Speeding things up

[Blade Borge]

Hi, My NLE is running on a somewhat slow computer, 512 ram, 80gig. I edit stuff that's usually no more than 15-20mins of footage at one time. What's the most important thing I could upgrade right now that would speed things up? Thanks in advance.

 

[TeleDan]

I'm not trying to sound flippant, but they are all important. You need a good balance between all three (CPU, memory, disk) to get good NLE performance. Beyond that, you don't give us enough info to be real specific. What NLE? What version? If you're running Premiere Pro, I would say you need at least 1 Gbyte of memory. You don't say what your CPU is but if you're adding certain effects to your clips, it bog down real quick. You don't say how full your disk is. Have you recently defragged the disk?

Depending on what your current hardware is, it may not be worth trying to upgrade it in a piecemeal fashion. By the time you're done, you may spend as much as what a new system box might cost. As much as I try to put together systems that have an upgrade path, I am continually confounded by the rate at which the industry changes to new CPU sockets, new memory designs, new I/O standards, etc.

-Dan

 

[bigteethproductions]

Agree with the above post that a lot depends on specific situations, but I'll say that each time I've gotten a new computer, I work on Mac in FCP 5.0, I always put as much memory in it as possible. In my case it is 2 GB ram for both my Imac and Powerbook.

If you buy from a non-Apple source, you can save lots of money and get the extra memory for prob. around $300 - and if you desire most likely could sell your 512 stick for a little cash as well.