Budget PP CS5.5 PC?

N

notharrylume

Active member
I am an amateur and aspiring narrative filmmaker and I am trying to resolve the final purchases to permit me to make short and intermediate (and eventually maybe feature) length movies.

After a lot of research I have figured out the parts I need for a DIY PC to be used for editing AVCHD (GH2) files on PP CS5.5. To edit AVHCD easily on PP I figure I need about $1500 to build a P8Z68/i7 2600k machine with a good case, power supply, ram, HDD's etc. For another $400 my teacher wife can buy me PP CS5.5 at the educators' discount. That $1900 is about what I have spent getting my camera, Nikkor lenses, Sekonic light meter, Chinese tripod, ND's, etc.

I'm able to spend that much on a computer, but I'm wondering whether my plan is "un-balanced", which is to say that the quality of editing solution is way above the quality of my acquisition gear. Am I buying a Sachtler tripod quality editing system to go with my Weifeng quality kit (not to speak of my inexperience)?

Are there more economical and reasonable editing solutiuons, or am I on the right track?
 
My question is a little different, and I probably should have stated it a little differently. ( I have studied the Adobe hardware forum in some detail).

What I guess I'm really asking is whether PP CS5.5 is the right editing solution for me, or whether there are other good editing solutions to cut AVCHD that don't require the horsepower that PP requires. If there aren't I'm reasonably confident about what I'll need to use PP.
 
What are your current specs? My i7/motherboard/Nvidia 570 card combo literally just arrived an hour ago. When the RAM gets here tomorrow, I'll rebuild my system (5-year old Q6600 home built setup). But I'm salvaging everything I can. And the only reason I got the Nvidia 570 is because of Star Wars The Old Republic :)

You can easily get away using something lesser. I mean, my current system does a decent job on AVCHD until you introduce multiple streams of 1080p footage editing a multicam wedding. I'm sure an i5 instead of an i7 will do just fine. and forgo the "k" model unless you want to overclock. I mean, an i5/Motherboard/8Gb of Ram will only set you back $400. You can get a cheaper card and use the "hack" as long as it's over something like 768Mb of RAM on it. That's only $100 or so. Can you keep your current drives? PSU? Case?
 
I have a 2600K w/16GB RAM and I hate editing AVCHD natively for large projects....It just plain sucks....I usually transcode to DNxHD instead.

You're not going to get buttery smooth AVCHD editing.

As far as choice of NLE, you can do anything in PP 5.5 and you'll never outgrow it.
 
Phil what are you using to transcode to DNxHD?

As far as an editing solution goes Harry, if you're going with Windows Premiere is probably your best bet. I tried MC6 and it runs pretty smooth, but I'm not a fan of their interface. Maybe it would take some time to get used to, but I picked up Premiere within a few hours after working in FCP for years.
 
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