Hardware Requirement for Movie Capture and Editing

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I am planning to get a PC to do some occasional video capturing and editing
from my miniDV tapes. Will the following spec suffice for such a job:

Pentium 4 3.0Ghz, 512 RAM with on-board graphics memory (up to 128MB).
Specifically, I would like to know do I really need a separate graphics card
instead of the integrated one? This is what the salesman trying to sell me.

Thanks for any advise in advance.
 
If your current graphics card is 128MB I see no reason to purchase a
different one at this point. I do a lot of video editing and I only have a
64MB graphics card and it works just fine.
If you end up doing a lot of video editing the things I would look at first
are:
1 - Additional memory - 512 is ok but 1024 is much much better and memory is
cheap
2 - The size of the HDD - Video clips, especially when rendered to DV-AVI,
take a lot of space plus you need a place to store them until projects are
finished etc... I personally have two 160Gig HDD's in my system but that is
likely overkill for most.
3 - Make sure your computer has a DVD burner and decent DVD authoring
software (there's a list of quite a few different programs I have worked
with on my website in the "DVD Programs" section. Even if you don't think
you will be making DVD's I assure you once you start video editing you will
be hooked and it won't be long before your making DVD's and using DVD disks
as storage for seldom used clips etc...
 
Thanks very much for the reply Wojo. Are you saying the on-board (integrated)
graphics with up to 128MB of memeory is sufficient? Or are you assuming a
dedicated grahic card? Also, would you recommend MS Movie Maker for a novice?
I read from this forum that this is not the easiest tool to use. thanks.
 
I am saying the on-board 128MB is sufficient for now. Upgrading later may be
something you want to do but not because of the 128MB so much as the quality
of the card which, of course we don't know yet, but for now I would say
don't waste your money.
And yes I would definitely say WMM is the perfect video editing tool for a
novice.
Yes if you read this forum there are many people that have problems but
there are also solutions. You will also read that many people posting their
problems here didn't read through the forum first or they would have seen
there problem, in most cases, addressed and fixed many times in the past.
As you familiarize yourself with WMM I guarantee you will add other tools to
your video editing software other than WMM but I would bet you will still
use it along with these other tools. I have many different programs I use
for different things but usually put them together with WMM.
 
Thanks so much fot the speedy response Wojo. The really helps. At least I
know I don't have to waste the money on the graphics card which I may not
need later. One last "stupid" question, are you from Microsoft or affliated
with Uncle Bill?

Thanks.
 
One very important question I forgot to ask earlier is do you need a video
capture card if you have a firewall port to capture video from miniDV?
 
Nope, just somebody interested in video editing, computers in general, and
especially DVD creation.
 
You shouldn't. If you have the firewire port then you should be video
capture ready.
I don't work with video capturing myself yet, my camera records right to CD,
but AFAIK the firewire card should be all you need.
 
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