Video Editing compy

[kura_w_kurniku]

I'm into video editing and I want to buy a computer that will let me edit effectively. im guessing i'll need a gig of RAM and a good video card, but if ayone can help me choose the rest i'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

[bombledmonk]

It's called an Apple.

But You'd probably be best off building yourself If you want a speedy editing computer. I personally don't know of any well rated companies that specialize in that type of computer.

Things to look for.
You want the fastest hard drives you can get. 10k Western Digital Raptors would be great as a main drive.
You want the Largest HD's you can stick in there for the bulk storage. maybe 2x 250 or 300 would be suitable for a true editing machine.
A processor of AMD Athlon64 3200+ or above, OR a 3.2 Intel or above. The AMD will give you a better price/performance ratio.
At least 1GB of ram. 1 will be sufficient for most people but an extra 1GB is a worthy addition in serious video editin machines.
Any video card will do. The video card really has nothing to do with the actual editing besides displaying what you see on the screen.

[bartidog]

Your post just caught my eye and I just wanted to affirm --- you do want a decent processor (the AMD's have served me well), a fair amount of ram and as much hard disk space as you can afford. When you're transferring digitial video, well.... an 80gig hard drive barely gets you started.

If you're just getting into video editing, a couple things you'll want to do if you haven't already is to bookmark a couple of websites:
http://www.videohelp.com/
doom9.org

These are invaluable sources for information.

[PC_Fanatic]

My system:

Windows XP Pro
Pentium 4 3.0GHz
1 GB 400 MHz RAM PC3200
ATI All-In-Wonder 9600
(2) Western Digital 80 GB ATA drives
(1) Western Digital 74 GB 10000 rpm Raptor SATA drive. BLAZING !!!
LG 8X DVD +RW/-RW

That said, if you are going to be capturing video, get a fast hard drive, fast processor, and fast RAM.

If I could afford to, I'd buy another WD SATA drive, arrange them in a RAID 0 configuration. This splits the data between 2 drives, which amounts to doubling the speed (I hope).

Use a very fast drive for capture, processing & compression.

Use a very large drive, 200 GB or so, for digital video which is uncompressed. This takes roughly 1 GB PER MINUTE of video.

The system performs very well.

I'm not sure about this, but I THINK that the actual capture (uncompressed) is done by the ATI hardware, and the processing and compression are done by the CPU. The CPU load is typically about 35% when capturing.

The processing is simply removing noise from the video signal and adding any other effects (color correction, sharpness,etc.)

I'm very happy with this system, and ATI gives a multitude of options when capturing video. You have total control. You can even capture the signal uncompressed and unprocessed if you like.

[kura_w_kurniku]

thanks so much!!! now onto the buying part....

B.L.

[brutimus]

People here are talking about video cards now making a difference. But when I was heavy into digital editing, using Adobe Premiere about...3 years ago, i had a Matrox card, and it did wonders at realtime rendering. But as I said, this was a few years back, and I'm not sure what improvements they have made on the software end as far as realtime rendering. However, at the time, these cards were $1000, so yeah, pricy. If anyone knows if you can get decent realtime rendering without one of these cards, guess you should make a post in here proving me wrong. Its just something worth looking into though.

[bombledmonk]

For 2d (video and pic) editing, the video card isn't even involved in the processing, for the most part. It won't make a lick of difference (in performance) whether you have a Geforce 6800Ultra or an ATI 7000 64mb. Though image quality (outputed to the monitor) may be different, and If the machine is purely for editing a Matrix card is one of the (if not the) best for image quality.