Rookie needs help with editing software and hardware

L

loafer

New member
Hey all,

I'm new here, been using DVXs for about a year, and just got my very own last week.

Now I'm hoping to buy some kind of editing software for my computer so I can edit at on my desktop at home. I trained on AVID and I can pull off the basics, but I know it's quite expensive. I basically just want to put together simple news stories and maybe 10-15 documentary type things, but nothing super technical--basic news cuts will suffice.

Basically, since I'm still learning to be a techie, I don't know what kind of hardware and software would be best for me.

For example...what software should I be looking at? Premiere? Premiere Pro?? Something else??? (I have a PC with about 50GB of free HD space at the moment)

How much hard drive space will I probably need to make things move smoothly??

Will I need to buy a firewire, etc.? Where online should I buy this stuff? How much money am I looking at in total?

I know this is all second nature to you guys, but any help (or guidance to a webpage where this is all laid out) would be much obliged!

Thanks, guys.
 
Im going to try to keep this simple for ya.

As far as computer specs goes:

Fast CPU. The faster the better.
At least 512 of ram. The more the better.
Good video card.
Get a dedicated harddrive for your video clips. you can get a 200 gig for less than 100bucks.
Firewire card. 20bucks
Sound is always good.

Programs:

Adobe video bundle can run for about $500 bucks(student version).
I'd go with Premiere pro, its simple and will do everything you need it to do.

I guess thats pretty much all you need. I hope I'm not leaving anything out.
 
Ditto to what BLUESPIDER said, but I'd go with at least 1GB of RAM, ESPECIALLY if you're going to even consider programs like Premiere or Avid. I've tried both, and they both appeared to be system resource pigs. If you want a program that can work on the least of a system, I'd download the trial version of Vegas 6 and see what you think. From my experience, it will run on WAY less of a system than any of the others, yet can do everything if not more than the others. Coming from Avid it could be odd, but for start up editors it's been proven (by Vegas users at least) to be the most user friendly & intuitive.

Last note: make sure that if you get a FAST CPU or a lot of memory, or whatever, that you've got a mother board that will truly support it all. Many times people will get a smoken CPU or something else, only to have it bottle necked anyway by a slow hard drive, mother board, etc. In other words, the chain is only as strong as the weakest link. You want things to balance to operate the most efficiently.
 
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