What are you Computer Specifications specificaly for editing video?

Musical Memory

Musical Memory

Carbonite Member
My 7 year old laptop just went blank. The mobo is shot, it to slow for video editing anyways so I have to go to Fry's and buy a whole pile of gear to slap together a PC to edit video specifically from the GH2.

What are you guys packing when it comes to PC power?

CPU=speed, brand?

RAM=gb?

Mother Board?

Hard Drive= speed-size-raid

Monitor= size resolution?

Software= for video editing

Any advice would be great one whats hot and whats not when it comes to PC power and so on.
 
Get at least i7 intel. Big drives! 1920x1080 monitor. Software? Best is sony begas.
And please stop pirate baying. You might get trouble.
 
I'm using an AND Phenom 6core, Asus motherboard, with 8 gigs of ram, 2- one TB hard drives and Edius for editing. Edius will will edit MTS files natively (no transcoding). I can edit multicam with filters in realtime using MTS files.
 
Well I bought a pile of parts from Fry's. I wanting a Gigabit mobo but it was out of stock. I went over budget on the Asus M4A88TD-M mobo ($95.00) but I felt that 4 slots that support 16gb of high speed DDR3 ram was worth the over reach. I only bought a 2 gb ram ($35) but I'll upgrade later when the wallet has recovered. I'm not a fan of Intel and Billy Boy and I feel AMD represent better value so I got a basic AMD Athlon II x255 cpu ($65) as it supports 64bit windows 7 and I believe its good for over clocking but I'll see about that later as well.
The Asus has a built in HDMI ATI video card that supports true 1080p so I saved a few bob there. I bought a generic black case that came with a medium to small PSU of only 400 watts but it has space for 6 Hard drivers. That cost $39.99
I got a single 1tb 32mb Hitachi hard drive for $69.99 which is helluva cheap if you ask me. One basic keyboard for $17 and a wi-fi card for $12. The subtotal was $376 yet I just bought a 23 inch LG LED LCD monitor that is true 1080p on Ebay for $150 so that makes a grand total of $526 and that is about as low as I could get it.

3.1Ghz dual core processor.
1 tb hard disk
2Gb DDR3 ram ( I know it should be at least 8Gb ram)
23 monitor

software non as yet.

Basic bread and butter stuff but it a start.
 
Built a system a few weeks ago. Was going to buy a laptop then thought "why". Got a $250 Netbook for portable offloading of SD cards and stuff.

Here's the specs..

Three Hundred ATX Mid Tower Case
135mm Universal CPU Cooler
Core i7-950 3.06GHz Boxed Processor
GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 X58 ATX Motherboard
RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1 64GB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Caviar Black 1TB 7,200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive WD1002FAEX - OEM
Radeon HD 5770 IceQ Turbo 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.1 x16 Video Card
10x Internal Blu-ray Disc Rewriter- OEM
XMS3 Series 12GB DDR3-1333 (PC3-10600) CL9 Triple Channel Desktop Memory Kit (Three 4GB Memory Modules)
Professional HX650W 650W Modular Power Supply
75-in-1, 7-Slot USB 2.0 Internal Memory Card Reader & Writer - Black
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM
Dual 24" Low Profile Viewsonic Monitors
Dual Monitor Desk mount

I ordered the system from Micro Center and purchased the monitors at Frys. I priced the same exact system from Newegg and it was $350 more then Micro Center. The processor alone was $125 cheaper at Micro Center for some reason.

Total cost w/ monitors was around $1800. It hauls A$$.

I edit with Sony Vegas 10 BTW
 
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Omg that's just small cpu! Can you exchange for quad core? Codec need some power! Timeline won't play smooth. Long render! Can you exchange? Your computer is gumpy with 2 core only! If you can only have 2 core you will need cineform for $99 more money. You also need 2nd hdd. Why don't you check dell outlet, you can get i7 for $450!
 
2 cores not enough really? A quad core is like $180 I think but I believe the Asus mother board has a hack utility which allows the unlocking of addition cores. I'll see if this sucker has more cores and then decide if its up to the job.
 
Musical Memory said:
2 cores not enough really? A quad core is like $180 I think but I believe the Asus mother board has a hack utility which allows the unlocking of addition cores. I'll see if this sucker has more cores and then decide if its up to the job.
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Any time you buy a processor, you should always check the various sites for benchmark data - most of them have rendering benchmarks as well as many others to help you decide which processor is best. It's not just about the number of cores, a lot of of other factors should be considered like FSB, Cache, platform, size, etc. And AMD chips are known for being quite a bit slower than Intel, that's one of the main reasons Intel outsells AMD 10 to 1.
 
Kit Hannah said:
And AMD chips are known for being quite a bit slower than Intel, that's one of the main reasons Intel outsells AMD 10 to 1.
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The mobo supports the Phenom X6 core so I have scope for movement. I'm using the PC today and the only problem is windows XP is tardy. I'm going to install Windows 7 tonight and hope that greases its performance. I've over clocked the cores to 4Ghz each and its stable. I have a bench testing utility as well to alter all the parameters on the board.

I read the specs on your machine and what can I say but mental! Does the G Skills ram make a big difference in your opinion?
 
Musical Memory said:
I read the specs on your machine and what can I say but mental! Does the G Skills ram make a big difference in your opinion?
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Thanks, it's what I feel was th best machine without spending another grand or more.

The ram, to me, doesn't make that big of a difference. I can definitely tell having the SSD makes writing times much faster. I thought about going RAID and may still, but it's just more money.
 
Mac Pro 8 core. 4 750gb drives in raid stripe 01, pci-e SSD 250gb corsair, 12gb ram, 2 24 inch monitors
Macbook pro i7 15inch, high res glossy screen, 8gb ram. 750gb sas drive replaced the stock, coupled to a 24inch monitor if my wifes tying up my Mac Pro
Macbook pro 15inch 4gb ram, 500 gb drive (used in a pinch with imovie for screwing around on the couch, if the i7 is dead and I don't feel like slinging a cord)
iMac 22 inch Core 2 3.0, 8gb ram, 1tb drive, used in a real pinch at work if I really really have to
Mac Pro g5 (ABSOLUTE pinch machine, this is mostly a file server)
 
Asus Z8NA-D6C
2x Xeon E5620's
24GB DDR3 Ram
Geforce GTX285 1GB
2x 1TB Samsung 7200rpm RAID 0 (Video Storage)
2x 750GB WD Black RAID 0 (System)
Dual 24 inch Dell Ultra Sharp
Copy of Snow Leopard from Best Buy

I use Premiere Pro CS5 for editing, machine has been running a year and a half now without any Kernel Panics. So the ones who say Hackintosh's are not stable just dont know what they are talking about.......or just diehard apple fanboyz...:happy:
 
I run...

2.8GHz Core2 Quad (Intel)
6GB RAM
A crap load of hard drives (but a single decently spaced (500GB or higher) 7200RPM hard drive should be okay to start with)
GeForce 9800 GT GPU
800Watt Thermaltake PSU

Running Adobe CS4 package, TMPGEnc, AVISynth, etc.

I probably would of gone with an Intel processor, they seem to be the most bang for your buck now adays. Remember you can't just look at stats like Ghz.. cuz different processor architectures can have vastly different performance at the same speed.

Another thing I might concider changing when you have a little extra dough is the power supply. Alot of people overlook the power supply as trivial and I myself used to use whatever crappy one came with whatever cheap case I bought, but it can be pretty important for your computers overall health and extra insurance that it's not gonna crap out on you in the middle of a project. Nothing too fancy is that that neccessary, but something economical but still quality from a respectable/know PSU manufacturer.

Really, you don't need anything too too powerful for an entry level workstation. At least in regards to the fact that anything new and moderately powered is going to be hell of alot faster then your old rig I take it. If your like me where you've built up alot of patience studder editing on older rigs.. you won't find something less then top of the line too painful, as long as it's new and better then bottom of the line.
 
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editguy said:
If you need to move up, the Phenom X6 is a great processor.
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Currently I have an:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor on Windows XP (limited to like 4gb RAM).

Do you think this AMD x6 would be a significant upgrade? I'm thinking of relegating my current editing computer to use as a DVR and/or DAW, and building a new AMD editing PC. The price on the AMD is just too hard to pass up:

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Thuban 3.3GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo 6 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor (which I would install with Windows 7 and like 8-16gb RAM).

I use Sony Vegas, which seems to love any extra CPU power.
 
Musical Memory said:
My 7 year old laptop just went blank. The mobo is shot, it to slow for video editing anyways so I have to go to Fry's and buy a whole pile of gear to slap together a PC to edit video specifically from the GH2.

What are you guys packing when it comes to PC power?
Click to expand...

To give you solid advice, you need to give us a few more details about yourself.

1. How's the budget? What's the range in how much you can spend?

2. What NLE do you / will you use for the GH2 footage? If you want to use Adobe CS5 for example, we'll have specific recommendations for video cards that will enable CUDA.

3. How soon do you need this? If you can wait a few weeks, the new (fixed) Intel Sandy Bridge motherboards will be available.

If you can give us more information on those three fronts, we should be able to provide you with some solid advice.
 
Eximious said:
To give you solid advice, you need to give us a few more details about yourself.

1. How's the budget? What's the range in how much you can spend?
Click to expand...

Budget as little as possible. It just as to play and edit HD. I don't mind waiting for rendering. I did nonlinear editing in the late 90's and we would wait days for a 30 minute render! ;-)

Eximious said:
. What NLE do you / will you use for the GH2 footage? If you want to use Adobe CS5 for example, we'll have specific recommendations for video cards that will enable CUDA.
Click to expand...

I don't know what NLE to use. I would like to use Adobe CS5 but it is rather complicated and expensive. I just need something that can accept plugs in like Twixtor as I love the slow motion ability of that plug in! Nobody uses time codes anymore right?

Eximious said:
. How soon do you need this? If you can wait a few weeks, the new (fixed) Intel Sandy Bridge motherboards will be available.
Click to expand...

That is interesting as I read the Intel Sandy Bridge has some problems and won't be on shelfs by April but in truth I don't need that kind of processing power. I just bought and extra 4mb of RAM but it turns out Windows 7 32bit does not recognize ram above 3mb! What a nightmare!
 
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