Processor? Or Video Card?

M

Mettsaphor

Member
Hello everyone!

I'm a proud new owner of a 7D! And I love it! The only drawback is I have lagging video when it comes to editing :( I have a PC, using CS4, and a trial version of NeoScene. (Which seems to have helped slightly but not enough) XFX GeForce 8800GT 256MB PCIE DDR3 620MHz Dual DVI Video Card, and an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q9550 @2.83GHz, 2.83GHz, 2.93GB of RAM. (im not really a computer guy so you'll have to bare with me ;) Okay heres my question...

Do I need to get a new Processor (i7 or i5) or a new Video card(Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB) to fix this lagging problem??

Thanks so much!!

-Christopher
 
Thanks Perrone, thats what i was worried about :/ do you have any suggestions as to which processor and video card I should get? is the i5 good enough? or do i need something like the i7 920?

Thanks!
 
I'll let the experts chime in on that. But I have a dual core in my laptop (along with an Nvidia Quadro card) and I know I'd really be looking for something faster on a primary machine. The video card should have at least 1GB of RAM on it these days. I think most of the higher spec apps are requesting that.
 
What kind of hard-drive are you using to store your video? It's not the same one as the Boot Drive, right? Does your computer have eSata or USB3? If so, you should be using an external eSata or USB3 drive. If you are using USB2 or storing the video on the same drive as the OS, then that could be a big part of the problem. If your computer only has USB2, you should buy a USB3 expansion card.

Also, I am very confused about your 2.93 GB of RAM number. RAM should be an even number of GB, like 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. You should have at least 4GB of RAM.

Are you sure that isn't how much hard-drive space you have left? If it is hard-drive space, you need to get some more.
 
Fahad- I was suppsoe to have XP professional, but as I just checked my system and it says i have XP Home edtion :( do I need to upgrade to professional?

agcohn- My C Drive is a 250GB Seagate barracudua 7200rpm stata3.0Gb/s hard drive, and my D, E, and F drives are all 320GB westren digital caviar 7200rpm sata3.0gb/s 16mb hard drives. (Im just copying what is on my recepit :) and i store my video amongst the D E and F drives. I must be honest, I do not know if it has a eSata or USB3 :( it says I have a SIIG 3 port 1394 firewire PCI adapter w/ 1 INT & 2 EXT ports ( I dont know if that helps? Like I said, I'm pretty computer illiterate haha.) I know I have two USB ports on the front and two on the back of the tower, just dont know what kind they are. As far as the RAM goes, I know it was originally 2GBs, then about 2 years ago I had them install another gig. But when I look on the computer at the specs it says 2.93 GBs. (maybe the cheated me out of .07! haha. would 4 gigs be enough to make it run smoothly? And my hard drives are almost all empty.

Thanks again guys!
 
Mettsaphor said:
Fahad- I was suppsoe to have XP professional, but as I just checked my system and it says i have XP Home edtion :( do I need to upgrade to professional?

agcohn- My C Drive is a 250GB Seagate barracudua 7200rpm stata3.0Gb/s hard drive, and my D, E, and F drives are all 320GB westren digital caviar 7200rpm sata3.0gb/s 16mb hard drives. (Im just copying what is on my recepit :) and i store my video amongst the D E and F drives. I must be honest, I do not know if it has a eSata or USB3 :( it says I have a SIIG 3 port 1394 firewire PCI adapter w/ 1 INT & 2 EXT ports ( I dont know if that helps? Like I said, I'm pretty computer illiterate haha.) I know I have two USB ports on the front and two on the back of the tower, just dont know what kind they are. As far as the RAM goes, I know it was originally 2GBs, then about 2 years ago I had them install another gig. But when I look on the computer at the specs it says 2.93 GBs. (maybe the cheated me out of .07! haha. would 4 gigs be enough to make it run smoothly? And my hard drives are almost all empty.

Thanks again guys!
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If you know that it has 3GB of RAM, then it must be your OS that is limited to showing 2.93GB. You would probably have to upgrade to a 64-bit OS in order to get use out of more RAM.


Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 Minimum System Requirements For Windows:
Operating System: Windows XP SP2 (SP 3 recommended) or Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (certified for 32-bit Windows XP and 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista)
CPU: 2GHz or faster processor for DV; 3.4GHz for HDV; dual 2.8GHz for HD*
MEmory: 2GB of RAM
Hard Disk: 10GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on flash-based storage devices)
Graphics: 1,280×900 display with OpenGL 2.0–compatible graphics card
Dedicated 7200 RPM hard drive for DV and HDV editing; striped disk array storage (RAID 0) for HD; SCSI disk subsystem preferred
For SD/HD workflows, an Adobe-certified card for capture and export to tape
OHCI-compatible IEEE 1394 port for DV and HDV capture, export to tape, and transmit to DV device
DVD-ROM drive (DVD+-R burner required for DVD creation)
Blu-ray burner required for Blu-ray disc creation
Microsoft Windows Driver Model– or ASIO-compatible sound card
QuickTime 7.4.5 software required to use QuickTime features


I think the big question here is the "striped disk array storage (RAID 0) for HD" requirement. If you don't have your extra Hard-Drives in a RAID 0 configuration, that could be the problem. There might be a way to create a software RAID in XP, but I don't know if there is. If you do that though, you definitely need to buy an external hard-drive for back-up, because while RAID 0 can help increase speed, it also leaves you at increased risk for losing data from drive failure.

This is what an eSata port looks like:
zrtn_003pcac7138_tn.jpg


If you computer has that, then you could buy some like a G-Raid drive, which would definitely be fast enough for HD video editing.
 
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Fahad- Sorry, Yes it is only a 32-bit. Do you think I could just up-grade from XP Home to Windows 7 64-bit?

agcohn- I was looking at my original paper work on the computer and I had told them I wanted a RAID-0 configuration. But looking back at the papers it does not say weather or not they did this :/ Also I checked the back of my tower again and DID find a port that is red and says eSATA next to it and looks similar to the picture you sent. So does that mean I should look into getting a G-Raid drive? I mean, I'd hate to have 3-320GB hard drives that arent being used! Do you think it would work fine if I was to have the hard drives set up in a RAID-0 configuration and up-grade my OS to a 64-bit with like 8GBs of RAM annnd get a new video card? (such as a Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB. Or is there something better?)


Thanks for helping me out guys!
 
Mettsaphor said:
Fahad- Sorry, Yes it is only a 32-bit. Do you think I could just up-grade from XP Home to Windows 7 64-bit?

agcohn- I was looking at my original paper work on the computer and I had told them I wanted a RAID-0 configuration. But looking back at the papers it does not say weather or not they did this :/ Also I checked the back of my tower again and DID find a port that is red and says eSATA next to it and looks similar to the picture you sent. So does that mean I should look into getting a G-Raid drive? I mean, I'd hate to have 3-320GB hard drives that arent being used! Do you think it would work fine if I was to have the hard drives set up in a RAID-0 configuration and up-grade my OS to a 64-bit with like 8GBs of RAM annnd get a new video card? (such as a Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB. Or is there something better?)


Thanks for helping me out guys!
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I would believe that that would work fine, but I am not a computer expert.

Do you have somewhere you can take the computer to find out if the Hard-drives are set up correctly? The thing is I'm not sure that XP Home supports software RAID, so I believe that you would have to have a RAID card in order for the internal drives to be Raid 0.

Can you call the people who built the computer to find out?

Also, if you're buying a new graphics card, you should make sure that it's one of the ones that supports the CS5 graphics acceleration in case you ever want to upgrade to CS5.
 
agcohn said:
I would believe that that would work fine, but I am not a computer expert.

Do you have somewhere you can take the computer to find out if the Hard-drives are set up correctly? The thing is I'm not sure that XP Home supports software RAID, so I believe that you would have to have a RAID card in order for the internal drives to be Raid 0.

Can you call the people who built the computer to find out?

Also, if you're buying a new graphics card, you should make sure that it's one of the ones that supports the CS5 graphics acceleration in case you ever want to upgrade to CS5.
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Thanks! I have contacted the computer place but they are under new ownership. Therefore tomorrow I was told to bring it in so they could take a look at it for me. I hope that it is a RAID-0 set up, if not I hope that they can set it up as one! I will be upgrading to windows 7 (64-bit) and I will get about 8GBs of RAM, Along with a GeFore GTX 470. It says that it is 1.28GBs and CS5 says that it supports it for GPU Acceleration. (Thanks again for the heads up on that!)

I will post back here tomorrow and let you guys know how it went!

Fingers crossed,
-Chris
 
Hello again!

So I just got my computer back today and after abit of an overhaul I now have Windows 7 (64-bit) 8GB of RAM, and a nVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 graphics card (1.28GB/s) as well as had my 3 320GB hard drives set up in a RAID-0, and the video playback seems alot smoother as well as render times and exporting times! I just set my reference monitor to draft quality (which isnt all that bad) and i convert the clips using neo scene to .AVI files and once i do that i can cut, color corect etc. with no lagging or rendering needed! BUT however I have now come upon a new problem! I have seriously tried almost EVERY export settings to try and get clean 1080p movies but they all end up choppy upon export!

What settings should I use for export to get the best quality??(im using Adobe Media Encoder)

Thanks guys!!
 
2 questions

1. Why did you set up your 3 drives as RAID-0? Are you working with uncompressed footage? I play back 1080p full frame over USB with a 5400 RPM external drive. No problem. If the RAID array is just scratch space that's cool. But if you're putting things there you actually care about (like source files) then you might want to re-think that approach.

2. Can you give us any idea of what settings you are using that look good, but are choppy? You could be exporting uncompressed for all we know.
 
PerroneFord said:
2 questions

1. Why did you set up your 3 drives as RAID-0? Are you working with uncompressed footage? I play back 1080p full frame over USB with a 5400 RPM external drive. No problem. If the RAID array is just scratch space that's cool. But if you're putting things there you actually care about (like source files) then you might want to re-think that approach.

2. Can you give us any idea of what settings you are using that look good, but are choppy? You could be exporting uncompressed for all we know.
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Hey Perrone,
Yes Im basicly using it as a scratch. I was told it would help with speed abit. But i back up all my original files on a 1.5TB external hard drive just in case :)

well my settings ive tried have been most of the pre sets in AME under the H.264 format. such as "1440x1080p 23.976" etc. The only one I have got to work thus far has been under the windows media format on the preset "HDTV 1080p 24 High Quality 5.1" but it seems to give me alot more artifacts in it than the others. However it does play back smoothly :/ Do you think that it may be because i took the original .MOV files and converted them into .AVI files in NeoScene and then it wouldnt recongize the H.264 settings because its now and ".AVI?" Im really lost here :(

What settings do you use for exporting in 1080?

Thanks I really appreciate it!
 
Hey man,

What about exporting it to an mp4 with h2.64 compression with a bit rate about 9000-1000? That should leave you with a fairly small, high quality exported file... Try it :)
(I do that with FCP, but I assume Premiere has similar export options)
 
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