New System for Video Editing, etc (AVCHD)

K

Kiri

Active member
Hi, I was wondering if I could ask some advice about getting a new desktop system primarily geared towards video editing and graphic design.
Specifically I would like a system that can handle editing AVCHD files smoothly (like the ones from the panasonic GH1) and is powerful enough to work with software like After FX, Vegas, etc.


One other important piece of information is that I live in Japan, so the systems available here are likely to be available in slightly different configurations than those in other countries. Prices will also be a bit different I guess..

My budget is quite flexible, but I am aiming for around 100,000yen (US$1000).



From my initial research I am considering 3 options at the moment, but am open to others.
1) Dell Studio XPS
2) HP Pavilion Desktop PC e9190jp/CT
3) Custom built system (have never attempted this before)

Here are the specs that are available for these in Japan:
Dell XPS
Intel i7-920 (2.66GHz, 8MB L3 Cache)
6GB(1GB x 6) DDR3-SDRAM
500GB SATA HDD (7200)
DVD super multi drive
ATI Radeon(TM) HD 4350 512MB (DVI/HDMI/VGA)


HP Pavilion Desktop PC e9190jp/CT
Core™i7-920
6GB DDR3 (1066MHz,3DIMM)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT220(1GB)
320GB (SATA, 7,200rpm)
DVD super multi drive



Both systems are roughly the same price (approx US$1000), but the HP seems to have more and better priced upgrade options (Nvidia GTS250 +$120, 2x640GB raid HDs +$100)
As such I am leaning more towards the HP at this stage.
What do you think?

Are those kind of system specs suitable for video editing etc? Are there any parts which I should consider upgrading (or downgrading)?

Also, are the video cards in these systems suitable for video editing? And what kind of hard drive setup would you recommend?

Thank you for your help
 
Which OS? There's really no point in having more than 4GB of RAM if you're on a 32-bit system like XP.

I would go with a custom system if you can and find someone to put it together for you. It's really not that hard, you can probably get a lot more bang for you buck that way. I would ditch the gamer graphic card and go with a dedicated card like the Nvidia Quadro line and have separate HDD for your OS and raw file.
 
If he's looking at prebuilt I'm sure it's Vista 64-bit. I agree with the video card comment. Since this is a PC, I'm going to guess there's a decent chance you use Adobe. CS4 support video card acceleration now, and their website has a list of recommended cards. Gamer cards and workstation cards are a bit different. It really depends on how dedicated to editing you want the system to be.

Personally, I tend to look at clock speed of processors more than cores and things of that nature. Video rendering doesn't always come out as a very multithreaded job. Hard drives in a RAID arrangement are very nice to have, so if you're set on these systems I'd probably go for that if it's still in budget. In reality I'd put it together myself, since that's what I've always done, and I also recommend a custom build if possible. A lot of times you can save and get a more suitable system doing that. Sometimes you don't, but usually in my experience. Again, I don't know if that would actually be an option for you.

Either of these should be decent, especially with a workstation graphics card. Sorry that this post wasn't actually very helpful.
 
Thank you for the replies. After a bit of research, I think I will take your advice and try to build my own custom system.

In regards to video cards, I noticed that the Quadro cards are quite expensive. How exactly do they differ from the cheaper gaming orientated cards? I'm just getting into video, so I'm not really sure what level of "pro" I need from my video card.

Also, what kind of hard drive set up would you recommend? Would something like 2x 7200rpm drives RAIDed together be a good move? Is it worth having another separate drive just for the OS?

I'm planning to use windows 7 by the way.

Thanks again
 
Quadro card uses the exact same chipset as many of the Nvidia gaming card, the difference is the driver. Their drivers are written specifically for video processing application such as 3d graphic design and lately have been optimized for many NLE as well.

And it's important to have a drive just for the OS to keep your main driver from becoming clutter which can result in system slow down and instabilities.
 
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