Hardware for Real-Time DVX100B Editing?

[rszebras]

Our company gave me $6000 to buy a camera, etc. for compositing our animation work with video. I have a Dell Dimension 9100 with single Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz), 1 GB DDR2 533MHz SDRAM, Nvidia GeForce 6800 256MB PCI Express card, and 160GB SATA hard drive. That's it. Not a dual processor system or even dual hard drives. We have Premiere Pro 1.5 and After Effects Pro 6.5 (along with Discreet 3ds Max).

Question 1: What do I need to get my system up to real-time editing when I work with the DVX footage? Perhaps a G-RAID drive or more memory? Any suggestions would be appreciated. By the way, over the next year I can probably swing another $5000 or $6000 to upgrade my computer so I don't want to spend a lot now, as I'd rather use it for the camera, etc.

Question 2: What should I get with the camera? I know I need a good tripod. Would a matte box be a good investment? Does it increase the quality of the footage shot? What about a varizoom controller?

I'm an animation guy who is just getting into shooting video for compositing work so any suggestions or links to sites that have suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[rszebras]

Do I have any takers to give me some ideas on hardware for editing DV footage? Maybe I'm in the wrong forum? Should I go to the Adobe Premiere Pro forum? Hopefully that would be the only place someone would tell me to go. I specified my current system configuration. I already edit and burn animations using sequential jpeg files. I know I'm not at real-time in PremPro or After Effects, as I've tried video footage as sequential jpeg, avi, mpg footage. Just can't get real-time.

Here's a link to a recent animation: http://www.vmar.net/animation_sample_1.htm

I work for a forensic accident reconstruction firm and we want to develop the ability to film an accident scene, survey the site, create an animation in 3ds Max, and then composite the CG with the live footage. Any technical suggestions would be greatly appreciated.