What is a good computer (and card) to edit gh13 footage on?

Futchibon

Futchibon

Well-known member
Hi guys,

I've just upgraded from a dvx to a gh13, and need to get a new computer.:cheesy:

Could people please give me their recommendations?
:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

eg. cards, whether or not I should get cs5 with Mercury Playback Engine, how important having multiple fast drives is, etc...:cheesy:

Feel free to list your specs and any other suggestions. Am proably looking at an i7, have been looking into the hack for cs5 unsupported Nvidia cardsa as well, but it's confusing as to which to buy...:crybaby::zombie_smiley:

Is is better to edit native footage or is transcoded footage better for grading?:Drogar-Mark-01(DBG)

Would these be good options?:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=350335092466&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/i7-870-Core-...001054?pt=AU_comp_dekstop&hash=item43a17afe1e

THANK YOU:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
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multiple fast drives will remove bottleneck on disk operations, but that need also depend how many time you consume for rendering of your videos.
if video processing is occasional, then possible 10 minutes addition to render time will no matter, if that is your work - then you that 10 minutes multiplies and multiple hard drives will be vital need .

system = SSD hard drive
footages = separate drive(s)
sources = separate drive
project and rendered files = separate drive
 
Futchibon said:
Is is better to edit native footage or is transcoded footage better for grading?:Drogar-Mark-01(DBG)

Would these be good options?:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=350335092466&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/i7-870-Core-...001054?pt=AU_comp_dekstop&hash=item43a17afe1e
Click to expand...
I pondered the same issues before ordering the following HPE390T workstation:

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
CPU: Intel i7-970 six-core 3.2GHz
RAM: 10GB DDR3-1066MHz SDRAM
HDD: 1.5TB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s
Video: 1.8GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 260
Power: 450 watts

In addition, I ordered two Force 60GB Solid State Drives from Corsair:

http://www.corsair.com/products/ssd_force/default.aspx

I'm planning on plugging the SSD's into a built-in RAID-0 driver on the motherboard of the HP workstation. This should double the throughput of the combined 120GB drive, which I'll use as a 500MB/sec work disk for video rendering and Windows/Photoshop virtual memory buffers.

I also read about the Adobe Premiere CS5/Nvidia hack from a user who successfully enabled an Nvidia GTX 260 video card for use with the Mercury Playback Engine. That should take care of AVCHD playback, though that's hardly the only bottleneck in video post-processing.

http://blog.krama.tv/hacking-adobe-premiere-cs5-to-enable-more-nvidia-cuda-cards/

Most of the work I do is in After Effects, which doesn't appear to benefit that much from MPE. I'm leaning towards transcoding both AVCHD and MJPEG to Cineform, which has been highly parallelized for multi-core Intel chips and is cross-compatible with Adobe and Final Cut:

http://www.cineform.com/neoscene/features.php

For high quality color grading, it's essential to work in at least a 10-bit, 422 color space. You can do this with GH1 AVCHD and MJPEG files within Adobe CS5, but if you then render back to a file format with a narrower color space, you will lose the uncompressed high-quality version that CS5 produced in RAM. If you transcode to Cineform up front, you can render intermediate results back to file storage at any time without significant quality loss.

The system should arrive in a couple weeks, I'll post back on how well it performs.
 
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DaLiV said:
multiple fast drives will remove bottleneck on disk operations, but that need also depend how many time you consume for rendering of your videos.
if video processing is occasional, then possible 10 minutes addition to render time will no matter, if that is your work - then you that 10 minutes multiplies and multiple hard drives will be vital need .

system = SSD hard drive
footages = separate drive(s)
sources = separate drive
project and rendered files = separate drive
Click to expand...

And, if you can, each "Drive" should actually be a few in RAID 0...also backup...what's that, RAID 10?

Anyway, I would advise saving your money and going AMD over intel. In terms of price vs performance you're much better off until you hit the very very very high end. You should probably be building the machine rather than buying it prebuilt.
 
raid10 will be slower than raid-5 on the same 4 disks, but redundancy approximatelly the same.
AMD over intel - you does not save money, as the same priced CPU have similar computing power (in one applications wins one cpu in another - second) /take in account only current technologies, not unselled stock for comparision/. (amd possible will be lower for some $, but price difference will not be so significant , howewer main application written for intel based cpu-s)

About prebuilt or not - agree with previous speaker - best solution only own configured.
 
I just put together a new system, and I must say that Adobe CS5 has been pretty rock solid and the Mecury Playback is usually everything it's cracked up to be.

Intel i7 950
12 GB RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS
Nvidia GTX 950
Hacked to work with CS5

I'm pretty happy with the system. I've been doing a lot of compositing in After Effects and bringing it into Premiere and they link pretty seamlessly.
 
I find that Adobe CS5 with a supported (formerly hackable) graphics card runs fine on my older Intel Q9450 Quad core system with 8GB of RAM. (Of course the i7s will be faster but they are certainly not required.) I use a GTX 470 which was hackable but is now officially supported with the recent 5.0.2 update.

+1 on all of DaLiVs's recommendations (plus SSDs wherever possible)

I would go for something expandable - a case that has plenty of space and good cooling plus add a powerful PSU if you go for one of the FERMI cards.
 
don't base videocard used in videoediting on benchmark, but firstly on application that planned to use. in current topic mentioned CS5 adobe, so nvidia will be preferable (as persist support of "cuda" technology), check list of supported cards, and than can search thru needed price/performance values (and don't forget -different manufacturer produce same cards with different performance /for example if memory bus width is halfed - performance will be lower, but price may be still high as other concurents /).
 
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Anyone has a GTX 260 for CS5? How is it treating you?

Planning to get that card thinking if that is sufficient enough for medium editing like
color correction and about 4 layers of 1080p footage.

I can shell out for GTX 470 but I want to save money if there is not much difference.
 
Interesting the focus on seperate drives and SSD's, I thought the same thing but I am not sure this is needed. I have 3 OCZ Vertex SSD's raided for my source files, and output to a Raid 10 eSATA disk. Even with this immense disk bandwidth my bottleneck IS, and ALWAYS has been my CPU. Even with an overclocked quad-core, it is at 100% usage and my hard drive is NEVER a bottleneck. I am using sony vegas and outputting to 24FPS/720P wmv files. Anyone else agree that CPU power should be the priority over hard disks and/or Ram?
 
Correct. HD is not a bottleneck.

Vegas = CPU intensive
Premiere CS5 = GPU intensive


I have no problem editing in vegas 9 with my Core i7 @ 4.2 Ghz(overclocked),
4GB DDR3 ram, Intel X25 Gen2, using a built-in crappy video card.

In vegas I can do 6 layers with color correction and some transition effects without a hitch.
These are raw AVCHD dropped directly to the timeline. I can see that the 8 threads are running
at the same time but not reaching 100% maybe about 70% but it fluctuates.

Since I got interested into After Effects now it is slow like a 486DX computer.
I like using after effects so I need to shell out for more rams and upgrade my video card.
I'm getting to like Premire Pro too since I can edit in after effect and premiere at the same time.
 
Definitely the case with Edius. In order of priority;
1. CPU
2. Drive storage speed
3. RAM

sdinet said:
Interesting the focus on seperate drives and SSD's, I thought the same thing but I am not sure this is needed. I have 3 OCZ Vertex SSD's raided for my source files, and output to a Raid 10 eSATA disk. Even with this immense disk bandwidth my bottleneck IS, and ALWAYS has been my CPU. Even with an overclocked quad-core, it is at 100% usage and my hard drive is NEVER a bottleneck. I am using sony vegas and outputting to 24FPS/720P wmv files. Anyone else agree that CPU power should be the priority over hard disks and/or Ram?
Click to expand...
 
Thanks a lot for the suggestions guys! Any other advice would be greatly appreciated.

@Ipowell: Thanks for the detailed response! Please let us know how your system performs.

@dvxhutch: Thanks for posting those charts, very intersting!

@ DaLiV : Thanks for your suggestions! I guess I'm not sure whether to get a GT240, or GTX 285/460/470.
It was intersting to see the 460 performs better than the 285 (I thought they were about the same), while the 470 is a cut above.

But I don't know if those top-end cards would be overkill? Simon Hoffer uses a gt240 in an i7860 with 8GB RAM and can have five video clips picture-in-picture no problems, while others with the 240 and similar setup have issues where their computer crashes or lags.

It's all quite confusing ;(
 
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