hey guys, ive decided in the endless strive to save money i'm gonna have my friend build me a new computer for editing and such...so anyways i was wondering what the best specs would be as far as hardrive space, proccesor speeds, video cards, ram ...and any others i may have forgotten. any and all help is greatly appreciated.

For editing, I've heard Apple's are really good. However, I despise everything and anything Apple.

The only thing you're limited by is money. If you have at least 500 dollars, you're in pretty good business. The big thing about computers are the higher the number the better (except for temperature of parts).

For a processor, you're going to want either an Intel Pentium 4 with dual core processor or an AMD processor (not real familiar with AMD, ask your friend). Go for something around 3.0 Gigahertz. Or higher if you can.

For a hard drive, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get as much as you can. At least 200 Gigabytes would be good for editing, I know you'll need it for all the raw videos and prototype renders. As for type, it's your personal preference. The SATA ones are really good, and I think there's one called a raptor or something that's supposed to be good. Brandwise, I like Western Digital.

Video Cards! My specialty! If you're only doing editing, you won't need too much graphics-wise. If you want to play games too, you've come to the right place. Your basic editing graphics card is going to be an NVIDIA. Always use an NVIDIA card. Never use ATI. NVIDIA=SeXy. Once again, go as high as you can with your money. Anything above a GeForce 6200 would be great. When it talks about video memory, don't worry too much about size, just make sure you're not getting a budget card (your friend can help you with that). Be careful when you buy the motherboard. If you are getting an AGP motherboard, get an AGP graphics card. If you're getting a PCI Express motherboard, get a PCI Express card.

On to RAM! The more the merrier. You're only limited here by your money AND how much your motherboard can support/hold. I have 1.25 Gigabytes. You can go so much higher now though. I reccomend at least 1 Gigabyte if you've got the money. Go for 2 Gig if you can. Corsair memory is the best. Type-wise, go for DDR2 if you can, otherwise PC3200 is good.

What am I missing...power supply. Just make sure it's wattage is high enough for all the other parts you're going to get (motherboard, graphics, etc.)

Duh! Sound card. Sometimes it's not enough to use the onboard motherboard audio. I would get a Creative Labs Audigy 2 sound card. That'll let you use surround sound too if you need it, but is like 100 times better than onboard sound.

Accessorize! You're editing, so make sure your motherboard either comes with firewire ports, or buy a PCI card that has some that you can just stick in.

Last but not least, for the case, make sure that the motherboard size you get matches the case size. If you get a MicroATX mobo, get a MicroATX case. If you get a ATX mobo, get a ATX case.

I think that's about it. If there's anything else, just post here or Private Message me

Hmm

iMac G5

1.5 gig ram
200 hd

FCP.

Heh, what biased advice. ATI is fine. And yes, you should have a decent card for editing. 1 GB is not enough. Most memory is virtually the same as far as performance and reliability.

I recommend buying a Mac, not a PC. You gain access to FCP, Soundtrack, Motion, and Cinema Tools (best program ever for film to video workflow).

You will want at least 1.5 to 2 GB of RAM and at least 500 GB disk space.

*Hissssss* ATI is THE DEVIL!!!

Well, maybe not. It's not that bad...I just like NVIDIA better

quote:

iMac G5

1.5 gig ram
200 hd

FCP.

Worst advice ever. G5s are old news. If you're going to get a Mac, get an intel mac. Any model from the new line of laptops works just fine, however make sure you pick up an external hard drive. I'd recommend one of the 2 ghz macbooks, but the 1.83 works ok for video too, a good friend uses it and it works well.

Minimum specs for video editing in my opinion are a 2.5 ghz or more processor, two hard drives, one around 60 gigabytes to store your OS and your data, another closer to 250-300 gigabytes to store your video and other assorted media. You'll probably have onboard video and sound on your mobo, but I'd recommend getting a sound card anyway. Onboard video works just fine for video editing and stuff, but if you're going to game on it, you need a decent video card too. Also, make sure you've got plenty of firewire and usb ports. 512 to a gig of ram as well.

It should run you under 800 dollars if you build it yourself.

A single 250 GB drive as a scratch disk...? Wow, I wish I could go back to those days. I have 2x250 GB internal drives and a 160 GB external, and it's really not enough. I'd be comfortable (for a while) if I had another 250 GB drive.

2.5 GHz on a PC or Mac? Processor speed is really the least important of the prominent considerations when you're selecting a setup. Fast drives, lots of RAM, and a good monitor are much more important. Many professional suites are based around G4 towers.

G5 is still an amazing computer, costs have gone down since the intel chip. I have a G5 and I havent had a problem yet.

I've recently switched from a PC, running an AMD 64 3400+ with 1 gig of RAM and a 200gb hard drive and though it flew at first, it started to get bogged down and started to run rather slowly. I guess I could have done a low level format of the drive and done a full cleaning on the actual system itself, but as I'm going to university in the fall, I decided to buy myself a Macbook Pro. I have 1 gig of RAM in it and have just installed FCP.

I plan on putting another 1gb stick in before the summer's out, but so far the tests on the universal binary version of FCP are so much better than the iMac's I used to use at school with 1.5gb of RAM.

I think Mac's are the way to go, but that could very well be a bias statement...well, not really as I've edited on both machines, and just find that editing on a Mac is more efficient. To each his or her own, but yes building is definitley the way to go if you have the skills. I built mine a couple years ago and it was way better than anything on the market for about the same price.

-Kegan

quote:

Originally posted by Evan Kubota:
FCP, Soundtrack, Motion, and Cinema Tools (best program ever for film to video workflow).

Actually - the best program ever for a film to video workflow would be an Avid Media Composer. But on a budget - FCP will do.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

quote:

Originally posted by paul:

quote:

iMac G5

1.5 gig ram
200 hd

FCP.

Worst advice ever.

Well, I wouldn't say that. It's certainly better advice than suggesting that he get a PC over a Mac.

I love these threads

The truth is, you don't NEED the best computer ever created to edit video. Yes, it will make it go smoother, but I've successfully cut HDV movies on a 12" Powerbook with 1.5ghz and 1.25GB ram. If you're serious about it, get a Mac and get the most you can afford. Apple computers last a lot longer than PCs when treated properly, and the little bit of extra cash you put in now, will equal a longer useful life-span, before it's outdated. Evan's right about processor speed - it's not nearly as important as hard drives, memory and even keeping the OS uncluttered and in good shape.

quote:

Originally posted by titaniumdoughnut:
I love these threads

The truth is, you don't NEED the best computer ever created to edit video. Yes, it will make it go smoother, but I've successfully cut HDV movies on a 12" Powerbook with 1.5ghz and 1.25GB ram.

I'm currently cutting my short on about 3.2 ghz and 512MB of ram. No problems. It could be a little smoother but I'm sure more ram would help that. Still, not a "must" at the moment.

Mike

I've edited HDV on an 867 MHz Powerbook G4 and 640 MB of RAM. No problems there either.

quote:

Originally posted by Josh:
Well, I wouldn't say that. It's certainly better advice than suggesting that he get a PC over a Mac.

I agree with the talking doughnut These threads are fun. I've never actually had a Mac, but every single computer forum I hang out on thinks that they're for fruits. I don't think this, I think Mac's are pretty cool. I remember when Lemmings was on it...ah the good ol' days.

I've always edited on a PC and it's worked fine for me. I guess that asks the question, "If you've never known better, how would you know if yours is bad?"

quote:

Actually - the best program ever for a film to video workflow would be an Avid Media Composer. But on a budget - FCP will do. Wink

Cinema Tools, not FCP I've never used Media Composer but I'm specifically referring to the conveniences that Cinema Tools offers like high quality, relatively fast inverse telecine with robust options. I wish there were some faster way to determine the starting field, but nothing is perfect...

"I've never actually had a Mac, but every single computer forum I hang out on thinks that they're for fruits."

I think these 'computer forums' are responsible for your weird thinking. If you were able to get a G5 I guarantee you would not want to go back to a Wintel box.

Regarding maintenance, etc. My 2 GHz G5 is the computer equivalent of Paris Hilton - it's been everywhere and had everything on its drive. I basically do no regular maintenance other than occasional backups. The hard drive is constantly approaching full. It's still really fast and handles everything I can throw at it. I bought the computer in August 2004. I doubt many PCs are still reasonably up to date and functional two years down the line.

Media Composer bests that as well in a 24p project.

All that the conversion is done in real time as you capture and all of the key # and film info are available and easy in the editing app itself.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

quote:

A single 250 GB drive as a scratch disk...? Wow, I wish I could go back to those days. I have 2x250 GB internal drives and a 160 GB external, and it's really not enough. I'd be comfortable (for a while) if I had another 250 GB drive.

2.5 GHz on a PC or Mac? Processor speed is really the least important of the prominent considerations when you're selecting a setup. Fast drives, lots of RAM, and a good monitor are much more important. Many professional suites are based around G4 towers.

A single 250 GB was sufficient when I first began, I've got a little more than a terrabyte of space now, in about 5 or 6 hard drives. DV hasn't changed its bitrate since then, and since it was sufficient when I started out, I figure it'd be sufficient for someone else starting out.

processor speed is important when it comes to rendering, not ram. I can render mpeg2 in faster than real time now, but back when I was running a 1.8 I couldn't, it was a little less than real time (about 22 fps instead of 30), even slower if I did lots of color correction. Since Ram has nothing to really do with render time, I figured that the processor speed is more important. My old setup was an 900 mhz processor with 80 gigs worth of hard drive space and 256 megs of Ram. I edited wedding videos with all sorts of ease on it, with only 256 megs of ram. It'd be two or three hours worth of footage, but it didn't matter much. It was fine. Rendering was a bastard and a half sometimes, especially if I color corrected. It dragged like Denis Leary on a cigarette.

Uh, I'm talking about producing footage with no visible interlacing from film transferred to interlaced video... Final Cut can obviously handle 24p projects as well but I don't have the money to get a film scan.

paul - I'm operating on the assumption that the drive will eventually become crowded with media and games. I bought a 250 GB a while ago and intended to use it as only a scratch disk. You know what they say about good intentions...

I don't think rendering is the most important aspect. How often do you render to MPEG-2 during editing..? Overall responsiveness for video editing is mainly a function of disk speed and RAM.

quote:

paul - I'm operating on the assumption that the drive will eventually become crowded with media and games. I bought a 250 GB a while ago and intended to use it as only a scratch disk. You know what they say about good intentions...

oh ok, i get you.


Rendering is important depending on what you're editing. If you're editing your own movie, then no, it's not really important as you'll make a DV-AVI master and encode it outside of the NLE ideally. There were however, times when I would render a watermarked mpeg2 out of my NLE to give to the clients to OK before I gave them the finished product, whatever it may have been. I sometimes just assume that people who are doing editing might take some video jobs doing something. I never planned on it, and I happen to make decent money doing it. It's something that could happen, and thus I sort of assume that it might.

And yeah, I forgot to mention 7200 or 10000 RPM hard disks. That was my bad. I was in a bit of a hurry.