keep my "storage" on other drives.

You're right, on the truly massive edits 64bit with 8Gb RAM works extremely well. For my needs I chose 2*2Gb sticks of fast RAM to start out with and haven't felt the need to spend all that cash for 4Gb more since I have very nice memory timings on this RAM. Mine is more of an all purpose box and 64bit Vista still has some maturing to do before I want to switch. I have 64bit Ubuntu on a partition and like that... Its just going to be another year before 64bit is more mainstream.

In the Radeon HD lineup you can find the exact same video decoder chip in the $50-70 cards as you'll find in the $500 cards ;) The decoder chip is NOT the same as the GPU. Currenlty of course the video cards won't help with encoding... another 6mnths from now it will though ;) Make sure you have a hardware DECODER though for playback while encoding ;) helps a ton