Editing computer for HVX200

S

sodotoguwangus

Well-known member
First, let me start out by saying that I know similiar questions have been asked on this forum before. However, I feel that my question is more specific.

By december I am getting one of the new HD or HDV cams. As of right now, I am leaning strongly toward the HVX. With the new camera, I will have to purchase a new computer.

Bear in mind that I plan to use this computer for short films and independent features. Narrative projects. Also bear in mind that:

*I am a PC guy; not mac.
*I know that I want dual Dell 2405 monitors.
*I am willing to spend 4,000 on the computer system, excluding the cost of the monitors.

As I see it, I have roughly three options:

1. Build a computor from the ground up.
2. Buy an off-the-shelf computor.
3. Buy a prebuilt editing computer (turnkey solution) like the ones on B&H.

What should I do?

If the answer is build a computer from the ground up, please be specific as to all the parts I should buy (what is the best video card, best ram, best DVD burner, fastest hard drive, etc.)

thanks.
 
I think you need to decide what editing program you are going to use first. And then find out what their requirements are.

I would personally buy a good workstation. I got a Dell 670, but in hindsight, I probably would have gotten an HP xw6400 with Opteron processors.

Not that I will have any problem with editing DVC ProHD footage, but if I had a choice....
 
The new Dell Gaming PC's have incredibly good results with Premiere and Vegas, but they suck for gaming.

*shrug*

If you're going to be buying one of these cams and a high end computer, you probably won't have much money left over for Everquest 2 anyway.

;-)

But yeah, definitely try to go with a dual core proc.

Alienware and Falcon both make extremely good computers, but they're up in the price. For 4000 dollars, get a Dell XPS, or build it yourself.

Probably building it yourself is the best bet.
 
Building it yourself will definitely get you the best bang for your buck, but you better know exactly what you're doing.

Check out www.hdforindies.com for info on system specs.
And www.newegg.com for computer parts.

I have a pretty fast computer that I'm sure could handle 720p at least, but I did some research on the Decklink HD capture card and I'm not sure it's compatible with my system... so make sure you do your homework before you buy anything.
 
definatly build it yourself, you could probably save 1k or 2 doing so. Your only priority will be good, fast, and stable hard drives. If i shoot HD i will definatly shoot for the 10k rpm drives
 
Yeah. Building it yourself, don't you DARE try to skimp out for a few bucks.

Every dollar you 'save' is another proverbial fork in your eye down the road.

Stick to only the highest quality parts.

Maxtor Diamondmax or Hitachi harddrives only, at least from my experience.

Whatever you do, don't touch samsung... anything. Samsung is garbage.
 
You might want to keep in mind that the FCC has mandated HD content protection. My understanding is my former employer will only support HDCP in the Windows Vista OS NOT XP. HDCP is where the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Player authenicates that the monitor/HDTV is HDCP enabled if yes a HD signal is sent if NO a D+SD signal is sent to MOnitor. Many monitors and HDTVs are not HDCP ready. No PC I'm aware of is HDCP ready from a hardware standpoint. While you can edit HD without HDCP you probably will not be able to view commercial HD-DVD/Blu-Ray on your new (expensive) computer and monitor. HDMI is the best choice for a new monitor although DVI-HDCP will work.
 
NEVER USE LACIE OR MAXTOR DRIVES - seagate, IBM/Hitachi/Western Digital - they all have 3+ year warranties. Run RAID 5 - that way if a drive fails (and it eventually will) you will not lose data. Be sure your motherboard (in whatever computer you do) has PCI-X 133Mhz slots - important for HD & Storage cards.

As soon as HD content protection is implemented, Microsoft will probably make an update for windows media player to handle it. Something tells me that not being able to view HD on a mac or pc will get old very quickly.
 
Which way you go kind of depends on your experience and preferences. If you are comfortable with building a PC yourself, that will give you the most flexibility. However, if you haven't built a machine before or are a bit unsure about it, you may want to get a prebuilt machine.

From my experience, the area that needs the most attention is the storage. Most off the shelf PCs (even high end ones) need to be augmented with a more capable storage system for NLE use. You should consider a separate SATA RAID store for your editing (keep the OS on a different drive). Drives that have higher sustained throughput and low latency access will help to keep things snappy.

A good 256Mb graphics card (either Nvidia or ATI) will do fine although you should make sure whichever one you choose doesn't suffer a large performance hit in a dual headed set up. Make sure you get plenty of RAM (2Gb or more).

P.S. I have had good experiences with both Lacie and Samsung so just goes to show that experiences will vary.
 
soarprod said:
As soon as HD content protection is implemented, Microsoft will probably make an update for windows media player to handle it. Something tells me that not being able to view HD on a mac or pc will get old very quickly.
Click to expand...

MS has said the update for HDCP is Windows VISTA the replacement for XP. I used to work for MS how do you think Bill, Steve & Paul got so rich? The update you speak of is BUY VI$TA and (big "and") a computer that will run it. BTW being MS they are adding their own layer of video content protect as well as HDCP to VI$TA. I could go off on a rant about the odds of Vista 1.0 being unstable but that's another thread.

At least MS is talking about and has public plans for the HDCP bomb the FCC dropped on July 1st, 2005. Apple.com has zero results for a search on HDCP.

Just to make matters worse for indies the license to protect your content with HDCP is a modest(sic) $50,000.
 
>>NEVER USE LACIE OR MAXTOR DRIVES <<

Amen! I used a LaCie drive for my feature, and it died right before I could make my final changes to the picture and sound. I went on the net and found that other people have had problems with these drives as well.
 
I only buy Seagate drives. 300GB drives can be found on sale for around $100 after rebates even $40 to $50 more for pre rebate price (1 per address) is a real bargain. Newegg.com has USB/Firewire enclosure for $25-$35. Beware Serial ATA in an external enclosure is $75 bucks from a vendor who I won't post as they are bad.
 
first find out what NLE, then what camera. HDV is tougher on the CPU, while DVCProHD needs more storage.
different NLEs have different demands: like Avid Liquid needs certain graphicscards to actually do all the realtimeeffects as the grafx are doing all the work instead of the CPU etc.

IMO, and i have many computers out as videoservers that run 24/7, it does not matter what harddrives you use, as long as you cool them! i always have a fan right in front of all my disks. temperature is your biggest enemy in a highend system. Seagate are good for sure, WD is overpriced IMO, i had success with Samsung, too. but my favourite is the Diamondmax in price/value and reliability.

make sure you have a topnotch mainboard. the mainboard is where it all comes together and a proven board with adult BIOS (never get the newest bang and whistles!) will prevent most problems. I have P4800S from Asus, and it is rocksolid.

my last advice: do not buy it, but build it. it will not only save 20%, but also will allow you to find the reason for a problem once they accur.

my webserver was built in 1997 and it runs since then! almost nonstop. ASUS mainboard. i changed harddisk 2,5 years ago, because the 20GB was too small, but the Maxtor runs since July 2003.....
 
This is the place to go for inexpensive external SATA storage hence the need for PCI-X 133mhz http://www.macgurus.com/info/storehome.php
You can also just get one of their kits and do your own drives. This setup is good for Mac/PC with whatever computer you get. The nice thing about external storage, is you dont have to worry about cooling your drives in your case and you can turn off the external drives if you want your setup to be quieter for sound recoring and such. On one of my workstations, I run the zalman reserator 1+ liquid cooling system and my system runs at 17db in a closet. When I close the closet door, silence :)
 
To get back to the subject, remember that you're going to need the DV100 (DVCProHD) codec. So far (as far as I can determine), this doesn't exist on Windows, except in two places:

1. Avid (but it's only a QuickTime codec, and it's incompatible with Apple's)
2. Canopus (as part of their hardware system)

Barry referred to a Matrox AVI codec a while back, but I can't remember whether that was HD. So far it refuses to install, claiming a conflict with Matrox's own DigiUtils software.

Hopefully Panasonic will release an AVI codec along with the HVX.
 
The Canopus option is a sweet one, but Matrox has the AXIO that really brings options to the pro table - uncompressed 10bit HD & DVCproHD. It is expensive tho - ~$22K but that includes everything - storage, system, setup.
 
From all that I can tell, Panasonic will not be releasing an AVI codec.

The Matrox codec is for DV50, not for DV100.

The Avid codec is different from Apple's, and delivers different results (Apple's seems to exhibit a slight color shift, and an overall softer but less noisy image; Avid's seems sharper/crisper but with more mosquito noise). But you could almost certainly use the Avid codec to decode an Apple-encoded .mov, I would think.
 
Barry_Green said:
From all that I can tell, Panasonic will not be releasing an AVI codec.
Click to expand...

Why? How could this not be in the best interest of Panasonic to make it easy to edit on the PC with DVCPRO 50/100? Not that Panasonic is alone in this behavior regarding their 'wares...

...Years ago I was beta testing a hardware capture card for the PC that basically worked liked the DV/firewire model, only with HDCAM and the Sony deck equipped with an optional output/input card. The raw HDCAM codec is pretty efficient, and only required approx the same bandwidth to digitize as uncompressed SD. Sony wanted a frickkin fortune (4 grand) per license per capture card for the codec, and so the product eventually failed.

During this period the company was also pursuing Panasonic to include the D5 codec and got absolutely nowhere with them after a year of trying. This was NOT a small company, and had good standing in the NLE community.

Bottom line, are these companies selling hardware or software? If you want to push hardware, and intend to hawk an "IT" model for the future, at least make it EASY for those willing to buy into your scheme and offer your codec to developers on both platforms...

Okay, rant off...

Jim Arthurs
 
Barry_Green said:
The Avid codec is different from Apple's, and delivers different results (Apple's seems to exhibit a slight color shift, and an overall softer but less noisy image; Avid's seems sharper/crisper but with more mosquito noise). But you could almost certainly use the Avid codec to decode an Apple-encoded .mov, I would think.
Click to expand...
I was not aware of this. Of course, I am sure that both DV50 codecs will look better then any standard DV codec, I was wondering which looks better overall, Apple's or Avid's? I know this is subjective, but there has to be one that shines a bit brighter then the other?
 
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